Bryce Moore's Blog, page 193

Passport Resolution

I thought I’d take a moment to let you all know you can stop holding your breath: we officially have passports for everyone in the family after yesterday. It was a long, drawn out process (as most things are, when you involve the government.) In the end, we got in touch with some nice people at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire passport processing office (did you know they work until 11pm at night? I didn’t.) who worked with us to make sure the passports came through in time.

They called us (after I hunted down the super secret number they can be reached at. It took digging through Yelp reviews to finally come across it) and let us know they were processing the passports late last week. At first they were supposed to be done Thursday. Then Friday. Then they called (at 10pm! Night owls!) to say they could send them overnight to arrive on Monday, or we could drive down to Portsmouth to pick them up in person.

It was a 2.5 hour drive one way, but after contemplating the idea of hanging the fate of our entire European vacation on the abilities of the US Postal Service, Denisa drove down in person with DC and MC and got the passports yesterday. Huzzah!

(And it looks like they didn’t charge us the $150 to expedite them. So there’s that as well.)

In any event, we’re pretty much squared away now. I’m working today and Denisa is at home with the kids wrangling the rest of our luggage together, and we zip off this afternoon for Montreal. I have no idea how often I’ll be able to update the blog while I’m away. I’ll try to do it now and then, but vacation comes first. So try not to miss me too much, and check Facebook if you’re looking for day to day updates.

So long, folks!

On Seer Stones, Faith, and Magic

There’s been yet another bit of an online brouhaha in Mormonville the last week or so. (It’s getting to feel like there’s always a brouhaha to be found in Mormonville these days, but I suppose that’s a topic for a different post.) On the docket this time? The church recently published pictures of the seer stone Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon. That’s it at the top of this post.

Yup. It’s a stone. A pretty cool looking rock, but still a rock. It doesn’t glow in the dark. (I don’t think. Granted, they didn’t release any pictures of it taken in a dark room.) But there don’t appear to be any Hollywood-style special effects associated with it.

So where’s the beef?

A bit of backstory for some of you who might not know: According to LDS belief, the Book of Mormon is an ancient volume of scripture detailing the history of a group of people who left Jerusalem in 600BC and came to America. It tracks their history up through about 400AD, including an account of Christ visiting them after he was resurrected. It was written on gold plates and buried before that civilization basically was killed off in 400AD. Joseph Smith was shown the location of the plates by an angel, and he (Joseph) translated them into English (since they were written in “Reformed Egyptian” (another post for a different time)).

So. Got it? Gold plates. Reformed Egyptian. Translated by Joseph.

The beef is that a lot of people in the church had understood Joseph translated the Book of Mormon by pretty much looking at the gold plates and then reading off what they said in English. Sort of like in this picture:

Why would they think that? Well, that’s the way it’s typically portrayed in Mormon art. (That’s the cover of the LDS magazine from 2001, for example.) But from the historical accounts we have of the actual process, that wasn’t really how it happened. From the church’s official essay on the subject, we get this description:

“Joseph placed either the interpreters or the seer stone in a hat, pressed his face into the hat to block out extraneous light, and read aloud the English words that appeared on the instrument.”

(Read the full article for a better explanation. I don’t have time to put the whole thing here.)

So there was a seer stone and a hat involved, from what we can tell. Why wasn’t it portrayed like this in church publications, videos, and art? Probably because some feared it would seem a lot more strange. I personally wish it had been consistently portrayed as described in history books. Why?

Because this whole brouhaha seems to me sort of like the arguments fans get into nitpicky things that only fans can care about. Like whether or not the eagles should have just carried Frodo straight to Mount Doom, or whether Han shot Greedo first or not. It’s stuff that if you’re a big fan, that it all makes sense and seems really important, but if you’re not a fan, you just think it’s stilly trivial details.

Did Joseph translate the plates or not? That’s a big topic. I believe he did, but (again) that’s a topic for a different post. How did he translate them? By the power of God. What exactly that process looked like is kind of irrelevant, in my opinion. It’s magic. Whether he’s looking at golden plates and dictating aloud or looking at a rock in a hat and dictating aloud. The end result is still the same. So why not show it like it happened? When you try to depict it differently, you end up with people getting upset and feeling like they were tricked, which is where we are now.

(And yes, I realize some are arguing that the church mentioned the seer stone long ago, numerous times. While true, the vast majority of depictions didn’t include hats or seer stones. So quit trying to split hairs.)

I see the picture of the seer stone, and I think, “Cool!” It connects me to history in a unique way. I love it. But then again, I’d also read up on the seer stone before I ever saw a picture of it. That’s just how I roll. I can see how it would be disconcerting to members who haven’t come across the history before. But in my mind, those days need to be over. The more the church can do to be open about its history, the better.

People who don’t believe Joseph actually translated the Book of Mormon aren’t going to change their minds because they’re told he did it by looking at the ancient scripture and was inspired with the translation, and people who have prayed about the matter and developed a testimony that he did translate the book shouldn’t be dissuaded if they hear that a seer stone and a hat were involved. The end result (the book) doesn’t change at all. It’s still there to be studied and analyzed.

I imagine if we found out the details of a lot of miracles, they’d seem much less miraculous.

And that’s all I have to say on that for now. Comments welcome, but keep ‘em civil.

Things I’d Rather Do than Watch the Republican Debates

There were some Republican debates last night, or so I gather from the interwebs today. I skipped watching them completely. Why? Because I’d rather do many many other things than waste my time listening to imbeciles like Donald Trump bloviate on television. What exactly would I rather do?

Watch a Rainbow Brite marathon
Compete in a “who can eat the most rancid meat?” food eating contest
Fall asleep to a handy “fingernails on a chalkboard” track on repeat
Jump into a pool full of ill-tempered sea bass
Listen to a double disc compilation of “Donald Trump Sings the Bee Gees”
Tattoo “Red Sox 4 Evar” across my forehead
Surgically replace my right foot with a bowl of lime jello
House train 15 rabid rottweilers at the same time
Sign up as a guillotine tester at the start of the French Revolution

Is the depth of disdain I have for the Republican nomination process coming through accurately? Hopefully. True, most of it can be placed squarely at the smelly feet of Donald Trump, but Republicans are the ones giving that sorry excuse for a hairpiece mannequin a platform to talk from. The fact that anyone in this country is thinking for even a millisecond that this man might make a good president disappoints me to an indescribable extent.

Even the thought of wasting a blog post detailing what an idiot the man is leaves me with an oily, unclean feeling. I can’t bring myself to do it.

Please, Republicans. Throw your garbage out before it starts to stink up the entire country.

Although come to think of it, a Trump/Palin 2016 campaign would lead to some awfully amusing SNL skits . . .

Off on Library Business

I’m swamped at the moment. Between stressing about passports, getting ready for this trip, juggling all my work responsibilities, and trying not to go crazy in general, life is pretty hectic. And today I’m off to speak at the New England Library Leadership Symposium.

So because I have no time, and to reward you hearty few who clicked through to what seemed like it might be a snooze of a post, I shall gift to you all my favorite episode of one of my favorite sitcoms: the IT Crowd. Series 2, Episode 1.

Hi-larious.

The Silent Majority

I have a routine I like to go through each day when I’m online. It’s not always in the same order, but there are sites I like to check out, just to make sure I know what’s going on. One of the things I almost always do is check in on my blog statistics to see how the previous day fared. Some days, the numbers are surprisingly high or low, and I’ve given up trying to easily predict which posts will get me eyeballs and which will fly under the radar.

(A lot of it rests on the algorithms of the mighty Facebook. If a few people Like and comment on the post soon after it gets put on FB, then it starts to splash it on more feeds. That process can accelerate quickly. If not a lot of people comment on it? It drops off the radar. This is why everyone should make sure my posts are right at the top of their Facebook feeds.   )

Something that consistently surprises me, however, is just how many people will tune into a post and read it, but say nothing. I’ve had some pretty controversial posts up on my blog over the years, and some have caused a fair bit of conversation here or on FB. But there are others that people just seem to like to read and say nothing. Yesterday’s post about passport panic is a good example. It got a fair number of hits, mainly (I imagine) because people are interested in reading about stupid mistakes other people make, but are too polite to say exactly what they think about those stupid mistakes.

(Really. People show up for schadenfreude. I’ve got plenty of posts and statistics that will back me up on that.)

Interestingly, sometimes the more provocative “out there” posts also don’t get much in the way of comments. It’s like people know they won’t be able to keep things on the up and up, and so they know better than to engage. Or that could just be me reading into it.

Not that I expect people to always respond to something. There are plenty of posts I read that don’t make me feel the need to say something back. It’s just that sometimes there are posts that get lots of views and little response. That goes against most of my experience, where posts with lots of views get lots of response.

In any case, it’s a busy Wednesday today, and I don’t have time on my lunch break to come up with more thought than this, so this is what you get from me today. I wonder how many people will read it.

Passport Panic

A bit of context for you fine people first: five weeks and change ago, Denisa and I applied for passports for MC and DC. Kind of hard to go to Europe without them, you know? When we brought the applications in, the person who took them told us the wait time was 4-6 weeks. We had more than 6 weeks to go, and we asked how accurate that was. She was confident we’d be fine, so we didn’t choose the “expedite” option. ($75 more per passport.)

Fast forward to yesterday. The passports have yet to arrive, and mild panic was beginning to set in. What were we going to do if they didn’t come? It’s not a good feeling to have, especially not when you’re a typical hyper-planner such as myself.

I got on the phone with the passport office. This is 2015, I reasoned. Surely they can give me an update on how far off the passports are. (Their website seemed to say they could. I trust websites.) After being on hold for a half hour (“Your call is important to us”), I spoke with a woman at the great passport office in the sky. She took my information, tapped some things into her computer, and helpfully said, “They’re being processed.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Any idea how long until they’re done?”

“No.”

A pause on my part, as I waited for her to provide some additional information. When she didn’t add anything, I asked, “Well, how long does it usually take for them to finish this part of the processing.”

“You should have them in two weeks.”

A bigger pause this time, as my brain tried to reconcile “two weeks” with “leaving in 8 days.” I cleared my throat. “I . . . uh . . . what can I do to speed that process up a bit?”

“You can pay $75 per passport to request that they be expedited, but that’s just s request, not a guarantee.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You can request we speed things up. We might or might not be able to accommodate your request.”

“And it’s $75 either way?”

“Yes.”

This woman was a font of knowledge and advice. I don’t know why in the world I didn’t try calling her sooner. “What are my options otherwise?” I asked. She was the customer service rep for the passport agency. Surely she handled this question all the time.

“We can’t guarantee anything.”

And that’s what it kept coming back to. I could fork over $150 to ask nicely if they wouldn’t mind hurrying things up a bit, but that’s all they could do. Needless to say, I was less than pleased when I hung up the phone (having paid $150, because what else was I going to do?) Applying for the passport, it was all “you’ve got plenty of time!” Now it was “4-6 weeks doesn’t include delivery times. We can’t guarantee anything.”

Once I fought down the panic, I went into research mode, and with a bit of effort, I found out that you can get a passport in a day, if you need to. It just involves going in person to a passport office. The nearest one to us is 2 hours away. This seems like a pain (we might have to pay for the passports twice, for example), but when the worst-case scenario goes from “Don’t go on the trip at all” to “spend a day getting passports and fork over another $400 or so), then you have to admit, it does seem like a better alternative at this point. But the only way I can picture those being the only two opportunities open to me is to recognize that the government is involved in this process. Which it is.

Denisa is on phone duty today, calling the local passport office and finding out if they’re any more inclined to provide helpful information. Cross your fingers. It’ll be hard for it to go any worse than yesterday went.

And if any of you fine folk out there have been in a similar situation and have any tips to offer, I’d love to hear them.

Bryce’s Guide to Being Less Self-Conscious at the Beach

I went to the beach with the family on Saturday. Had a great time, although I managed to do something to my back in the water that made things uncomfortable on Sunday. All is right with the world now, however, and I’m here to share with you a few important pieces of advice for any of you thinking you might want to head to the beach in the near future. (Especially if, like me, it’s been a while since you’ve been.) Most of them are things you’d think a full grown adult would recognize.

You’d think wrong.

First up? Sunscreen washes off. Remember to reapply it once or twice, or you might wish you had later on.

Second? Wind is windy. It tends to want to mess up your beach umbrella.

Third? That ocean is mighty salty. Bringing some goggles or something to keep it out of your eyes all the time might be a good idea. On the flip side, your beard will provide all the seasoning you need for hours later.

But most importantly, one of the best ways to enjoy the beach is to stop worrying how pasty white your skin is and just enjoy yourself. To do that, I have one tried and true method:

Make sure to be as close to legally blind without your glasses as possible.
Take off your glasses once you get to the beach. Put them someplace safe.
Profit.

That’s really it. Suddenly, your body is just this big blurry area beneath you. Everyone else turns into big blurry areas, as well. Guess what? You can’t prove to me that my big blurry area is in any worse shape or color than anyone else’s big blurry area. (Just make sure to try and remember what color swimming suit your friends and family are each wearing, or you might get pretty confused . . .)

I’m debating making some special swim goggles that helps people with normal vision get the same effect. It’ll be all the rage next summer. Just wait.

 

What Advice Would You Give 16-Year-Old You?

I came across this article about Stephen King’s letter to his 16 year old self, and I was struck by how open and honest he was with himself. For those of you whose clicking fingers are feeling kind of drowsy this fine Friday, he said

“I’m writing to you from the year 2010, when I have reached the totally ridiculous age of sixty-two, in order to give you a piece of advice. It’s simple, really, just five words: stay away from recreational drugs.”

He goes on to add a bit more to that, but that’s about the size of it right there. And it got me thinking: what would I say to 16 year old me? What one piece of advice could I give myself that would be of most use? I’d want it to be something that could be really impactful, and I’m going to avoid the snarky “buy as much Apple and Google stock as you can” sort of Back to the Future Part 2 lines.

As I thought it over, what kept coming back to me was another simple thing: Be more compassionate.

I know that might seem a bit strange, since it’s not like I’m the world’s most compassionate person or anything, but let’s just say that I’ve come along way. Growing up, I could be a pretty judgmental person. I would see people doing things or saying things I didn’t agree with, and so I’d make assumptions about who they were or what they thought. I was way too eager to stereotype, even though at the time I remember thinking I was pretty open-minded.

Something I’ve observed since: if there’s an issue that most of society has discovered is fairly universal, and you look at yourself and think you don’t have any issue with it at all? There’s a good chance you’ve got a much bigger problem with it than you think. Racism, homophobia, hypocrisy–you name it. If you think everyone else has that problem but you’re free of it, there’s your symptom right there. One of the best things to do in life is to be able to look at yourself openly and be honest.

16 year old me was bad at that, and it ruined a few friendships in later years. I did things and said things that still bother me to this day. Could I really have done/said that? Yes.

Anyway. It’s not like that was the only problem I had, and I’m sure I’ve got a slew of family or high school friends who would point out some much bigger ones, but today, that’s the one that came to mind.

So let me turn the question to you: what would you tell yourself?

Off to See the Bread Wizard

For the first time in I don’t know how long, Denisa’s headed off to a conference all on her lonesome. It’s over in Skowhegan, and is quite well known among the bread people out there (or so I’m told). A conference that draws people from across the country, all about bread baking, and it’s only 40 minutes away from our house?

How could she not go, really?

So if any of you know anyone at the 2015 Kneading Conference, tell them to keep an eye out for Denisa today and tomorrow. She went once before and loved the experience, and I think she’ll have a blast this time as well. I’m used to going to writing conferences, and at this point many/most of those are old hat, but looking over the offerings at this one makes it look like it would be fun even for a non-baker.

Plus, did you see how much bread is going to be there to eat? There’s an Artisan Bread Fair in Skowhegan on Saturday. Denisa had wanted to go to the beach. I wonder if we’ll go there instead . . . (Also, while writing this post, I noticed King Arthur Flour does a big conference on baking in September, as well. It’s just over in Vermont. Something tells me Denisa might head over there in a year or two or three.) I’m really happy Denisa has found this, and that it fit into her schedule. I end up whining and complaining about all the plane rides I have to take to get to conferences all over the place, but in the end, I always have a great time at those cons, all while Denisa’s at home holding down the fort. I’m all for her going to as many of these as she wants, and it’s exciting that it (should) get easier for her to go as the kids get older.

In the meantime, the kids are at a friend’s house in the morning, and I’m picking them up in not too long. Together, we’ll celebrate her great baking skills by having a dad-made dinner of the finest spaghetti I can find in the pantry, coupled with a light red sauce (assuming I can find a jar of it in the pantry, as well.) If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, we might finish off the evening festivities with some ice cream or (if there’s none in the freezer) whatever’s left in the candy jar.

And people say I can’t cook!

A Few Quick Thoughts on the School Budget Passing

First off, yes! It did pass. But when I looked to see what the margins were like, I was shocked to see what a close call it had been. 107 votes? And it was just 53% in favor of the budget? Yikes.

I’d been hoping all along that the first time the budget didn’t pass was a fluke. That people just hadn’t been aware it was close to not passing, and that now that they knew, they’d have a strong turnout to make sure that didn’t happen. Instead, we had a real squeaker. In fact, if the same number of “No” voters had turned out yesterday, it would have easily been defeated again.

That’s troubling for a number of reasons.

First off, the “no” arguments aren’t going anywhere. When the budget comes up again next year, you can be sure they’ll be lurking there ready to demand it shrinks instead of grows. The problem as I see it (basing this on the arguments I’ve read online) is that the “no” voters really won’t be satisfied. Ever. So long as the budget is as big as it is, what they want to see is cuts and more cuts. I can’t imagine that if those cuts went through that they’d want to stop there. Keep on cutting! Or at best, don’t let the budget grow anymore after those cuts.

I would be more sympathetic to these arguments if our school district really was out of line in comparison to the other schools in the state and area, but it isn’t.

Second, there was some significant misinformation distributed during this back and forth that I found disturbing. One of the town’s selectmen (New Sharon) issued a press release making claims that were later proved to be off by a wide margin, saying that the school budget would increase their town’s taxes by $200 for every $100k of property value. In reality, it turned out to be an increase of only $75 for every $100k. That’s a big counting error there. (Interestingly, that letter has since been removed from the local news site, though you can still find a cached version on Google if you’ve got your ninja librarian skills handy.)

A press release like that comes about by one of two ways. Either it was issued by someone who was incompetent/bad at math, or it was issued by someone who was intentionally trying to mislead the public. I’m not sure which one of those options alarms me more, but neither of them give me warm fuzzies. (Add to this the fact that whole board of selectmen of New Sharon are new enough they might want to check and see if they’ve still got tags attached, and it’s even more worrisome. There’s a real trend in some places to “elect new blood” so that people can “bring government back in line.” This is an argument that makes about as much sense to me as a kick in the head. New views are important, yes, but when they come all at once, without anyone there to offer some historical insight? That can be dangerous. But that’s a topic for a different post.)

In any case, the budget passed. It’s a problem that will come around again next year, but my hope is that votes were down because it’s the middle of the summer, and a lot of the people who would traditionally support schools (teachers, families, etc.) are off doing fun summer things. Next year, we’ll just have to make sure to show up in force for the first vote, thus avoiding all this July vote nonsense.

At least, one can hope . . .