The Nephites always seem outnumbered by the Lamanites.  Yet Nephite ethnography describes the Lamanites as hunter-gatherers who live off of game.  It’s possible that this is just a trope, some kind of traditional form of ethnic prejudice, and the Lamanites didn’t really live that way.  In support of this is that the Gadiantons are later described in the same terms.  I don’t think its just a trope.  I think the idea came from somewhere.  So if we take the scriptures seriously, the Lamanites are hunter-gatherers at least until part way through  the book of Alma, while the Nephites grow things, yet the Lamanites outnumber the Nephites.   This is  real puzzle.  Usually agriculture supports much higher populations than hunting does.

I have a speculation.

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Its interesting to read old popular fiction.  You get a better feel for what makes popular fiction popular fiction.  (By popular fiction I mean fiction that is meant to appeal to the public taste, not necessarily fiction that sold well).

I just finished readering C.S. Forrester’s 3rd Horatio Hornblower novel.  Really good book, but also pretty informative about how such books work. (more…)

I dreamed that Hell was an exquisitely confected array of interlocking corporations and trusts.  All prepared with the most careful art.

But it mattered little, because there were very few things at all to be owned, most of what little there was was broken, and ignoring the corporate forms altogether the devil jealously kept those few things heaped up in a little pile of trash on which  he sat like a mountebank dragon.

Inspired by the conference theme on wearing your garments–

To riff on Chesterton, everyone has an identity.   When they reject an identity, they don’t cease to have one.  They just start conforming to a different one.

You always dress to belong.  The only question is, to what group do you dress to belong

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On the sweetness of Mormon life.

The young man bashfully starts his talk by making eye contact with the lectern.  He says, I gave a really good talk two years ago for mothers’ day so the bishop asked me again.  The thing is, my mom wrote that talk.

On the sweetness of Mormon life.

You are driving to St. George probably for the first time when you see a sign for a town coming up.  Its called Kanarraville.

Hey, one of your daughters says, I think that’s where Elder Hollands talk happened.

She’s right, so you put it on.

The town is beautiful from the road.  There is a storm, the black clouds heaped up in great piles over the mountains and silver sheets of rain.  Meanwhile Elder Holland’s sonorous voice from the speaker.

Don’t give up, boy.  Don’t you quit.

 

 

A great little short short story about looking at maps.

How many people have you killed?

Disclaimer: the following is the middlebrow blog version of a ghost story.  Not intended for brooding purposes.

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Years gone by my first little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year.

Today you would be 23.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

We put flowers on your grave.

It’s another photo album birthday for us.  I don’t know how birthdays go where you are.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

I’ve been having flashes of a dream about an old dead hollow tree trunk in a fen; a swirl of bats issue from the hollow in the twilight. There was some kind of minor problem with it that I was addressing.

In my other dream flashes, we were preparing a church program at a small, flat rectangular building. Probably a small branch building, one of those where its just one room that gets used for church but also everything else. There was a grape vine that sprung up next to one of the walls and was causing some kind of trouble with the building, so I dug it up.

Last night, the dreams converged.

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General Conference Retrospective

Elder Gong talks about being buried in your own temple clothes. One of the not yet entirely lost customs of the old Church was making your own temple clothes and then laying out your dead in theirs. These little acts are very meaningful.

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Brother Dushku had the Spirit make a powerful impression on him by one day telling him to sit down and shut up.  It is one of his treasured spiritual experiences.

My point is that there are many ways to receive heavenly rays of testimony. These are just a few, of course. They may not be dramatic, but all of them form part of our testimonies.

Brothers and sisters, I have not seen a pillar of light, but, like you, I have experienced many divine rays. Over the years, I’ve tried to treasure such experiences. I find that as I do, I recognize and remember even more of them. Here are some examples from my own life. They may not be very impressive to some, but they are precious to me.

I remember being a rowdy teenager at a baptism. As the meeting was about to begin, I felt the Spirit urge me to sit down and be reverent. I sat down and stayed quiet the rest of the meeting.

My own treasure house contains many such. I have also been blessed that way.

The Divine Character Includes Humor

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16-year old G. was making fun of his mother’s singing by singing in an exaggerated operatic way when his mother happened to wander in. She listened for a bit. “You’re sounding better,” she said. “I knew if you stuck with it you’d get better.”  And he was better after that.

19-year old G. was at the MTC learning Spanish. He thought it would be funny to say something in class with an exaggerated Speedy Gonzales accent. “Hey,” his instructor said, “your accent is getting pretty good. That was pretty good.”  He meant it. (more…)

Let’s tell the story of the 11th virgin.

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It’s time to play another round of wild guesses using calculation.  Let’s use LDS activity rate data to rough up a ballpark idea of what the LDS birthrate might be.

There’s an interesting study going around, using cellphone data to estimate actual church attendance as opposed to what people self-report.  Not very precise, probably only useful for comparing attendance across denominations.  The Deseret News has a write up.

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