From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #824 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Friday, September 6 2002 Volume 01 : Number 824 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2002 22:55:32 -0600 (MDT) From: Fred C Pinnegar Subject: Re: [AML] BYU Education Week Event I appreciate Jacob?s thoughtful response to my counter-rant, and I stand corrected on his name: ?Her name was McGill; she called herself ?lil,? but everyone knew her as ?Nancy.? I don?t think the original Newnet article was very helpful in articulating the dynamics of the situation, or Ron?s personality and character. Ten years ago, I think I would have written Jacob?s original post with even more enthusiasm, but I have come to know and appreciate Ron, and I have come to see that he does a lot of good?even if his teaching strategies are not ones I personally like or would use. Different strokes for different folks. On a related note, Eric Samuelsen said, ?If it doesn't speak to you, don't listen to it. Give it to charity, or sell it on E-Bay. But we don't destroy works of art. It's something decent people don't do, not ever.? In response to Eric and a similar post from William Morris, here are a few quotes I found in some ancient, recently unearthed scholarly aesthetic journals that might be of interest: 1. The Golden Calf, a stunning work wrought in pure gold in the great tradition of the Pharoah School by some skilled artisans in the Israelite rabble, was so utterly destroyed by that un-decent man, Moses, that he ground the precious metal into powder and made the throng drink it. That is religious fanaticism gone crazy! Aaron, Moses? own brother, was apparently the chief architect of the calf, as well as chief fund raiser for the project (the NEH proposal having been rejected on the grounds that the project was for religion rather than against it). He got everyone to contribute their gold ear, tongue, and belly rings to the project, he constructed the altar before it, and scripted the worship rituals. It was Aaron who supervised the casting of the three-dimensional sculpture in metal, even though he likes to talk about how he simply ?cast the gold into the fire and there came out this calf.? 2. Hardline, Israelite radical right-wing religious fanatics, acting under the direction of their self-styled prophet, last week destroyed several groves of old-growth forest and smashed a large number of artistic treasures and religious artifacts on display there. The members of these dying, minority sects have no understanding or respect for religious art, let alone the property rights of others. For many people in this community, those groves are a place of worship, a place where love abounds, a place of peace and harmony where they can speak directly to their gods, unlike the iconoclasts who like to blabber to the sky from the tops of the mountains. Courses in art appreciation are offered at the university for those who know nothing about aesthetics. 3. Archeological discovery of the century! Magnificent Ancient Art Found! Professor Akish recently brought to light certain ancient manuscripts apparently written by the hand of a poet known to us only as ?Master Mahan.? It has long been thought that these records were destroyed by that group of deluded fanatics who style themselves ?Followers of God,? who had taken an oath to ?use every means in their power to destroy them [i.e., the followers of Gadianton and their records] from off the face of the earth? (Heleman 6:20). Akish has been so taken by these records he has resigned from his university position to found a new religion, and he is reputedly now administering to his followers certain oaths and covenants which he found in the Mahan manuscript. Akish is also said to have political aspirations. Experts who have examined the Mahan manuscript declared it the finest example of illuminated work and calligraphy they have ever seen from the Tower of Babel Period. Literary and linguistic scholars have commented on the rhetorical complexity of the language, as well as its simple power and beauty. Here is an example: ?Will ye swear unto me that ye will be faithful unto me in the thing which I shall desire of you?? What is so horrible about this plain and poetic language which would make the Followers of God so angry about it and want to up and destroy it with a sledge hammer? 3. Censorship! The Nauvoo Expositor, the region?s most important venue for alternative poetry and stories by serious writers, was recently dumped in the Mississippi River by the ?Prophet,? Joe Smith and his followers in an act of outright censorship. That guy ought to be shot! These are a few items my quick research turned up, but Strong?s Bible Concordance has a long list of art (images, pictures, high places, trees, human beings, cities, etc ) which God himself says he will destroy and which he commands to be destroyed. Regards, Fred Pinnegar - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 11:21:19 -0500 From: Linda Adams Subject: Re: [AML] Linda Adams Irreantum Interview Thanks, guys. These are good questions. I feel "all special" now. :-) Sorry for whining--I hear enough all day that I really don't need to create more of it! Linda Linda Adams adamszoo@sprintmail.com http://home.sprintmail.com/~adamszoo - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 10:00:32 -0600 From: Christopher Bigelow Subject: [AML] Irreantum Update Just a note to let you know that the AML's literary magazine, Irreantum, looks like it's going to be OK and not take a step backward. We found a printer (Alexander's Digital Printing) that can do the magazine for half the price of BYU. So we will continue to do a 100-page perfect-bound magazine for the foreseeable future. Chris Bigelow - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 11:06:01 -0700 From: "Katrina Duvalois" Subject: [AML] RE: Musings on Farce You wrote: I just saw the Scooby Doo movie. It got terrible reviews. They're all wrong. It's terrific. It's just that it's a farce. It's a good one; it's one of the best farces of the past five years. It's consistently funny, and what's more, it's an intelligently structured farce. Thank you. My kids thank you. I did not want to see this movie, and now I DO! Thank you for your perspective. I found it thought provoking and LOL funny. You wrote: Matthew Lillard's performance in Scooby Doo, playing Shaggy, is astonishing; I caught an interview with him (on Regis, I believe) and I was impressed with his training. I hope we see more of him. Katrina D. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 14:21:25 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: [AML] Daniel Rector Dies Thu, 5 Sep 2002 1 a.m. I just happened to go upstairs a few hours ago and there was Hartman Rector, Jr. on the 10:00 news trying to talk to the camera. His son Daniel had gone freehand mountain climbing and fallen. "He was doing something he loved." I feel so sad for brother Rector. 1 p.m. I'm going to expand a bit on what I originally wrote and sent out, partly because I'm not satisfied with the part about my old bishop, and partly because I want to think for a moment about reporters and tragedy. It's so common to see grieving people talking to a camera that we don't think how odd it is to ask someone fresh into a tragedy to try and talk to a large audience, let alone be eloquent. When Eppy Lederer was divorced she wrote to the newspapers carrying her Dear Abby column and asked them to leave the space blank that day in memory of one of the best marriages that never made it. She was asking the newspapers to let her and her readers reflect on tragedy in silence. Broadcast news--radio or tv--doesn't like silence. The medium demands action, sound, images. It's not a medium for reflection. Some time last year I went to cover a bill-signing. A neighbor with a groupcalled Focus Utah had gotten a bill through the lesligature relating to father's rights, particularly the rights of divorced fathers. When I got home Donna told me she had seen me in a teaser for the story. So did my sister the PR woman. Seems while I was taking pix of Gov. Leavitt signing the ceremony the tv cameras were pointed in my general direction. Anyway, Rod Decker (I think) was interviewing one of the fellows who had been working a long time to get the bill through, and he was crying about how much he loved his children, and how this bill would help. I don't know if he was crying for the camera, or because he has had painful experiences with his children. Both probably. He wasn't crying before the camera came or after it left. So I don't know what it means when people talk about emotional things on camera. I don't know if it means we don't like reflection as a society, or if it means we have to cut through a lot of emotional noise, or demands for our emotions, before we can have time to reflect. But I wonder, do we think to thank the grieving people we see on news shows for allowing us to share something very private with them? Perhaps broadcasting allows us to mourn with those who mourn--but I've never heard that justification when someone asks how reporters can just stick a microphone before someone whose son has just died and expect them to speak. (Obligatory disclaimer: I occassionally report the gnus myself, so the question is not rhetorical.) This isn't exactly what I was thinking during the news report. Mostly I was sad for Bro. Rector (Sr. Rector wasn't in the story) and thinking how old he looked. I was also thinking "I know that name"--the odd satisfaction of having some connection to someone who has died. Daniel Rector was a long-time publisher for Sunstone, and I kept thinking about something a former bishop said. He was a seminary principal at the time, and happened to get a symposium program--because he's CES, he explained, and the apostates there send the programs to try and lure people like him--and saw my name on it. He was deeply concerned, and asked me if I knew what Sunstone was about. He was particularly offended by Daniel Rector, and said Daniel believed the Church was a bunch of nonsense. That's the paragraph I didn't like. It makes my bp sound very bitter. I told him I had never met Daniel Rector, but he wasn't the publisher anymore, and I managed to reassure him about my spiritual health. I didn't talk to him about Sunstone again for several months, until Elbert Peck asked me to do something for the next year's symposium, and I told my bp I was going to because it was one of the few places where a scholar of Mormon culture could present ideas to other interested people. And then I found out where some of his bitterness came from. He told me he had had a dear seminary teacher who left the Church for 20 years because of getting involved in intellectual something or others. I assumed the phrase "dear seminary teacher" referred to someone who taught him, rather than to a colleague because he probably hadn't been teaching 20 years back then. I know a lot of people think that intellectual questioning and study leads people out of the Church, but I also know the relationship between intellectual or spiritual quests / questions and organizations is very complex and people who leave the Church often still have deep and poignant ties to the Church and culture. I came home from choir practice first Sunday in May last year and Donna said, "Bruce died." "My brother in law?" Bruce hadn't attended church for years, yet it was evident to me--became gradually evident--that he had deep ties, despite comments like, "Ezra Taft Benson represents everything I've worked against." And yet, when Pres. Hunter's colon cancer flared up again, Bruce was deeply shaken. I asked him why, and he reminded me he had colon cancer himself--but I doubt he would have been so shaken if he had read a stranger's obituary and found the stranger had died of colon cancer. At the funeral his longtime home teacher said (I think I'm remembering correctly) that Bruce told him once if you chopped him into a 1000 pieces every piece would shout, 'Mormon.' He also said that when Bruce was going through a rough time once a fellow therapist asked him to imagine himself in the worst situation he could be in. "Who could deliver you?" (A good lawyer, I thought) "The Savior." (That reply still moves me.) I realized then that the Friberg print of Christ among the Nephites hanging over their mantlepiece was likely Bruce's choice, not my sister's--though he and Diane may have chosen it together. Anyway, watching Bro. Rector try and say something about his son reminded me how deeply parents love their children, and that whatever differences in religious belief there may have been between the two are irrelevant considered against the implacability of death. As I reminded my cousin once, Paul was right, death really is the last enemy that needs to be conquered (has already been, by some accounts, though it will take awhile for all the dead to rise again). So my prayers are with Daniel's parents and wife and children, and all the others who mourn with them. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 15:00:03 -0600 From: "Todd Petersen" Subject: Re: [AML] Brewvies [MOD: I'm going to hitchhike off Todd's post to get a comment of my own in. While on my mission (to Italy), if I recall correctly, I had companions who claimed (in teaching investigators) that the "wine" in the New Testament wasn't really alcoholic... --Jonathan Langford] So here I am teaching primary and we get to a discussion of wine and drinking wine and all the kids are like, "it's okay that these people in the bible drank wine becuase it was like grape juice back then." One of the kids was the bishop's daughter -- and he's a groovy professor of art. Mormon culture maintains certain inaccuracies in order to make themselves feel better. I've attacked this propensity a lot in the Sugar Beet. I'm well aware of lots of Mormon people who are not willing to admit that the Word of Wisdom wasn't even manadatory for temple attendance until well into the 20th century. The literary tie in, for me, is that our literature has a great opportunity in all this: we can write about characters who are confused about the true tenants of the religion or characters who might cause others to lose faith because they are jot and tittlers. - -- Todd Petersen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 01:00:46 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Programs for Poverty Note on obligatory literary tie-in: Some of the stuff I'll be mentioning here is background and plot material for my unwritten novel Mother's Day Burial. On Sat, 24 Aug 2002 00:30:50 -0600 "Jacob Proffitt" writes: > ---Original Message From: Scott Parkin > > On a general basis, though, I can't help but wonder if we > > sometimes spend inordinate effort fighting the spectre of > > unrealized possibility more than the real problems that lie > > at our feet. If we spent less time worrying about fraud and > > devoted that time and effort to offering service, it seems > > like we could accomplish even more good than we already > > do--even if some undeserving benefit as a result. I wonder if > > we shouldn't just "serve 'em all and let God sort 'em out," > > as it were. > > If resources were unlimited, I'd be happy with this as a policy. But resources are unlimited. "The Earth is the Lord's and the Fulness thereof." I have a friend who teaches accounting at UVSC, Mike Stemkoski, who used to come to the English Dept's readings nights, and became excited about writing himself. He told me once, "I want to write a book called God Talks to an Economist." One of the things God tells the economist is that economic theory is based on the wrong metaphor, the metaphor of scarcity, whereas God uses the metaphor of overflow: "All that I have is yours," and God can say those words repeatedly without diminishing all that he has. As a sidelight, Mike is not LDS, but he repeatedly told me two things, first that my writing was accessible to non-writers, and really fascinating, and that my work made Mormonism accessible and fascinating to non-Mormons--which is part of why I believe there's a large audience outside the Church for Mormon writing. > The problem is that fraud is incredibly crippling. Even if a very > small portion of the population will engage in fraud (say 1 CEO > in 100), the costs of that fraud will rise over time with no natural > limiting factor. But there is a natural limiting factor, the budget for any program. There's also something called honesty and integrity--which isn't spelled E-n-r-o-n, W-o-r-l-d-c-o-m, or Q-w-e-s-t, but can be seen in the lives of many many poor people--and many many who aren't poor > Fraud grows because greed has no bounds and systems open to fraud > will attract those willing to defraud. I agree. For a little perspective on fraud I would bet that all the welfare fraud in the history of the major welfare programs, like AFDC and food stamps, doesn't even approach the 10s of billions of fraud perpetrated recently by Enron, Qwest, Worldcom and a half dozen others. There's an easy way to check this. Just add up the allotment for welfare programs in all the national budgets for the last 65 years. That figure will represent how much welfare fraud is possible. Compare that cumulative budget with the fraud discussed above. Now, go through a year or two of the Wall Street Journal and write down the dollar amount in every story about the gov't suing a defense contractor for fraud, every story about any kind of corporate fraud. Compare this figure with the total welfare budget. I'd bet that the total fraud recorded in 6 1/2 random years of WSJ would compare favorably to the total welfare budget over 65 years. There may be a bit of a greeting to Perbole in that last paragraph, but I'm fairly sure you wouldn't have to search _The Nation's_ electronic archive very long to find a story or book by someone who's done what I suggested. > > I wonder if our fear of the elusive (illusive?) "welfare > > queen" has caused us to become so demanding, harsh, and > > critical of those who seek help that we all but criminalize > > them, and look for excuses to withdraw our assistance in the > > name of moral right. Are we letting the criminals dictate how > > we treat the honestly needy? Is that the best mindset to use > > when attempting to offer real charity? > I *do* hesitate to give when my giving is demanded and even taken > by force. I dislike it because without my willingness to give, there > is no blessing in the giving. But you control that. Willingness to give has nothing to do with whether the money comes from your taxes or not. Willingness to give has to do with the metaphors and images you use to define a situation. Do you resent being forced to pay for military services, police protection, fire fighters, roads, schools, the 911 system, libraries, Internet access in schools and libraries? Do you smolder with resentment every time you see a post office, library, school, park, stop sign or crosswalk? Maybe you do, but I've never met anyone who truly wants to do without all services provided by our taxes. Let me state this in a different way. One of my main interests in this thread, and in literary theory, is the images and metaphors people use to define and interpret the world around them. We are required to pay for all the services I've listed above in the same way we pay for social programs--taken from us by force, if you want to use that metaphor. But remember it is a metaphor--it doesn't describe what actually happens. I've never had anyone come up to me and take my taxes by force. Even when I miscalculated my state taxes one year, no one forced me to hand over money. I got a polite letter from the State Tax Commission telling me what the mistake was, and what more I had to pay. I suspect most of us image government spending we approve of differently than we image spending we disapprove of. We're likely to see spending we approve of as investment in infrastructure or personal, local or national security, and likely to see spending we disapprove of as a forced taking, but all government spending comes from taking a portion (sometimes a very very small portion) of our income. Is it possible to re-image social programs as investments? > When there is contempt for my giving and open suspicion of > my human value because I'm "rich", it gives me little joy or > willingness to give. Yes, and when the poor hear open suspicion of their human value and motives because they're poor do they feel any more joy or willingness to give gratitude? When was the last time you sat in seminary class, or Sunny Schoodle, or other such meetings and heard someone say, "These rich people just keep having babies every year so they can get a new tax deduction." > I *have* seen in vivid detail delivered to my living room > those who *demand* food and shelter as their *right* as > Americans and it leaves me cold. Well, how do we know as a society that food and shelter are not a basic human right? > > It's an emotional argument, but it's the one I keep coming > > back to. Isn't it to our good to help those in need of > > help--even if they have the tools to escape their poverty, > > and even if they're defrauding us by accepting our > > assistance? If we should labor all our days and save only one > > soul from poverty and the spiritual abyss it can represent, > > won't our joy be great in the kingdom of heaven? > > I don't believe so. Saving a soul from poverty isn't at all the > same as saving a soul from sin. OK. I've been wanting to share this classic quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. for some time: "The Church cannot hope to save a man on Sunday if during the week it is a complacent witness to the crucifixion of his soul." Oh, sorry, attribution error. That's not from MLK or Malcolm X. It's from a guy older than both combined at their deaths, early nineties, balding, dry sense of humor with impeccable timing, his organization runs a bunch of employment centers and a chain of sheltered workshops (I worked in one in Seattle a couple times), and various other anti-poverty programs. (Actually, I just found out today, Aug. 29, that GBH was about the same age as Martin and Malcolm when he made that statement, 30 or 31 if the American Fork employment Center's dating of 1941 is correct. I suspect he made the statement in a welfare session of general conference. I'll have to look in some back Improvement Eras to see. The quote as it hangs framed on the wall there is: "A man out of work is of special moment to the Church because, deprived of his inheritance, he is on trial as Job was on trial--for his integrity. . . . Continued economic dependence breaks him. . . . He is threatened with spiritual ruin. . . . The Church cannot hope to save a man on Sunday if during the week it is a complacent witness to the crucifixion of his soul." I am amazed at how well that resonates with William Julius Wilson's _When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor_ which I picked up for 49 cents at Hastings in Twin Falls, ID during last year's trip to Hagerman to decorate my sister-in-law's grave (drank kerosene at age 2). (The one I bought the year before, Paul Hendrickson's _The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War_ is one of my favorite half-read books.) >Wasting our resources on those who defraud is poor stewardship. But so is defining fraud so broadly that you exclude people who have genuine need. Donna's mother used to complain that her daughter Georgia didn't like to take her into town and was practically keeping her a prisoner in the trailer home Georgia's son had provided (he sells them). Mom needed a lot of care, was in poor health for decades, had medication-induced diabetes, was very much the shining example of the sterling health care available in deep rural America where the nearest specialists were three hours away in Spokane or four hours away in Portland or five hours away in Boise. She was homebound, needed someone to come in and help her bathe and do other tasks, and got that help through a home health agency. Too much for Georgia and her son and his wife to handle. Donna and Matthew used to drive up and help when they could. One spring they were gone for a month, got home in time for Easter weekend, got a call on Monday and were gone another month. Mom's health improved briefly, enough that her home teacher and his wife made a bed for her in the back of their van and drove her 900 miles to Pleasant Grove. (Bless them.)When she got down here we found out why Georgia was so cranky about taking Mom into town. In order to be eligible for the every day help, someone to come in and bathe you and clean house, you have to be truly homebound. It doesn't matter that you can't take care of yourself--if you can get out of the house you're not eligible. You can go to church, and she did for about a year. But if she wanted to go out--if she was feeling good enough to want to go outside and not have a fire in the woodstove in July--we had to combine it with something like a trip to the doctor. Homebound doesn't mean you can never go out, but you can't go out regularly--whatever that means. Once a week is too often, but not too often was never defined. Such a loose definition makes it difficult to know whether your activity is acceptable or not. My former stake-missionary companion is a nurse who does a lot of home health care. He has stories about people's eligibility being terminated for things like the children taking dad out to a restaurant once a week so mom can have a break from caring for him. And if they think you're going out too much the home health aides/nurses have to report it or they're liable for fraud. And let me note one other thing here, though Mom spent decades on welfare and other public assistance, she was hardly an unproductive member of society. Like many women on welfare she made it possible for many other women to work by providing cheap, loving, safe care for their children, allowing those mothers to generate more in taxes than was spent on their children's keeper's keep. She was hardly unique in this. Jonathan Kozol says in _Illiterate America_ that many of the dreaded welfare queens do the same thing. One woman on welfare may care for the children of 4 or 5 other women so they can work and not have to spend all their meager paychecks on childcare. Kozol says women who do this develop considerable administrative skills. His proposal for addressing poverty involves cities using their power of eminent domain to seize abandoned buildings, then getting retired contractors and business people to volunteer and supervise workfare programs renovating the buildings into literacy centers with daycare administered by workfare mothers. > Wise giving is as important as wise spending and anything > less is an abdication of responsibility. Attitude is everything, > though. Eliminating fraud by seeking understanding with a kind > heart and generous spirit is a whole lot different from eliminating > fraud by seeking conviction with a spirit of suspicion and > assumed superiority. I agree. > > Of course we need to target our assistance to those who have > > real need so that needed resources are not wasted on those > > without need. But in attempting to make sure we only serve > > the truly needy I wonder if we don't do ourselves spiritual > > violence by looking at people as statistics, commodities, or > > subhuman, putting the mask of our own fear on them and > > turning them into targets or even enemies instead of fellow > > children of God. > > You certainly *can* do yourself spiritual harm by looking at people > as statistics, commodities and so on. But making sure we serve > the truly needy doesn't have anything to do with statistics or > commodities. Shortly after we married, and before the company I was working for had been bought (which eventually resulted in corporate bankruptcy) so it could offer health insurance, Donna got bad kidney stones--$10,000 worth--and we had to apply to WA DSHS (dept socl&hlth svces) for help. By the time they had made sure we were truly needy we felt like statistics and commodities. Indeed, Donna could have become a statistic. The dr. finally had to write DSHS a letter saying that if she didn't get the operation right away she could lose her kidney and maybe her life. > Serving the truly needy requires personal relationships, love, and > caring. The problem is that making people prove they're truly needy violates the sense of personal relationship. We were told, in so many words, "We don't trust you," meaning, personal relationships are irrelevant--you have to prove your need. (I have often thought that if it was daunting for a man with a masters degree and graduate work in rhetoric, philosophy, and literary theory to fill out 30+ pages of applications and financial declarations to prove he was truly worthy, how much more daunting must it be to someone who has not had formal training in how to interpret and work with difficult texts.) > To me, that is the empowering difference between church > giving and government giving. Government gives based on > statistics. Anyone meeting certain statistical criteria qualifies > regardless of situation or circumstance. Of course, a great deal of the statistical criteria have to do with peoples' circumstances. > There is no humanity there and no relationship or love > no matter how complex and sophisticated you make the criteria. Perhaps that's because the system is designed to weed out or prevent fraud. Weeding out fraud is more important in the system design than treating people humanely. > Church giving is based on personal evaluations and thorough > knowledge of situations and circumstances. It's a weaker > system insofar as it isn't subject to central oversight and is > subject to the weaknesses of individual interpretation and so on. Small story here. In Skedaddle I was asked to home teach a man who, the bp said, thought he was gay, but he mostly used sex as a means of debasing himself. And indeed, he had complex attitudes toward his sexuality, as would anyone who as a child had been pressed into a kind of sexual prostitution (slavery) by the fine upstanding Christian businessmen of B'ham. He had so much anger he could not hold down a job, and there developed a conflict between him and the bp, who was the presleydent of an big downtown insurance co, and who thought my friend was just lazy and working the system. (It occurred to me, writing this, to wonder how anyone so deeply abused by businessmen could want to contribute to their riches by working for them.) I've often thought that if I had been a better advocate with the bp my friend wouldn't have demanded his name be removed from the records. But the bp was helping me through a very difficult time (imagine high school compressed into three months--and not the academic part), and I didn't have it in me to stand up to him, though I did tell my next bp that I had learned a ht's duty is to advocate for those under his stewardship. Anyway, I was cleaning buildings at night and the last buses would stop either at 145th and 15th (he lived on 177th and 15th--about 2 1/2 miles and I lived 1/2 mile norther) or 175th and Aurora (2 1/2 or 3 miles west) so I would sometimes stop at 2:30 a.m. (he was insomniac) and talk if the light was on. Once I told him I enjoyed cleaning the break room at the corp hq of a big sports wear company because there was always lots of discarded food from Beba's, A Deli--stuff that was completely untouched. He told the Elders Quorum pres I was eating out of the garbage can, and the EQ pres asked me if I needed a food order. I told him my friend needed one more. "He's not eligible." I refused the order. Solidarity, though I didn't say so. > But it is also a stronger system because it gives wide access to > a large pool of generosity and a human aspect in charity that > permits kind giving and the expression of honest gratitude in > receiving. We give central guidelines and dispersed discretion > in application of those guidelines. You have to trust deeply > to implement such a system and I find that faith touching--even > ennobling. I agree, though it depends a great deal on volunteers, on people who either have some independent income, free time, or don't need to work for a living. > > An emotional response rather than a rational one, but it's > > the hill I still struggle to climb despite recent experiences > > that should have taught me otherwise. > > It's one I struggle with, too. Rational explanations are all well > and good, but they don't really give much comfort when > adversity strikes. It was disturbing to find that I wasn't humble > enough to ask for help even when I desperately needed it. Yes, I understand that disturbance. Donna's had to kick my butt a few times to get me to ask for help. And yet, I'm not sure you should have had to ask for help. Ideally home teachers and/or visiting teachers should have been nosy enough to know and report your situation to the bp. I love that story Eugene England turned up in his research, the one about Joseph Millet in his field one day feeling that he should take a bag of meal to a neighbor, and the neighbor thanked him, and said the Lord had told him Joseph would be by with some meal. "I can't tell you how good it made me feel to know the Lord knew there was such a person as Joseph Millet," Joseph later wrote. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 17:13:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "Eric D. Snider" Subject: Re: [AML] Lousy Movies Scott Parkin: > > I once went on a search for the worst movie of all time--for a film that > was > so bad it was just bad. Ah, now we reach a subject near and dear to my heart. Philosophically, the worst films to me are ones that are mediocre, that inspire no strong feelings of any kind. At least really awful movies can be hated with passion, and of course great movies are wonderful to love. But a movie that makes you feel NOTHING? Ugh. I can barely stand to sit through them. There's nothing worse than making me feel like I've completely wasted my time, that I've sat for two hours and don't have a single emotion to show for it. I also believe, and not just philosophically but practically, that the worst thing a movie can be is boring. There's no excuse for it. I don't care how uplifting, educational, inspiring or useful a movie is, if it's not interesting, it ought to be hewn down and cast into the fire. (And there's your LDS lit tie: Many works of art try to get by on their values rather than on being interesting. That discussion has been had, of course; I mention it merely to make this post relevant.) Even when a movie is "offensive" (there's a broad, subjective word for you), that's not what makes it bad. In my review of "FearDotCom" last week, I observed that the film was unpleasant, dark, morbid and hellish. I also pointed out that while I have used those terms as compliments for other movies ("Seven" comes to mind), I did not mean them in the positive sense for "FearDotCom." What's good in one film can be bad when used badly somewhere else. As for the absolute worst movies -- the ones that are just bad, so bad you hate, hate, hate them -- my choices are uncontroversial. (I suspect my friend Eric Samuelsen will name something unusual like "Schindler's List" or "Forrest Gump" as the worst movie of all time, and will have an impeccably logical philosophical explanation for that conclusion, too.) At the top (bottom?) of the list, I have to put "Manos: The Hands of Fate." This film was made famous by "Mystery Science Theater 3000," and that is the only way of watching it that is at all bearable. And even with the constant wisecracks, it is still painful; this is the episode, in fact, when the mad scientists forcing Joel and the robots to watch the films actually apologize for it. ("Even for us, this is bad.") The cast has observed that during the wisecrack-writing process for this episode, there were long stretches of silence in the writing room, when they were just caught up in the awfulness of the film and couldn't say anything. Literally every element of filmmaking is done badly in "Manos." Acting, writing, directing, cinematography, lighting, sound, props, costumes, everything. I suspect even the on-set catering was bad (though I also believe it included large amounts of cocaine). Not a single element of the film is done with any competence whatsoever. To make matters worse, the film's plot is oily and creepy, too. Even if the movie were done well, it would still probably be unpleasant to watch (though I do allow for the possibility that, in the right hands, such a story could work, making it more "Seven" than "FearDotCom," as it were). So that's my vote. Eric D. Snider - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 15:19:53 -0600 From: "Marianne Hales Harding" Subject: Re: [AML] Kurt Bestor Profile > >From this profile: > >"I love my muse," says Bestor. "My career had a large part to do with it. >It's >probably hard to be married to me. It's hard to compete with my muse." . . >. >."But he is just so driven. He is almost helpless. Maybe that's the case >with >any genius." Cathy replied: >And so on . . . . > >This is the eternal conflict for every aspiring artist/writer/musician >who >wants to honor his or her gift and still live the life of a decent >human >being. And now for me: Several things disturbed me about the Kurt Bestor profile. First, I was saddened to hear of his moving away from the church and to hear hints of adultery in the article as I find his music to be quite inspirational. I'm sad that his personal life isn't as inspirational as his music. I'll probably get some flak for saying it, but it's the truth! Second, what is this easy use of the word "genius"? I like his music, I do. But, genius? I'm afraid I was immediately reminded of a young undergraduate composer that I know who is constantly talking about himself, his music, his muse, the way he uses the "misery" of his life to compose his works of "genius." Gets to be a bit much. And comes off, as it does in the article, as being too full of oneself. Sacrificing two marriages and two children on the altar of the "muse of genius" (as the article seems to put it) seems, again, to be a bit much. You know what? We are all trying hard to balance doing our art and being a human being. Not being able to balance those two things doesn't make you a better or more inspired artist (or, dare I say, a genius)...it makes you a sad, sad human being. (I should clarify that I don't mean "sad/pathetic" but, rather, "sad/lonely/unhappy") Marianne Hales Harding _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #824 ******************************