February 2012 - Week 3

Another week of classes complete. I should buy myself a day planner soon, though, so as to ensure that I don't forget the numerous deadlines I expect will be haunting me quite soon. Before I go to sleep tonight, I need to scan a document and send it to a friend, and I'd also be well served to study my Greek a bit in hopes of getting back up to speed.

A great deal of my week has been consumed in reading. I'm pleased to say that Thursday saw the arrival of my first InterLibrary Loan book of the semester. I've been interested in reading the journals of various 19th- and early 20th-century Mormon leaders, and I've decided that there's no better way to start than with the most extensive set there is: the journals of Wilford Woodruff, who went on to become the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His journal begins from his conversion experience at the very end of 1833 and runs all the way up through the remainder of his life; he died in 1898. That is a lot of life, and a lot of recording of that life. In the 1980s, a complete typescript was made of those journals and published as a nine-volume set. There was also a one-volume collection of the highlights, and that's much more popular, since the unabridged set is rather expensive and hard to come by. (And by "expensive and hard to come by", I meant that the cheapest set on Amazon would cost $2500.) But, being an unabridged sort of guy, I've decided not to settle for any less than the full thing. On Thursday, I received volume one, covering 29 December 1833 through 31 December 1840 by reproducing the text of three manuscript journals (1833-1837; 1838-1839; 1840), an extensive set of genealogical data, and a manuscript baptismal record for 1840. As a loan, I have this volume until 2 March 2012 at the latest, so I've been intentional about plugging my way through it.

It's been a really fascinating experience so far. Moreso than I anticipated. I really feel like I'm walking through Woodruff's life with him, you know? I feel like I'm getting to know him. In a way, I feel like I'm making a new friend. That might sound strange, getting that feeling from reading his journals, but... I mean, I'm getting to know him so well, I'm getting glimpses into his mind, his innermost thoughts... Currently I've paused after completing the events of 1838, so that's slightly over four years worth of material. I've been with him through his conversion, through his baptism, through his ordination to various successive positions in the church (Teacher, Priest, Elder, Second Quorum of the Seventy, first Quorum of the Seventy, and now he's received notice that he's to become a member of the Quorumm of the Twelve Apostles).... I've walked with him through the Zion's Camp expedition, I've experienced Latter-day Saint life in Kirtland through his view, I've listened in on his prayers, I've watched him labor in several missions (one to Tennessee and Kentucky, and another focused on the Fox Islands in Maine), I've caught sight of various cities (New York, Boston, etc.) with his eyes, I've read about his marriage and his patriarchal blessing and the conversion of his family and the death of his little brother Asahel and the birth of his first child Sarah on the trek to Zion in Missouri.... It's a moving saga, a moving life, and it comes through, even in the little details. And along the way, I've caught glimpses of more familiar stories from the edges, listened in as he catches wind of this or that event (the Haun's Mill Massacre, for instance). It's not just history. I've taken so many notes so far (perhaps 70 pages or so of notes!), and there are many more to come.

Reading this, and talking tonight with a close friend who keeps a fairly detailed journal, has made me begin to contemplate starting one myself. I mean, this blog has somewhat of that function, but I'm talking a true daily handwritten record of everything I see fit to mention, personal reflections, etc. - even what I wouldn't feel quite comfortable putting online. Perhaps if I start that, I'll have material at the ready to digest down into a more robust weekly update!

Also pertaining to reading, I've had to shift some things around under the pressures of (1) the priority of Woodruff's journal (since it's an ILL book), and (2) classes. Thus, in practice I've temporarily set aside my reading of Spencer W. Kimball's The Miracle of Forgiveness and my listening to MRM's accompanying podcast episodes (save to catch up to my point in the reading, as I'd gotten slightly ahead of them). Consequently, I've not progressed yet beyond Chapter 13, but I'm okay with that for now. I made pretty good progress while I was focused on it. I still haven't gotten much back into Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, unfortunately, though I think I did this week get around to taking notes on William Hasker's refutation of Dale Tuggy's "divine deception" argument. I've continued to make steady progress in some of my books for class. In Ken Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey, I'm now up through Chapter 3. In Dennis Hollinger's Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World, I've read the fourth and fifth chapters this past week (in addition to the first, second, third, and seventh that I'd read previously); I still need to read Chapter 6 and Chapter 8 before class on Wednesday morning. I have, alas, made no real advance in Wesley's sermons, to my discredit. I'm planning on just going to the website that hosts them all, copying and pasting them into a single Word document, and then reading it that way during class where necessary; that way, I can also fulfill the highlighting requirement without actually highlighting in my physical book, which I want to sell back later. I've also begun a couple other books. For my Christian Ethics course, I've started to read Rebekah Miles' The Pastor as Moral Guide; I think I've gotten through the first chapter, but I only need to have the first three read by Wednesday. And then for my Pastoral Care and Counseling course, I'm reading Stephen Seamands' Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. I need to have it read in its entirety by Thursday, I think. I could be wrong, I don't know. (This is why I need a day planner.) Anyway, I've read the first three chapters so far, out of eight in total. I hope to read one more tonight before bed, two tomorrow, and then one Tuesday and the last on Wednesday. If I can do that, I ought to be able to stay up to speed.

Other miscellany.... Well, I'm annoyed at my laptop. The "m" key has suddenly become extremely sensitive, meaning I have to do more editing than usual of what I type. I get these random strings of "mmmm", or a random 'm' following an 'n'. Irritating. Church was good today, though I was running late. Great sermon on stewardship from Andrew. Today was laundry day also for me. Glad that's done. Costs $4.50 in quarters to wash and dry two loads. Also, I suppose I've been feeling a bit of a general melancholy and weariness, which might have come through a bit in my last post. I've been attempting to ignore my sense of ennui. On another note entirely, this week I've listened to a few podcast episodes. I listened to "I'm Ok, You're Not" (2 January 2012) from William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith podcast. That's always good. I also listened to the 69th episode of the Mormon Matters podcast, "Patriarchal Blessings", but although the episode had the great strength of including Richard L. Bushman, it was marred by the ramblings of a panelist who's a student of Bart Ehrman and apparently thinks that anything that dares dissent from his master's pet views is an abject fideistic denial of True Scholarship(TM). So that was irritating enough that I was glad when the episode ended. Also, I listened to a recent (5 February 2012) episode of the Apologetics 315 Interviews podcast in which they interviewed New Testament scholar Craig Keener - who now teaches here, and I am so happy about that. On yet another note, I find myself routinely annoyed at some of my old friends of a more left-wing bent who routinely post on Facebook about their extraordinarily unreasonable opinions about certain items in the current media. Were it not late, I'd get into them presently; I may do that soon, so watch for me to expand on this. Needless to say, it's been bugging me more and more to watch them invert good sense. In other miscellaneous news, I really must remember to get gas soon. I'm almost empty. I think I'll be holding off on taking my car in to get looked at. Malfunction though it may, I just don't think we can afford it right now. Another miscellaneous thing: this online article made me laugh a lot. Wow, those were horrible attempts at humor. Finally, at least this past week I got slightly more caught up in correspondence - but I'm still hopelessly behind in general.

Reflections of a Bastard

Lately I've been feeling intensely reflective about who I am and where I come from. In a certain respect, it's something I try not to dwell on; much of what follows is a painful story for me, and highly personal in nature. But I can't deny the powerful way it's shaped me in my innermost being. I can't not tell this story, no matter how truly afraid I am to put even these bare outlines down in writing.

In the late 1980s, a married businessman with three children - two sons, one daughter - moved to my area to consult for a company there. While there, he and a significantly younger coworker fell for each other. And during that time, they carried on an affair. She, the coworker, who had been married a few times before but hadn't had any children, found herself pregnant. He, the businessman, had fathered a child out of wedlock, behind his wife's back. And so, about nine months later, an emergency Caesarean section was required to deliver the child; he was being strangled to death by his own umbilical cord. He was born alright, but there was little hope for his survival, miniscule as he was (a mere seventeen inches in length, and less than four pounds in weight). He probably wouldn't survive even that night. But he did. He lived. And I am he.

Now, in time - I'm really not sure when - the affair came to a close, though certainly not for lack of love between the parties. The man's family - my dad's family - never learned about what happened. The wife had some suspicions for a time, I'm told, but her search for answers turned up nothing. To this day, my dad has never told his family what he did. Never told his wife about the affair. Never told his children that they have a half-brother out there in the world. I can understand the fear. Who knows what sort of ramifications that might have on his nuclear family, on his household? So in one sense, I can't blame him - or, at least, I can understand.

Meanwhile, I lived a fatherless life. I was raised by my somewhat protective mother and grandmother - undoubtedly the source of my unbridled masculinity and athletic prowess. (I hope the sarcasm isn't lost on anyone.) Oh sure, every now and then my dad would come to visit, when he could do so in secret. For a long time, he had a position working outside the country, and would often swing by our house on his return before going home; and he'd bring me this trinket or that trinket, a little souvenir of life further south. So I might see him once or twice a year, for a few hours at a time. That was my connection with my father. When I was a child, I couldn't understand what the situation was. I remember pleading with my mom to explain to me how he could be my dad if he and my mom had never been married. I was always rebuffed with a, "I'll explain it when you're older."

I did get older, and eventually I came to have a growing understanding of what the situation really was. I was a bastard. Born outside the confines of marriage. I had somewhat a sense of being a shame. I was a secret. His family could never know, could never find out. They could never learn what he'd done, could never find out that I exist. My existence itself would be too much of a scandal. And so, from youth for the rest of my life, carrying the secret in silence would be my responsibility. My burden to bear, to preserve the domestic peace in a family I don't know. My family that I don't know.

When I was eight, my mother married again. I gained a new house, a new father. Suddenly I was the only member of my household with my last name. See, I never had my dad's last name. I wish I did. But I don't. I got the last name that my mom had when I was born, which she in turn had from her scumbag ex-husband. A dreadful, bland, common last name I've always hated. A man I never met, a man I never had any connection with, nor ever cared to have any connection with - and it's his last name that's marked me throughout my entire life. I hate it. I hate it when people ask me about the "B[****]" family, and I have to weigh whether or not to yet again give an explanation that I'm the only one with that last name in my entire family, save perhaps ten or more generations back. All that connects me with my real father is my middle name, which is his given name. But someday I'd love to legally change my name, to drop the abomination I've borne my whole life and finally take the name that should have been mine by birthright. (Of course, whenever I mention the desire at home, my mother chastens me with warnings of how terribly dangerous it would be if the secret were finally unveiled.) My birthright... if I hadn't been, of course, a bastard.

Bastard. It has a harsh sound, doesn't it? It's a bit of a vulgar term. Used often as an insult. I could soft-peddle it. Choose a less-vulgar equivalent. But I won't. No. I'm not writing this to hide from the reality. I'm writing it to lay it bare. And I am a bastard.

Anyway, I still had the occasional biannual visit from my dad, my real dad. I always looked forward to it so much. I couldn't wait to see my dad again. But then, one year, he never came. And the next year, he never came. Nor the year after that. Nor the year after that. And you get the picture. I didn't know why. Had he stopped loving me? Had he stopped wanting to see me? That much I couldn't believe. For years, I thought perhaps he had died somewhere, maybe even overseas. My dad was dead, for all I know, for all anyone told me. And so I lived with my mom and my grandmother and my stepfather - a large man with strong views on disciplining children who made sure to warn me every few days or so that I'd likely be dead before I turned twenty, and who - in the service of teaching me to swim - would at times hold my head forcefully underwater until I began to drown, and only then release me for a breath before repeating the process. (I simply can't imagine why I'm now practically a hydrophobe!) At least the physical abuse was less frequent than the verbal abuse - but I often lived somewhat in fear in my own home anyway. I seem to remember at times seeking refuge in my room because he was less likely to interfere with me there. ('Coincidentally', I'm fairly reluctant to leave my room these days.) I loved him - somewhat - but he never understood me (never really saw fit to try), and I never understood him. Eventually my parents separated, in part at my insistence, because I wanted to get away from there. The separation was good for us all, I think. My stepfather's illness allowed him to mellow somewhat. As I grew, he began to show me respect. We could enjoy one another's company. I no longer felt I had to fear him. (Not that things were always bad or always terrifying before - not even close - but beyond my threshold to bear anyway.) I felt safe loving him, finally. We finally had a decent relationship, in the months leading up to the end. He succumbed to cancer in the fall of 2006.

But now I have to backtrack a ways. Several years earlier - on 25 August 2004, to be precise - I got an e-mail, which I still have. It was from someone I never expected: my dad. He apologetically explained the reason he'd dropped off the map for years. He hadn't wanted to interfere with my relationship with my new dad, my stepfather. He didn't want to be in the way. And so he stopped visiting to let us live our own lives. For years, I thought my dad was dead. I've mentioned this part of the story to a few friends, and I've been surprised to learn that they're usually surprised that I don't hate my dad for it. Here's a portion of what he said to me in that e-mail:

Guess who? Yes it's me. I called your mother at work recently after I heard she was no longer with R[****]. she gave me your email address. I have missed you and now I realize that going away was not the right thing to do. I was trying to stay out of the way with R[****] and your mother as I felt he resented my visits. I wanted to give you guys a chance. But it still was not meant to be and now we have missed all this time. I am truely sorry and hope you can someday forgive me. I asked your mom not to tell you about me contacting her the other day so I hope you will not be angry with her. She is worried about that. [...] Your mother is so proud of you and so am I. I would like to come see you this Friday if it is okay with you. Please let me know. I am working a job but can get off work to come so let me know. Hope to see you soon.... Love, Dad

But no matter. I was just happy to learn that he was alive and wanted to see me. And of course I wanted to see him. I love him. I love my dad, even if I barely feel like I know him. I always have and I always will. So I answered him a few hours later:

Of course I want to see you. I'm not mad at all. I would love to see you Friday. You just made my year, Dad. Love, J[*******]

Ever since then, I've gotten to see him a couple times per year, for a few hours each visit. Whatever he can spare, really. I've corresponded with him by e-mail, best as we can. (The last e-mail exchange we had was in preparation for our meeting this past summer; I haven't seen him or heard from him since, though to be fair I haven't e-mailed him since then either, though I should. He was hoping to visit me late last month, but the timing didn't work out for him.)

A bit before he popped back into my life, I found a new hobby: genealogy. I love genealogy. It's one of my passions. I love learning more about who I am, who we are, where we came from. According to those old e-mails from 2004, the first time we met up again, I pestered him to provide me with some genealogical info on his side of the family, which he did. I kept at genealogy for a while after that before setting it aside for a number of years. A couple years ago, one of my mother's cousins got me back into it again, and I've learned so much about both sides of my family.

Anyway, like I said, lately I've been feeling reflective. I'm big on heritage. I'm big on family. I know of my family on his side of things.... but I don't know them. And I can't find the words to express how badly I wish I did. 'Wish' isn't a strong enough word. 'Long' isn't even a strong enough word. Ever since I was a child, one of the deepest longings, wishes, desires of my heart has been to not have to live in secret like this, but to be able to have real familial fellowship with my own family. I've always wanted to have the family bonds I never could. My longing has always been that I could know - I mean, really know and be known by - my dad's side of the family. No fear of reprisal. No fear of 'outing' him and his past. No fear of disrupting his life and ruining his own family. If I could have that.... if I could publicly be one of them, be acknowledged as a son of my father, a brother of my brothers and sister.... I mean, they don't even know me. I'm their brother, and they've never even heard my name uttered. They don't know I exist. And that breaks my heart. It always has. This has always been hard for me. I know I can't really reach out fully to my paternal extended family, because if his nuclear family finds out, there's no telling what the harmful repercussions could be. From youth on up, I was always warned about the need for secrecy. But that's no way for a child to live. That's no way for anyone to live. And yet I was given the heavy obligation to live in private as the secret child, the bastard, the one no one can ever know about. I can never proudly say in public, "This is who I am," without first having to carefully way the probability that there'll be fallout from it. It's always been rough on me.

I've never known my brothers. I've never known my sister. I've never known my nieces. I never got to see or be seen by either of my paternal grandparents, and now it's too late for that. I've never known any of my aunts, uncles, cousins on that side of the family. What's perhaps just as bad, I've never gotten to really know my heritage. I'm big on heritage. I want to know where I come from, what legacy I carry through life, what contributed to who I am now. There are entire ethnic groups I have to be wary about publicly identifying myself with in certain contexts - my own people. An entire culture, an entire history, an entire set of traditions that my birthright should've influenced my childhood, should've shaped my dialect and my speech patterns, should've sculpted the way I view the world. But it didn't. It didn't because I was artificially severed from it by the circumstances of my birth and by the need for secrecy and separation. Those traditional recipes, I've never tasted. Those proverbs, that history.... I've lived cut off. Oh sure, now that I know some of the story of my people - my own people! - I've read a number of books, studied the history, learned about the genocide, and whatnot.... but it's not experiential. It's abstract, fuzzy, and second-hand at best. But I should have fed on this as a living tradition. But I never was. And I doubt I ever will be.

No disrespect to my maternal heritage and lineage, of course. I'm immensely proud of it. Much of the past year, I've been focusing all but exclusively on exploring it, now that I have the resources to do so. I've got a growing consciousness of what it really means to be Pennsylvania German, to have roots that go back not merely to Lutheran and Reformed immigrants, but even to an assortment of German Anabaptists, to simple illiterate farmers for whom English was a second language at best and often a foreign language entirely, even for some of those born and raised in the United States. I identify quite well with my mother's lineage and heritage - but it isn't all of me. There's more to my family than this family; there's more to my blood than this blood; there's more to my rightful cultural inheritance than Amish Paradise. But that's all I've ever had, and often barely that. And to me, that's a crime. It breaks my heart.

Take one of my most predominant ethnic heritages on my father's side; for reasons of privacy, I'm not certain I can even be safe mentioning it here. (It kills me to have to withhold it like that, as though it were a matter of shame.) I identify very strongly with it. I'm in awe at the strength, the suffering, the sacrifice that people went through. All four of my grandmother's grandparents were immigrants from that people. I've joined a few Facebook groups discussing their history and culture, groups united around descent from that people - and at times I scarcely know what's going on. I have nothing to contribute. I have no family stories, I have no family traditions. They were stolen from me by my circumstances. And it kills me. I've never gotten to tell my dad most of this. I'm afraid to. I'm afraid of causing pain. I'm afraid of consequences. I'm afraid of being abandoned, deserted, unloved. I've always been afraid of that.

I feel conflicted on a regular basis. I want nothing more than to be publicly who I am. But I can't. It isn't permitted me. I have a responsibility and a burden, the obligation of secrecy. I love my dad. I don't want any harm to come to him or his family. I don't want to disrupt their life or his marriage. I love him. But I resent the burden. I resent it beyond words' power to convey. Because it keeps from me what ought to be mine, what any person ought to be able to have: family, heritage, belonging, identity. I'm without father, with only half a heritage, half a cultural inheritance, half a family, half a self. Sometimes I'm mad. Sometimes, honestly, I want to break down in tears. I'm resisting the urge right now. It matters that much to me. This burden isn't fair. It wasn't my choice that made me a bastard. It wasn't my choice that kept me a secret from the beginning. I wasn't the one with the responsibility of confessing what was done. And I can't not say that there was and is such a responsibility, though it isn't my place to speak of it. I never asked for this burden, but it's mine. I inherited an impossible situation: I can reach out for family to end my private suffering only at the expensive risk of breaking family bonds and hurting someone I love. I'd give nearly anything to have the issue resolved, to finally gain my freedom. I've taken small calculated risks in the past - got to know one of my father's cousins (safely, in that their branches of the family have been long estranged), even follow my half-brother on Twitter. A risk each and every time. I hate it. I want to be free. But I can't be. Certainly not in the foreseeable future, not until it's too late, and probably not ever.

I suppose that's just the irresolvable burden of bastardy for me.

February 2012 - Week 2

What have I been up to lately? Well.... that's a darn good question, I'd say; I have to wrack my brain to come up with much of an answer. Well, first and foremost, classes have at last begun, and I've survived the first week. Thursday in particular wore on me. The problem, for the most part, is the intense boredom that comes from understimulation in my classes; simply listening to a lecture doesn't cut it to keep my attention. I wish it did, but it doesn't. In times past, the way I've dealt with that is multitasking with my laptop - perhaps doing some writing or reading on my computer so that I'm visually and mentally stimulated that way while being aurally stimulated through the lecture. When I do that, I can pay attention to both better than I could to either alone. But few professors understand that, and most seem to have quite strict specifications in the syllabi against using computers for anything not directly related to the course material during class time. Which, in my case - and perhaps also for others of my generation - is ironically an actual detriment to my ability to pay attention in class and to enjoy it. Alas. As for specific classes, so far the biggest particular challenge has been Elementary Greek II. Up until this past week, it'd been ages since I'd studied or thought about New Testament Greek, so over the course of this past Monday I spent hours (punctuated by rest breaks whenever my mind melted into a pool of painfully throbbing goo) cramming much of everything I learned in my prior semester of the language back into my head. With reasonable success, I suppose, but I should still do some more study tomorrow.

At any rate, now that I've got a better experiential handle on my schedule, I can tell that I'll be able to make it to chapel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but seldom on Thursdays. Unless I can shift into going to bed very abnormally early on Wednesday nights, and can get excellent sleep (which, frankly, never happens at night here), I'll be needing both a pre-lunch and post-lunch nap on Thursdays. So, no chapel on Thursdays; to put it in terms of one of the class books I was reading this past week, sleep is the more vital form of "self-care" in this situation. But chapel this past Tuesday and Wednesday was really phenomenal. I can't begin to express how much I've really missed the worship experience here, to say nothing of Dr. Tennent's outstanding sermons. I just wish they'd update the iTunes feed already, because I'd really love a chance to share it with some people.

In other news, I've finished reading both Tony Headley's Reframing Your Ministry: Balancing Professional Responsibilities and Personal Needs and Terryl Givens' The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. With regard to the latter, I stand more firmly than ever behind the preliminary assessment I offered in last week's post. I've also read more of Spencer W. Kimball's The Miracle of Forgiveness, up to and including Chapter 13, and have completed listening to the most recent companion episodes from the Viewpoint on Mormonism podcast. To be perfectly honest, reading Kimball's book at time makes me actually angry. Not just at the blatant abuse of scripture without regard for context in certain cases (as especially in his discussion of "confession" in Romans 10:10), but because of the seriously slanted view on works and Christ's atonement that I have to struggle not to label an outright blasphemy. I don't like using language with that sort of inflammatory potential, but it's the honest visceral reaction I have when I read him continually talking about us practically perfecting ourselves with our own effort (virtually never does he seem to mention grace, save as lip service in a cursory afterthought), or how Christ's atonement was essentially too feeble to save us simply through faith, or about how God basically doesn't believe our repentance until we've proven it over an extended period of time in this life. Maybe I'm being uncharitable - it's happened before - but it's honestly the impression he makes on me.

Anyway, I can't say I've made any advances in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity; just haven't had time to try to catch up with my notes on that one. On other fronts, as per my assignments, I've read the first two chapters of Ken Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey; the first, second, third, and seventh chapters of Dennis Hollinger's Choosing the Good: Christian Ethics in a Complex World; and I've begun reading the first five of John Wesley's 52 standard sermons (I think I've made it through the first, and possibly the second).

Also, sometime during the past week I listened to a couple recent episodes of the Mormon Stories podcast in which they discussed the past couple decades of demographic shifts within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and today I listened to an old (2007) episode of the EconTalk podcast involving an interview with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on the economics and logic of political survival for leaders in democratic and autocratic systems of government. It was fascinating, and I've added Bueno de Mesquita's 2004 book The Logic of Political Survival to my Amazon wishlist. It was a great interview, and it's certainly gotten me more interested in Bueno de Mesquita's work.

In other news, I had a great opportunity to volunteer with a local church's meals-for-the-needy ministry on Saturday, along with a few other people from the seminary. Because there were so many volunteers, my initial task was to set salt and pepper shakers, bowls of butter packets, and baskets of bread on the tables; and then, during most of the meal time, I picked a table and sat there with the people to talk with them, make them feel welcome, etc. I had a hard time understanding most of them, but I did have a great conversation with a local man who said he's been on Social Security since he turned eighteen. Afterwards, I helped wipe down the tables and set up the chairs for a worship service later that afternoon or evening, and then took a few trips to take some trash out to the dumpster at the far end of the parking lot. All in all, I'm glad I had the chance to serve, and I'm excited to see what I can do with Global Community Development tomorrow.

Oh, something else I've done over the past few weeks has been some more genealogical research - mostly just gathering a few spare sources and whatnot. I think it was a couple weeks ago in late January that I procured the passenger lists for the voyages that a few of my paternal ancestors took when coming to America - ships from Bremen to some of the major American ports. I know I also found my ancestor Henry Jacob Rauch in a handwritten naturalization index (and, for that matter, seem to have found the transcript of his will, dated 1783), found a marriage record for my great-great-great-grandfather's brother Henry D. Stick, some assorted original records for my great-grandfather's brother James Franklin Root (birth record, death certificate, veteran burial record), some excellent records (a detailed passport application, plus German records pertaining to departure from Hamburg, Germany) for one of my more noteworthy recent paternal ancestors.... but most thrilling to me have been a few key finds. First, in keeping with some genealogical remarks I posted a while back, I've found a handwritten record in a church book pertaining to the 6 September 1879 marriage of my great-great-great-grandparents Joseph Stick and Catherine Nagle. This find was utterly thrilling - and also a bit revealing, since their son Adam (my great-great-grandfather) was born in December 1879, and both parents were teenagers at the time. Incidentally, it also mentions the pastor as one "M. Fernsler" or "M. Feinsler", so I did a bit of digging and learned that this was Rev. Moses Fernsler, born 25 February 1830 and orphaned at a young age, who studied at the Missionary Institute of Susquehanna University from 1860 to 1863 to become a Lutheran minister, took the Fisherville charge until 1866, then to Berrysburg until 1878, and finally spent twenty-one years as a Lutheran pastor in Schaefferstown before retiring in Lebanon; it was within a year of being elected pastor of the Schaefferstown congregation that he married my great-great-great-great-grandparents. As for a second find, I located a handwritten baptismal record for Joseph Stick's maternal grandfather Michael Henry Dissinger. At least, I think this is it. I marked it down as it originally, but I can't really read it all that well (not even well enough to be certain whether it's German or Latin, yeesh), nor do I recall which entry on the pages is him. As for a very exciting third find, I found the marriage record for my great-great-great-great-grandparents, Philip Mowrey and Amanda Vernon of Philadelphia. Not only did this give me the date (25 July 1844), but it also gave me another new tidbit of information: Amanda's middle name (Malvina). But perhaps most precious of all to me (though admittedly these set a high bar) were two burial-related records for another great-great-great-great-grandfather, German immigrant Valentine Raihl. The first such record was a nice find but not earth-shattering or anything, since I'd seen a hardcopy of the same catalogue while doing research at the local historical society last summer. But the second record was a typescript from some church in the area - I'm not sure why they had this - and it included the following:

Valentine Raihl, born August 6, 1806, died August 20, 1888 in Hinkletown, buried August 22, 1888 in Bergstrasse. Aged 82 years, 14 days. Death caused by gangrene and old age. Sickly for some time. Text: Psa. 119:123.

That may not seem like a lot, but it gave me an exact date of burial, a cause of death, and even the biblical verse preached at his funeral! That verse reads, "Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness." I can't even speculate on what sort of message the minister might have brought out of that, but I hope someday to learn. Beyond that, I've also found a number of records pertaining to my probable great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Henry Mumma (1757-1851), who apparently served in the War of 1812.

Today my focus has been on my paternal ancestors (and relatives) who lived in Kansas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kansas had a lot of decennial status censuses, and boy are they ever helpful! For example, here's a description of what I've culled out of the 1915 census with respect to my great-grandfather Adam:

In fall of 1914, he sowed 200 acres of winter wheat, 25 acres of corn, and 20 acres of oats. In spring of 1915, he sowed half an acre of Irish potatoes, 20 acres of sorghum for forage or grain, and ten acres of kafir for combined forage and grain. As of 1 March 1915, he had on hand fifty bushels of corn and a hundred bushels of wheat. He had ninety acres of uncultivated land under fence for meadow or pasture. Over the preceding year, his family had made 150 pounds of butter, and sold $125 worth of milk and/or cream to cheese factories, creameries, condensaries, and/or skim stations. His farm had one cream separator. Over the preceding year, his family sold $350 worth of poultry and eggs, and sold or slaughtered $285 worth of animals. As of 1 March 1915, they had on hand fourteen horses, four milk cows, fourteen other cattle, and eighteen swine. During the preceding year, none of their animals died from disease. They also had one dog. They derived their water from both a stream and a 30-foot-deep well, and used a windmill for power to lift water. Overall, their farm covered 320 acres, all 320 acres of which was under fence.

That is a lot of additional data that really helps to statistically flesh out what life might have been like for them. I've been slowly making my way through other state censuses for the three towns I know are most relevant for this branch of my family. I've even discovered that in one case, my great-great-great-grandfather was the assessor for the census! So the entire thing comes down to me in his handwriting, which is stupendous. I can just imagine him walking from farm to farm, gathering the data to write down.... What a wonderful mental image. In the meantime, I've been working on using various resources to pinpoint in Google Earth the various villages in Russia that their ancestors lived in before coming to the United States. It hasn't been easy, but I think that with one exception (of dubious and/or irrelevant veracity anyway, I suppose), I've finally nailed them down. I'd love to go visit someday.

February 2012 - Week 1

Well, I've been back in Kentucky for about a week and a day now. It's nice to get settled back in. I think I've finally gotten over that rather nasty cold I have, though it only really cleared up a couple days ago. Lingered for quite some time there. But I've been enjoying myself in some relative solitude, while hanging out with my friends from time to time. I've got a new neighbor named Matt, a really good guy who's a great inspiration in faith, and I can tell we're going to get along and hopefully become close. Also, my birthday was four days ago. It seems a tad bit odd to think of myself as twenty-four years old now, but it's the case.

What have I been doing? Well, this is one thing that's in play. I've been starting to gradually contemplate the research I'll need to do to write my defense of Evangelicalism over against Mormonism. So far I've begun to develop a structural outline and flesh it out with some particulars. Although it won't be the beginning of my paper, naturally I've gotten some material prepared in generalized outline form on the subject of priesthood from an Evangelical Christian perspective, relying chiefly on the main New Testament sources for a theology of priesthood; I've started formulating my points and selecting a few supporting quotations and citations from the resources I have available in my notes and whatnot - things like Attridge, Lindars, Schenck, etc., though I also found some useful references in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas thus far. Additionally, pertaining to other subjects, I've gotten to comb through some early Christian writings to jot down anything relevant in terms of their ontological views with respect to God, matter, and humanity, and I've found plenty of useful material - Aristides, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Hilary... and all but the last are ante-Nicene. I've also begun assembling some cursory references to LDS sources to be able to document my piecing together of LDS views of God, matter, and humanity, as that will prove likewise important.

In other news, at the airport I began to read Terryl L. Givens' The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. It has some chapters that make interesting studies, though I'm rather surprised at how clearly Givens' bias shines through in the way he crafts his discussions (and frankly there were a couple paragraphs here and there that I can't even really regard as being honest). I had always expected better from Givens, I suppose. Anyway, I've been taking extensive notes, and I think I have just one chapter remaining in that book. I've behind in my notes for Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, edited by Thomas McCall and Michael Rea, which is quite a mind-bending book. But really, it's just that it's been a while since I've read much written in the analytic philosophical style. It's good to be back, but I confess that so far several of the models strike me as appealing (Swinburne's seems to have much to offer, and I can maybe see something to Craig's, but I'm also intensely intrigued by the Brower-Rea model with an analogy to material constitution). Anyway, I've also begun to read The Miracle of Forgiveness (1969) by former LDS President Spencer W. Kimball. Mormonism Research Ministry's podcast Viewpoint on Mormonism has been running a chapter-by-chapter series commenting on it, and I've decided to read a chapter and then listen to the associated episode(s). Though I'm still somewhat behind, I'm catching up. I believe they're up through Chapter 9, while I'm up through Chapter 6 (though only through the podcasts through Chapter 4, as there were four 14-minute episodes for that one). I'd long heard from Evangelical critics of Mormonism that The Miracle of Forgiveness tends to embody a very harsh sort of legalism (one that even some strains of Mormonism find rather repugnant), and I'm beginning to see why they've said that.

As for today, I didn't watch the Super Bowl, though I've heard the Giants won. (I care for watching no sport save hurling, and it isn't like we get that on cable here...) After church this morning, I used the Internet and read for a while until around 2:30, then took a 3.5-hour nap, and then did a bit of other stuff until heading over to my friend Meghan's house for an 'anti-Super Bowl party'. I was one of the four winners of the seminary's 'Super Bowl to Go' prize giveaway, so I had a 2-litre bottle of Pepsi (a soda I don't drink - can't stand colas), a large bag of Doritos (a snack I don't eat), and a $20 gift certificate for Papa Johns. At Meghan's house, we ordered a medium 'John's Favorite' (six cheeses, pepperoni, sausage, and Italian herbs.... delicious, and had a coupon good for it) and Tuscan six-cheese cheesebread, sat around looking at various things on the computer, had some good conversation, brought in my best friend Daniel on speakerphone for a while.... good times. I also played vigorously with her rather hyperactive young cat, Panther, who has a pretty darn adorable kitty face.

Classes start this week. I've got nothing on Mondays and Fridays this semester. On Tuesday, however, after chapel and lunch, I'll have Elementary Greek II from 2:30 to 3:45 PM and then John Wesley's Theology for Today from 4:00 to 5:15 PM. On Wednesday, I'll have just a morning class, Christian Ethics, from 9:00 to 10:45 AM, after which, chapel and lunch. And then Thursday may be somewhat grueling, with Introduction to Pastoral Care and Counseling from 8:00 to 10:45 AM, chapel, lunch, and then Elementary Greek II from 2:30 to 3:45 PM and John Wesley's Theology for Today from 4:00 to 5:15 PM. Yikes. At least I'll have four days to mostly relax and accomplish required work after that. In preparation, I've begun to read Anthony Headley's Reframing Your Ministry: Balancing Professional Responsibilities and Personal Needs and Kenneth Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey, though technically I haven't yet made it out of the introduction of the latter.

At any rate, as it grows late, I believe I'll try to read Chapter 7 of The Miracle of Forgiveness while catching up on the Chapter 5 podcast episodes (there are three), and then call it a night.

January 2012

I don't seem to have updated here since shortly after Christmas. I suppose there hasn't typically been all that much to tell. At this point, the bulk of my time since then has been a large blur. Did finish Assassin's Creed: Revelations about a week after I got it, though that doesn't include the sort of detail-level completion that I'd rather strive for. Also, from January 18 through January 21 I was at my denomination's annual Pastoral Assessment Center, which involved a review of various assessment tools we'd taken, a group church revitalization exercise, several interviews, an evangelistic sermon, and some worship service planning and execution. On the second day of the assessment, I was there for a solid thirteen hours. The process as a whole was grueling but rewarding, and the result for me is that the center will be formally recommending that the conference approve me as a candidate for the ordained ministry. Of course, this is just the first of many steps. At some point I'll also need to be interviewed by the Conference Review Committee, mainly for theological compatibility with the denomination, but I don't think that'll be a problem.

I've also been watching plenty - and I mean plenty - of movies lately (compared to my usual rate of, um, zero). Things like The Haunting in Connecticut, Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity 2, The Fog, The Last Exorcism, Sauna, Paranormal Activity 3, and most recently The Village.

Anyway, shortly after getting a visit from my best friend Daniel, I came down with an illness, from which I'm still suffering. Quite an unpleasant state of affairs. I can scarcely breathe, see, or think some of the time. And my only defenses are some extremely vile expired-in-2009 cold medicine and a bit of nasal spray.

Anyway, this coming Saturday (28 January 2012) is my flight back down to Kentucky. I've got mixed feelings about that. I've gotten virtually nothing done over my break, which means I want it to continue in order to compensate for that.... but, on the other hand, something tells me that I won't be able to motivate myself until I'm back in Kentucky. Heh. Can't win on that one.

Christmas

Yesterday, 25 December 2011, was Christmas. (This is my obvious statement for the day.) Got up around 8:00 AM to be sure that I'd be ready to leave for church by 9:15 AM. When we arrived, there was a delicious pancake-and-sausage breakfast prepared for everyone, followed by a somewhat brief-ish worship service with a strong sermon (on the importance of 'treasuring up in one's heart' our encounters with God's activity in our lives) and the eucharist. Came home, and after a bit of reading in D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (up to page 116), it was time to open presents. I got my mother a movie (Taking Charge) and a CD by Matt Maher. Wish I could've afforded more, or that the store had actually had some other things she would've wanted. She, in turn, got me:

• a six-month World Deluxe gift membership to Ancestry.com, active starting today
• a copy of the Xbox 360 game Assassin's Creed: Revelations
• a new pair of slippers
• a pair of sweatpants
• Metaphysics: An Anthology, edited by Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa
• Evangelicals and Nicene Faith: Reclaiming the Apostolic Witness, edited by Timothy George
• Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want by Christian Smith
• In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism Among Early Christians by Graham Twelftree
• Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration by Paul Copan and William Lane Craig
• The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity, and Immutability by Jay Wesley Richards
• Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics, edited by Paul Copan
• Invocation and Assent: The Making and Remaking of Trinitarian Theology by Jason E. Vickers
• Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God by Marilyn McCord Adams
• Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the Study of New Testament Miracle Stories, edited by Wendy Cotter
• Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against Scientism by Frederick Olafson
• The Death of Truth: What's Wrong with Multiculturalism, the Rejection of Reason and the New Postmodern Diversity by Dennis McCallum
• The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton
• The Meaning of Jesus: Two Views by Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright
• The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History by Gregory W. Dawes
• The Interpretation of the New Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism by John Granger Cook
• Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, edited by Thomas V. Morris

After relaxing in our family room by the fireplace for a while, I went to my room for a five-hour 'nap' from about 2:30 to 7:30, which included an odd dream that, best as I can recall it, involve myself and my friend Kristyn inserting three of our hands (two of mine and one of hers, I think) into a brown paper bag... to fill in for the Teletubbies... who had been removed from their position in a project... to retranslate the biblical book of Micah? Sometimes it boggles my mind that I can have the dreams I do, and not be a crack addict or something. I'm sure the dream was even stranger than the few points that stick out in my mind.

After I got up, we had a supper of turkey, stuffing, fried potatoes, and mixed vegetables. After that, I went to my room to both start playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations and to turn on my computer in hopes of writing this post. Well, one of those things went much worse than the other. And it wasn't the video game. A couple viruses had snuck past my antivirus the other day, and apparently cleaning them out wasn't enough. My computer had lost the capacity to start Windows, necessitating a full system recovery. All data: lost. All programs: lost. All settings: lost. Now, I'd be a lot more distressed if I didn't have virtually everything backed up on my external hard drive in Kentucky. But still, I was and am quite upset, because this is a massive inconvenience. At least I didn't lost too much in the way of notes....

Anyway, I stayed up until around 5:00 AM in an effort to begin restoring my computer to functional status. That involved re-downloading a slew of programs (Firefox, Open Office, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, iTunes, Google Earth, etc.), starting to download a massive collection of podcasts (which still has well over a thousand episodes to go), attempting to re-create my blog subscription lists from memory.... It took a while, and I'm still not wholly done.

Today I'm experiencing further obstacles, in that apparently Firefox 9.0.1 uses the Ctrl+I keyboard shortcut for something other than italics, and although I successfully disabled that with through the use of Firefox extension Customizable Shortcuts 0.5.9, I still can't get it to play nice with Blogger. On the other hand, Firefox will use the italics shortcut when writing up a complaint about it in the Blogger forums, and Blogger will use the italics shortcut when I'm typing it via the otherwise-awful browser Google Chrome, which I downloaded today in an attempt to circumvent this particular problem but which I can now see is both aesthetically and functionally inferior to Firefox. So I just need to hope and pray that someone can provide me with a solution, or else all my blogging will be in Google Chrome... yecch.

To a New Home

So on Saturday, 17 December 2011, I finally woke up at 1:30 PM. A good shower, a shave, and a few miscellaneous such tasks brought me to 2:30 PM, which is around when I finished reading Quodvultdeus of Carthage's Creedal Homilies. Then I sat down and began notes on the first seventy pages of Kurt Widmer's Mormonism and the Nature of God: A Theological Evolution, 1830-1915. While I did that, I listened to an episode of the Mormon Expression podcast that dealt with the subject of divorce in Mormon culture. Needless to say, since the ME folks have a hard time bringing on voices who come from neither a secular ex-Mormon or a somewhat liberal Mormon perspective, it was sadly a bit of an echo chamber of railing against how harmful traditional understandings of marriage are, and about how it should be easier to get a divorce than to get married in the first place. But, it served as fine background for my note-taking task. Also splurged on a delicious footlong buffalo chicken sub from Subway at 5:00 PM for a much-needed daily meal, and finished off the last of my bag of jalapeno-flavored potato chips.

When I finished taking notes, I drove down to my friend Meghan's house (which was nearly impossible to find in the dark, no matter how many times I've been there). While she cleaned a few things up and dealt with her nosy cat, she made the grave mistake of leaving me unsupervised with her open Facebook. Declining to do any real damage, I simply posted the status update, "Playing with my cats to prepare for the next sixty years of... playing with cats." After a few mutual friends began liking the status, she came over and added a comment mentioning that I'd hijacked her Facebook. She also made the minor mistake of tagging me.... so then when I was sitting there, her aunt messaged Meghan noting that I was the person they'd talked about earlier. Her aunt then clarified, "That is the one I thought you were in a relationship with." Heh.... well, that's an opportunity for mischief I could hardly pass up, so - as Meghan - I replied back, "He is awfully cute!" To which her aunt replied, "I really thought the way you two were hanging out that he WAS your boyfriend. Maybe that is a sign of the future?? You can never tell." At this point, laughing, I simply replied, "I can only hope", with a wink; and Meghan's aunt, still believing she was communicating to her niece, said, "I will hope with you." At that point, I decided not to dig the hole any deeper, and I shared it with Meghan and with Meghan's housemate, the latter of whom found it quite amusing. Later, Meghan messaged her aunt to explain that I'd intercepted the messages and made those replies on Meghan's behalf. The aunt's stunned reply ended with the statement, "I hope I didn't embarrass you, but I still think you two would be a good match." Many lulz were had by all. Of course, that's not all we did with the evening. Using Netflix, we also watched the 2009 film Gamer, starring Gerard Butler. Great movie; look it up if you aren't familiar with it.

Anyway, technically that lasted until early (e.g., 1:30 AM) the morning of Sunday, 18 December 2011. When I got back to my dorm, I read the introduction to Phil Stevenson's The Ripple Church: Multiply Your Ministry by Parenting New Churches and then read the preface, introduction, and first eight pages of the first chapter in D. Michael Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and expanded edition. I also took notes on everything I read in Quinn. Finally, before bed, I wished a philosophically inclined friend a happy birthday with the following message: "Let T be today, H(t) be the degree of happiness you experience on a given day t, and x be H(v) where v is the typical day in your life. On the grounds that T is the occasion for a commemoration of your birth, my wish for you is that H(T) >> x." He appreciated it.

Anyway, I slept from 4 'til noon, unfortunately sleeping through my alarm and hence failing to make it to church as I'd hoped. When I did get up, I resigned myself to reading the remainder of the first chapter of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, which took me through page 29. After that, I took notes on not only that chapter, but also all of the pertinent endnotes (which, in any Quinn book, are exceedingly copious). Then I confirmed my flight reservation and printed my boarding passes. That took me to 3:00 PM, when I showered and then - at 4:00 PM, after sorting it - began doing my first load of laundry, consisting of towels. After putting it in the washer, I went to Subway to pick up a six-inch chicken breast sub with chipotle southwest sauce. By the time I got back and finished eating, it was about time to put my towels in the dryer and my clothes in the washer. Then I went back to my room, cleaned off my desk, cleaned off my spare bed, cleaned out my drawers, sorted my findings, shelved all my loose books, and packed up my backpack for my travels. Then at 5:30 PM, I went downstairs to put my clothes in a dryer and my bedding in a washer, and I took my towels back upstairs, folded them, and put them away. After that, I took seven empty gallon jugs down to recycling, and then consolidated my massive heap of assorted bags of trash into just a few extremely dense bags to go out to the dumpster.

When I returned, I chatted with my mother via Skype from about 6:09 to 6:20 PM, and then at 6:30 PM I turned my car keys over to my friend Andrew (so that he can run my engine once a week during my absence), and we went to the library so he could check the time schedule and I could drop off seven library books that were due back - including Prudentius and Quodvultdeus, neither of which I'd had time to take notes on, as well as Widmer's Mormonism and the Nature of God, thus leaving my notes on it incomplete. When I got back at 6:40 PM, I put my bedding in the dryer and took my clothes upstairs to fold. Then at 7:15 PM, I vacuumed the room (boy did it need it), and then at 7:30 PM went down to get the bedding, lug it back upstairs, fold it, and stow it on top of my bed. At 7:45 PM, I started an intense scrub-down of my mini-fridge, which had a great deal of spilled drinks caked onto the bottom along with some loose hairs. Yecch...

Anyway, at 8:00 PM I took a few extra notes on Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel - a portion or two I hadn't jotted down before - and then started relaxing. At 8:20 PM, I turned off the fridge and cleaned the bathroom, and then at 8:50 I joined Andrew in the lounge to watch a few episodes from the second season DVD of The Big Bang Theory. During that, I went to Subway and got a six-inch meatball sub with jalapeno-flavored potato chips and a Sprite to bring back. Then at 10:00 PM, my dear friend Lori arrived to pick me up, so I finished packing and departed. We went through the McDonald's drive-thru so she could get some food (as well as some extra fries and a drink for me), and we also got the movie Horrible Bosses from Redbox. After we got back to her place at 11:00 PM, we watched it, and then chatted for a while in the dark and watched a bunch of clips on YouTube. That technically carried us into the morning of Monday, 19 December 2011. Finally, at 3:10 AM we took a brief rest - it was supposed to be a nap, but we mostly kept talking to one another from our respective couches - and then at 4:00 AM we got up and she ran me to the airport.

I got to the airport at 4:30 AM and stood in an unnecessary line for twenty minutes until realizing that I didn't need to. So at 4:50 AM I went through security, which was quite fast and painless, really. Took maybe two minutes or so. At 5:00 AM, I reached Gate A1 and used my computer for about twenty minutes or so. Boarded at around 5:30 AM, and my flight departed at 5:50 as scheduled. I arrived in Chicago O'Hare at 6:00 AM in its time zone (7:00 in the one I'd just departed), and it took me a full half-hour to talk to Gate B22A, though I picked up a delicious soft pretzel from Auntie Anne's along the way. It then took me another fifteen minutes to backtrack and find an outlet in hopes of using my computer - but, alas, no free wi-fi there. So then I went to the gate and took a brief nap on the seats until my flight boarded at around 7:20 AM (8:20, Kentucky and Pennsylvania time). My flight departed twenty minutes later or so, and I arrived in Harrisburg at 10:12 AM. Of course, as with the preceding flight, the last twenty minutes was hell on earth, thanks to the intense pain in my ears from the pressure differentials. That may have actually been the most intense pain of my entire life, actually.

I met my mother swiftly, since she'd arrived at the same moment I did. We were out of there by 10:25 AM. It took us until 11:40 AM to reach my friend's house a bit further north, but after picking my friend up, we started the drive back down here. I'd guess that around 1:15 PM, we finally made it to my new trailer. My mother gave us both an extensive tour, and I greeted my cats warmly. After that, I was exhausted, so my friend and I caught a couple hours of a nap before a spaghetti dinner at 5:00 PM. Much of the rest of the evening was spent in a lengthy effort to get my TV, VCR, and RF modulator all hooked up to one another properly so that I could play my XBox 360 again. That attempt involved finding manuals online, going to K-mart to purchase a pair of coaxial cables, and finally having an old family friend swing by to help with the logistics. It was about 9:30 PM by the time that was done, and I refamiliarized myself with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood until 3:30 AM this morning. Now I'm sitting here, finishing up leftovers from last night and awaiting a turn in the shower.