Nancy's Musings

I have been feeling lately how diminished the Church is when people are missing. And I mean properly missing, not just buried in some worthy work or other. It began with the thought of how the priesthood ban for members of African heritage had directly victimized black members and members of color all over the world, but that it had also damaged white members too, because while members of color were innocent victims, white members and leaders were guilty of the sin of racism (and sometimes still are, if we're honest). So today I participated in a conversation about church retention, especially for young people, and the conversation briefly drifted into how our friends and family who have left our congregations lose some kind of light, and lose the peace that the Gospel offers us, and I squirmed just a little. It's not false: if we live up to our covenants and privilege, we have huge emotional and mental advantages. And sometimes physical advantages. That's why we evangeli...

Yesterday my mother and I were doing some light touring of my current hometown. It's a cute little town, on the young side even for the United States, and it sits in the center of a broad swath of rural farms. It's all very 'Murican. We took a brief self-guided tour of the local "tabernacle" - a large assembly hall erected by the local religious founders for civic meetings, concerts, and other non-denominational and secular gatherings. This tabernacle echoes beautifully. Normally, an echo is not ideal for these kinds of large rooms because when you have something noisy going on, or get a large crowd together, the sound multiplies to very uncomfortable levels, and you can get a lag, but in this case, since the crowd was me and my mum, it was wonderful. I couldn't resist, and sang Molly Malone , harmonizing with my own echo. I do think very well of myself, yes. Then my mum sang America the Beautiful , and I joined in. But we got stuck on the third verse. Our...

So I started taking medications toward the end of my PhD program when things were getting too stressful for me to function. I loved meds. But I kept needing more and more. When the doctor finally prescribed the biggest pill manufactured, plus another one to take at the same time, I realized that I was on a slippery slope, and it was getting more expensive. I kept on the meds until after my defense, and then I began tapering off Sertraline. My doctor knew I wanted to do it, and I made sure my roommates were watching for any dangerous symptoms. I'm not stupid. But I am miserable. Without medications I can't sleep. I catch myself hyperventilating or not breathing. I'm frequently dizzy and my lips go numb. I have emotions all the time. I'm sad, angry (I haven't been angry in TWO YEARS!), lonely, hungry, and insecure. Oh my goodness the insecurity. I overdose on all-caps. I get bitter about being single. I spend too much imaginary money. And future money. It's ...

These last couple of weeks I have been digging around the internet for information on publishing, printing, binding, selling various volumes. I know a little bit about hand-binding, because I had a desperate need to upcycle a hardcover book of finished crosswords. I contacted a bindery somewhere in the upper midwest that specializes in rebinding old bibles [ Grimm Bindery ]. Their information was so detailed and complex that it took hours to navigate it all. Their services are very adaptable and also very expensive (read: well out of my price range). My local Alphagraphics will print and bind, but only paperback with glue (not a long-term form of binding). I even grilled my neighbors for their experience. I live in a college town, so they have a lot, and that was the most helpful. On their advice, I even threw together a quick collection of poetry ("quick" meaning "only took three days to format") and pushed it through CreateSpace and Amazon. It's there, if y...

I recently passed my dissertation defense. If I read the situation correctly, the defense is a formality that requires a certain level of professionalism and proficiency on the topic, but not a lot else. It is not a substitute for the dissertation. The dissertation has already been written and edited and edited and edited, and there have been numerous checks by supervising professors up to that point to make sure that the PhD candidate is not going too far astray in either argument, style, or approach. At the defense, the committee may react in several different ways. My sense is that their response depends at least as much on the professional trajectory of the candidate as on the relative genius of the candidate's work (that professional trajectory having previously been determined by the candidate's work and preferences, so it's not a clear-cut binary). The defense was the period at the end of a very long sentence. I wrote the sentence, and my committee made sure that...

I love listening. I love sitting still and letting other people say what they're thinking. I don't always believe what people tell me, because I'm cynical, but I think people are beautiful on the inside, and the things that they tell me are often just another way of being beautiful, even if I think they're wrong or lying or even both. I also like talking. I can talk a lot - for hours, and never touch on a subject twice. As a matter of fact, people who can (and do) pull a conversation back to where it began often annoy me, because it's like insisting that an oak tree should bend into a trellis. I feel like conversation is a thing that's meant to reach upwards, not twist into circles. Lately, things have been odd for me. I moved to a different state, and I've been making some new friends, and reconnecting with old friends. I'm further away from my family. Things are different. I listen a lot. I feel useful, which is something that I've craved for ...

Arguments against pornography are many and varied, but recovering addicts will admit that it changes the way we see people, and it skews our ideas of the role of intimacy in a relationship. With a simple google search, you can find scholarly articles that analyze the social and neurological effects. For a few years - I'm not sure if it's still the habit - we used "porn" to describe anything that offered a visual reward of some kind, from " food porn " to "destruction porn" (don't google that one. It'll take you straight to pornhub, which is disturbing on several levels) and even further to images that satisfy a need for visual order. They all give us a kind of satisfaction when we look at them. I have a particular satisfaction when I read stories or see movies about people who seem to be incapable of making human mistakes. It's called "competence porn" among my friends, and it's very, very satisfying, whether the char...