Hills Like White Lamanites

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_huckelberry
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _huckelberry »

I have been haunted by the Hemingway original. I have also wondered why. It is so slight. I do like brevity, it charms. I think it is the promise of a train coming to escape the scene which gives Hemingways tale substance.

The above story lacks a train and might run on pointlessly forever. That of course might be the point of story in the above version.

Or is it just Utah land which reminded somebody of Hills like White Elephants.
_Bob Bobberson
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _Bob Bobberson »

Part III: "By the Power of Greyskull!"

A week after the meeting, Krista Severson sat at home at the kitchen table with her laptop open. Her husband, Kyle, was off at a scouting meeting at the local ward's cultural hall, and so she had a bit of alone time. She navigated over to MormonDiscourse.com and logged in and went into the Private Message system, and she began typing a message that would go to both Zelph Junior and Skeletor.

Greetings, old friends. I bring news from the Hinton Institute. As I told you last time, there are administrative changes afoot. Howell Lambeth is out as Editor in Chief, and he's being replaced by Merlyn Young. Someone is being promoted to Associate Editor, but I don't know who. It could be Jon Trout, or maybe Krista Severson, since they were ordered by Salt Lake City to make a show of being "diverse." We'll see how it plays out.

One other thing. I've been able to learn that Merlyn Young's agenda for the upcoming issue of
The Journal of HIDM is going to be on online anti-Mormonism. Don't be surprised if you find quotes from this board in the pages of the next journal!

That's all for now.

Take care,

Grendel's Mother


She hit "SEND," and then logged off. It wouldn't be long until either Skeletor or Zelph Junior posted a new thread, and she smiled to herself, knowing how angry Merlyn, Howell, and the others would be.



Down in Utah County, Howell sat on the sofa, with his fingers interlaced and resting on his distended belly. He was watching a program on World War II on the History Channel: it was a show that gave play-by-play accounts of the different battles in the Pacific Theater. At the other end of the sofa, Lilith was reading a novel, some thing by some woman that Howell had never heard of: Alice Munro or something along those lines. He had assumed that it was some whiny, "relationshippy," maudlin story about a bunch of lovelorn, sad-sack women, and therefore that it wasn't worth an iota of his time. On the other hand, he partly suspected that the characters in the book were having affairs, or were engaged in various kinds of inappropriate sexual behavior, and for that reason, there was a part of him that wanted to yank the book out of Lilith's hands and tear it into pieces. Ever since her confession to him, things had been tense. After the drag-out fights, and the crying and the screaming, they had settled into something resembling a detente, though they hadn't touched one another in months.

"You know," Howell said during a commercial break. "I wonder if I should just go on this trip by myself after all. Maybe we just need time apart from each other."

Lilith didn't look up from her book. "Nope," she said.

"Huh? What's that?"

"Nope, I said."

"So you still want to go. What for? Why would you want to spend the time in my company? Obviously you think I'm disgusting. Unworthy of your love." He waved his hand whimsically in the air as he said this.

"Not everything has to do with you, Howell. The tickets and reservations have been booked and paid for. We'll make this work," she said.

"Make what 'work'? This marriage? So you're ready to stop with all the resentment?"

She pursed her lips and turned the page in her book.

"Would you just talk to me?" he said.

At last she looked up and met his gaze. She snapped the book shut and set it in her lap. "Okay, sure," she said brightly. "Let's talk, Howell."

He blinked. "Tell me why you want to go on the trip."

"Why not?" she said. "I like trips. I like going places."

"But you'll have to go with me."

"There's all kinds of things I've had to do with you. What's one more?"

"This is because I won't give you the divorce, isn't it?"

"I don't need your permission for that, Howell."

"You know what I mean," he said. "Pppttthhbbbt. Ah, to hell with it. I give up."

"Meaning what?" she went on. "That you're going to let me go?"

He had turned back to watching his show. "I already told you my feelings on that," he said. "Covenants actually mean something to me. 'For time and eternity' is a phrase that I actually took to heart."

Lilith smiled softly and returned to her book.





It was 11:59 PM, and Merlyn Young had retired to his study. He was snacking on a king-size box of Goobers and reading over an old, tattered copy of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The 2nd movement of Dvorak's 9th Symphony wafted softly from the stereo speakers. I really ought to be reading something American, Merlyn noted to himself. He began to put away his copy of Coleridge and to look for something else, but he soon found himself distracted by his open laptop, and before he knew it, he found himself logged in at MormonDiscourse.com, and looking over the new threads. He had been dreading a new installment from the Zelph Junior/Skeletor tag-team, and sure enough, something new was up:

LAMBETH GETS BOOTED; MERLYN YOUNG IS THE NEW HATCHET MAN

He popped a few more Goobers into his mouth and clicked on the link. Once again, "Skeletor" was reporting on things that were way to accurate to ignore. Someone was leaking information to the apostates. But who could it be? Merlyn grit his teeth as he read through the the posts, replete with Skeletor's cynical, unfailingly negative speculations ("I'm sure the Brethren ordered Howell Lambeth's firing"), and plenty of back-slapping from the mostly atheist, apostate critics. His mind swam as he read: who could possibly be feeding these things to the apostates? Who would do this to us? He ate another Goober, but it went down the wrong pipe, and he leaned forward, gasping and choking and coughing, slapping at his knee and growing red in the face until it came up.

He closed his eyes and spent a few moments re-composing himself: drawing in some deep breaths, and then he began to type out a reply, and he noticed that, in his anger, he'd missed the fact that he had 5 new Private Messages: two from Nephi, two from Herb, and one from Howell.

FROM: Nephi Clark
TO: Merlyn Young, Howell Lambeth, Herb McConkie

Are you seeing this? Who is Skeletor? You don't think it's Jon Trout, do you?


FROM: Herb McConkie
TO: Merlyn Young, Howell Lambeth, Nephi Clark

I wouldn't peg Jon as doing this. Frederickson is a better candidate, if you ask me."


FROM: Nephi Clark
TO: Merlyn Young, Howell Lambeth, Herb McConkie

Whatever the case, we need to start keeping better tabs on what's going on, and on what people are doing and saying. I only suggested Jon Trout because I've seen some suspect things on his Facebook feed from time to time


FROM: Herb McConkie
TO: Merlyn Young, Howell Lambeth, Nephi Clark

Well, if we're going to follow through on Merlyn's editorial vision, we should probably be keeping an eye on Facebook and other venues anyways. The blogs, the message boards: these places are where the war's being fought.


FROM: Howell Lambeth
TO: Merlyn Young, Herb McConkie, Nephi Clark

This is going to be a big task. We'll want to recruit more people to help us out. And not just STAAM people, either. We know all too well what can happen when we rely on people who aren't fully equipped for what we have in mind. I'm thinking instead that now is the time to give an opportunity to our friend up in Winnipeg. He's been a long-time donor to the Hinton Institute, and I know he's been hankering to get more deeply involved in the apologetic aspects of what we do.


Merlyn immediately saw the potential in what Howell was suggesting. The "friend up in Winnipeg" was a psychiatrist and bishop named Beau Taylor, and he had deep roots in the Church: one of his in-laws was in the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy. And Beau had asked, on several occasions, if there were any ways that he might get further involved beyond financial donations. He was bright, well-read in Hinton Institute publications, and Merlyn knew, from having had a number of private conversations with him, that his exasperation with Church critics ran marrow-deep. As Dvorak's 9th shifted into the final movement, Merlyn began to type a reply to the others:


FROM: Merlyn Young
TO: Howell Lambeth, Herb McConkie, Nephi Clark

I really can't think of a more ideal person to lead up our new efforts. Brother Taylor is well aware of the anti-Mormon landscape online, and I'm sure that he can offer a special point of view on some of the challenges we're facing. He's not an academic, but he clearly very bright, and he may be just what we need to counter the threats posed by 'Skeletor' and 'Zelph Junior.' We need someone with time and wherewithal, and I can't think of anyone better than Beau.

Merlyn sent the message off, and ate a few more Goobers. Howell was right: what they needed was more foot soldiers on the ground; more eyeballs watching computer screens. The Brethren, in the last General Conference, had called for greater LDS missionary efforts online, and, so long as Merlyn had anything to sa about it, the scholars of the Turley J. Hinton Institute would not let the Church down.


To be continued in Part IV: The Shrink from Winnipeg
Last edited by Guest on Tue Jul 21, 2015 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
_Bond James Bond
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _Bond James Bond »

Image
Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded.-charity 3/7/07

MASH quotes
I peeked in the back [of the Bible] Frank, the Devil did it.
I avoid church religiously.
This isn't one of my sermons, I expect you to listen.
_Molok
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _Molok »

Fantastic as usual.
_Runtu
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _Runtu »

Excellent.
Runtu's Rincón

If you just talk, I find that your mouth comes out with stuff. -- Karl Pilkington
_beastie
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _beastie »

That's what I get for slacking off in keeping up with MD. I missed Bobberson! But at least I got to binge read the episodes to this point.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.

Penn & Teller

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
_annie
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _annie »

Excellent!

More, please!
_moksha
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _moksha »

annie wrote:Excellent!

More, please!


No use pleading. A day for Robert B. Obberson could be either a week or an eon for Mankind.
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Hopefully all his posts are stickied.
Last edited by Guest on Tue Jul 21, 2015 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_Bob Bobberson
_Emeritus
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Re: Hills Like White Lamanites

Post by _Bob Bobberson »

Part IV: The Shrink from Winnipeg

Beau Taylor knew an opportunity when he saw one, and as soon as he received the email from Merlyn Young, he sprang into action. For over 15 years, he had been loyally following the academics at the Hinton Institute: he was a "Brother of Jared's Stones"-level contributor and had amassed nearly the entire collection of issues of The Journal of HIDM. He regularly went to the STAAM Conference each summer, and more recently, he had been asked to speak on plenary panels. And though he didn't post as frequently as Merlyn, Howell, the late Hiram Sanderson, or Herb McConkie, Beau was nonetheless a presence on the message boards. He spent his days seeing clients in his "faith-friendly" counseling practice, including a sizable percentage of the Winnipeg area's LDS population, and in the evenings he would unwind by reading the message boards, and watching the Hinton Institute apologists dismantle the anti-Mormon arguments. That's what he often told himself, anyhow. The truth was that there was nothing in heaven or earth that he hated more than the antis. They seemed to be growing exponentially, too, and increasingly they relied on lower and baser tactics. It was unfair in a way: the anti-Mormons cheated, lied, flung insults and hurled profanity, and yet if any of the LDS posters slipped up and gave the tiniest sign of having lost his temper, the critics were all over him, accusing him of being "un-Christlike," of not living up to his temple covenants, and so on. And Beau Taylor believed, above all, that it was the anonymity of the Internet that was to blame for this. If they were out in the open, exposed to the light of day, they would never behave like this, he had said more than once: both on the boards and to various friends who stayed abreast of such things.

So when he read Merlyn's message:

We're wondering what, if anything, you might be able to learn about the poster who calls himself "Skeletor."

Beau smiled softly. He knew exactly what to do, and he spent the next three hours sending emails out to a few allies, and then to carefully, methodically going back and reading every last one of Skeletor's posts. Somewhere in there, he was certain, "Skeletor" had slipped up, and this would provide him with the means to peer under the rock and see what the insects were doing.




"Well, I'm headed out," said Krista to her husband, Kyle.

"Okay, sweetie," he said, and he smiled at her. "You'll be back tomorrow morning?"

"Or in the afternoon. I might just go straight to work. I've got a change of clothes and things over at Taizel's."

"Okay. Have fun."

"Thanks," she said, and she was out the door. She got in her car and drove over to Poplar Grove, where Taizel had an apartment. The drive was peaceful and uneventful, and Krista listened to the country music station. As she neared the apartment complex, though, her heart fluttered slightly, as it always did. For a long time, Krista felt conflicted and guilty about this feeling, but after a while, she eventually came to understand it as a form of excitement, and as a means of protest. She and Taizel had gone the rounds on this issue more than once: why keep it a secret? Why not tell everyone? So what if we get excommunicated? But, of course, there were complications. There were always complications. At least Kyle was understanding about all of it. How could he not be? His treatment at Sprucewood had been ineffectual, and so his marriage to Krista was a kind of compromise, for both of them.

Krist shut off the car and climbed the stairs up to Taizel's apartment, and knocked.

"Just a second!" Taizel called from within, and after a few seconds, the door opened up. "Hey, girl!" They hugged there in the doorway, and then Taizel dragged her inside.

"Come in, come in: I missed you." They pressed their lips together, and Krista felt Taizel's lip ring pressing softly into the corner of her mouth.

"I missed you, too," Krista said. They held each other for a moment longer, and then Taizel led her off into the living room.

"So, what about this one?" Taizel asked. It was a resplendent flower arrangement of calla lilies and and Birds of Paradise, set into an elongated vase. Taizel, with her cargo pants, purple hair, and piercings, did flower arrangements from home to supplement her income as a record store clerk. It was actually a hobby for her, but as she often said, "Hey, I'm lucky that I can make some extra cash doing my hobby." And it was something that Krista loved about her: the way it contrasted with almost every other aspect of her personality.

"It's really beautiful," Krista said. "Do you have a wedding or something?"

"No, I think it's a retirement party," she said. "I dunno, I didn't get all the details." She touched the petals on one of the calla lilies and adjusted its position in the vase. "Anyways," she said, and she nodded in the direction of the TV. "I was thinking we could do the next season? Order in, some pizza or something?"

"Sounds good to me," said Krista. She and Taizel had been slowly but surely making their way through all the Dr. Who episodes. She sat down on the sofa and slipped off her shoes.

"How has work been for you?"

"Oh, you know how it goes," she said, and they both laughed.




Two days later, at night, past midnight, in fact, Beau Taylor logged on to his account at MormonDiscourse.com to check his private messages. Things had been moving quickly, and he wanted to make sure that everything was in order for Merlyn and the others at the Hinton Institute. "Skeletor," it turned out, had been relatively easy to track down. Beau had gotten Tracy Ingerson to ferret out "Skeletor's" IP address, and from there it had been a simple matter of a few Google searches to figure everything out. The truth was that "Skeletor" was a 39-year-old human resources manager named Brett Steves. He had six kids and lived in Logan. Knowing this information, Beau and his helpers branched out and began culling through the man's Facebook postings, and looking for anything else they could learn about him. It was astonishing, really, to see how much of a two-faced life Steves lived: going to church and attending temple weddings on the one hand (there were even pictures of him baptizing one of his sons) and yet publicly slamming the Brethren, complaining about the alleged "secrecy" of Church finances, and saying openly that he thought Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon.

Beau Taylor read over the man's old posts and shook his head and smiled to himself. It's all going to come crashing down for you, Brother Steves.



To be continued in Part V: The Cruise
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