Wow…quite a lot of interesting commentary here. First: what to make of the remark that “very few people would be willing” to take his place? What do you imagine he’s referring to? All his travels? All his dining out and eating fondue? Occasionally writing an Editor’s Introduction blog post for Interpreter? Reviewing scripts for the Interpreter movies? (And why wouldn’t the typical LDS be “unable” to do these things?)I believe strongly that older people should, where they can, devote at least some of their retirement years to service to others and to the Kingdom.
That said, though — and I know that some (certainly the small but obsessive coven of anonymous online critics who monitor my every word) will see this is self-glorifying, self-serving, and hypocritical — I’ve concluded that, for the foreseeable future, my wife and I are already serving a kind of mission, one for which very few people would be willing or even quite able to take my place.
The Interpreter Foundation requires a lot of time, as do our film efforts. And I’m working, when I can, on several enormous book projects, as well as a continual flow of articles, that I hope and believe might someday be of some benefit to at least a few Latter-day Saints. I spend easily forty hours a week on such things — from morning until, typically, late at night — and already I worry that, at my advanced stage of senectitude, I’m not going to be able to finish them.
Meanwhile, there is the astonishing claim—apparently made with a straight face—that he spends “easily forty hours a week” on articles and book projects! Wow—really? This really strains credulity. Is he counting his daily (mostly recycled) blog posts as part of this? I thinks it’s safe to say that this is a wild exaggeration of the truth.
On the matter of the movie projects, he also revealed the following:
Remind you of anything? It may be worth pointing out that the funding of the movies has been shrouded in secrecy, in defiance of the Mopologists’ assurances of “transparency.”Right now, the main Interpreter accounts are doing reasonably well -- though we're trying to build up a "rainy day fund" for future contingencies. It's the "Six Days in August" funding that is having some current difficulties, and I have pledged not to raid Interpreter proper in order to fund it. So that's where our need is greatest at the moment.