There’s an article in todays NYT about the surprising success of Mormon Y.A. authors.

Good for them.

With me there’s always the question that if you’re so gifted, talented, and smart, then why not also have integrity and be courageous?

In other words, get out of Mormonism.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2023 04:16AM by unconventional.

The only one that I'm aware of is Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight series. She must have made a major contribution to the $100 billion trust fund with her tithing on the profits from those novels.

When I was a classroom teacher, I always tried to build free reading time into our day. It was always fascinating to me to see what children picked. Some children's and youth series would take off like wildfire.

* Orson Scott Card is well known in science fiction circles.
* Brady Udell in the literary vein.
* Richard Paul Evans' Walk series is very moving.

A lot of the female ones write YA. That's a wider issue than just an LDS one.

Mormons tend to be cases of arrested development at the Y.A. stage. Have you ever read anything in the Ensign or heard anything at GC that **wasn't** simplistic, moralizing treacle?

They are just doing what they know best.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mormons tend to be cases of arrested development
> at the Y.A. stage.

Spot on.

Junior High level morality tales get mixed results in the adult world, so monochromatic Correlation falls short.

Or as Mike Tyson put it, every fighter has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

The German field marshal, known as Moltke the Elder, believed in developing a series of options for battle instead of a single plan, saying “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.” Today, “no plan survives contact with the enemy” is the popular reconfiguration of this concept.

A personal defense instructor once told me, "Always get the first punch in or the first shot fired.

Moltke was a strategic and tactical genius. He took Clausewitz's ideas and operationalized them by reconsidering war not as a single operation but rather as a series of contingent options, which rendered Germany's army much better at adjusting to changes in battlefield conditions.

He also revolutionized the logistics of warfare, recognizing early the military advantages entailed by railroads. This bore fruit in the wars against Austria in 1866 and then the war against France in 1870-71. In both conflicts he used railroads to deliver troops and supplies with much greater speed than his enemies were capable of. Moltke also recognized the importance of "needle rifles," which could fire several bullets in the time the enemy's older weapons needed to fire once. Without these advantages, and Moltke's command abilities, Bismarck could not have unified Germany in 1871.

Moltke also helped modernize the Ottoman Empire's armed forces, which produced a military relationship that brought the Empire into the First World War on Germany's side. That didn't work out so well for Istanbul and, one could argue, for the world since after WWI the victorious European powers divided up the Middle East in ways that destabilized the region and thereby contributed to many, many wars.





ETA: an accurate date lest I be pilloried mercilessly by [|]!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2023 12:35AM by Lot's Wife.

>Bismarck could not have unified Germany in 1971

Quite the trick considering he died in 1898

D'oh!

Just a slight correction :)

The US Army pioneered communications and railroad logistics in the Civil War.

The American Civil War foreshadowed many innovations that would appear in WWI, but most European militaries regarded American officers as amateurs playing at war and ignored the lessons of the Civil War.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Signal_Corps



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Railroad



The U.S. Military Railroad (USMRR) was established by the United States War Department as a separate agency to operate any rail lines seized by the government during the American Civil War. An Act of Congress of 31 January 1862[2] authorized President Abraham Lincoln to seize control of the railroads and telegraph for military use in January 1862.[3] In practice, however, the USMRR restricted its authority to Southern rail lines captured in the course of the war. As a separate organization for rail transportation the USMRR is one of the predecessors of the modern United States Army Transportation Corps.

The American Civil War was the first war where railroads were a significant factor in moving troops and supplying forces in the field. The United States Military Railroad organization was established to coordinate this new capability for the Union Army. The USMRR organization benefited from the appointment of experienced railroad men from the private sector. Thomas A. Scott, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), served as an Assistant Secretary of War during the period 1861–1862.[3] In January 1862 Scott prepared a report on military transportation that anticipated the creation of the USMRR.[4] Daniel C. McCallum, former general superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad,[1] was appointed as Military Director and Superintendent of U.S. Railroads.[5] Herman Haupt, former chief engineer of the PRR, was appointed as Chief of Construction and Transportation in the Virginia theater.[3] The departments in the USMRR tended to operate autonomously, although micromanagement from the Secretary of War and overlapping authority between departments did affect their operations.[6] Over time the USMRR would buy, build or capture 419 locomotives and 6,330 cars[1] beyond the rolling stock that was requisitioned from the various Northern railroads. When Col. McCallum was first appointed the USMRR system consisted only of 7 miles of the Washington and Alexandria Railroad;[7] however, by war's end the USMRR exercised control over a network of more than 2,000 miles[8] of military railroads and captured Southern rail lines.

That would explain why Ike wanted the interstate highway system. He wanted a bigger version of USMRR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#History

During World War II, many of Germany's workers were required for various war production tasks. Construction work on the autobahn system therefore increasingly relied on forced workers and concentration camp inmates, and working conditions were very poor. As of 1942, when the war turned against the Third Reich, only 3,800 km (2,400 mi) out of a planned 20,000 km (12,000 mi) of autobahn had been completed.[11]

Meanwhile, the median strips of some autobahns were paved over to allow their conversion into auxiliary airstrips. Aircraft were either stashed in numerous tunnels or camouflaged in nearby woods. However, for the most part during the war, the autobahns were not militarily significant. Motor vehicles, such as trucks, could not carry goods or troops as quickly or in as much bulk and in the same numbers as trains could, and the autobahns could not be used by tanks as their weight and caterpillar tracks damaged the road surface. The general shortage of petrol in Germany during much of the war, as well as the low number of trucks and motor vehicles needed for direct support of military operations, further decreased the autobahn's significance. As a result, most military and economic freight was carried by rail. After the war, numerous sections of the autobahns were in bad shape, severely damaged by heavy Allied bombing and military demolition. Furthermore, thousands of kilometres of autobahns remained unfinished, their construction brought to a halt by 1943 due to the increasing demands of the war effort.[14][15]





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956


The Interstate Highway System gained a champion in President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was influenced by his experiences as a young Army officer crossing the country in the 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy that drove in part on the Lincoln Highway, the first road across America. He recalled that, "The old convoy had started me thinking about good two-lane highways... the wisdom of broader ribbons across our land."[7] Eisenhower also gained an appreciation of the Reichsautobahn system, the first "national" implementation of modern Germany's Autobahn network, as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II.[14] In 1954, Eisenhower appointed General Lucius D. Clay to head a committee charged with proposing an interstate highway system plan.[15] Summing up motivations for the construction of such a system, Clay stated,

It was evident we needed better highways. We needed them for safety, to accommodate more automobiles. We needed them for defense purposes, if that should ever be necessary. And we needed them for the economy. Not just as a public works measure, but for future growth.[16]

anybody,

Moltke was far in advance of the United States. Yes, in the Civil War the Union was the first army to employ railroads as a major tool of war. But bear in mind that that only began when Lincoln seized the American railroads in 1862. Until then the US had not done much war planning of any sort let alone logistical planning involving railways.

Compare Moltke, who urged Germany and the Prussian General Staff to promote and guide the development of Germany's rail network before the country had even started building it. Later, in 1843 he published an article declaring that military considerations must determine the location and capabilities of the new transportation lines--which is what happened. In other words, Germany's railroads were built from the start in accordance with military considerations--and this was two decades before Lincoln acted.

By the time he was appointed chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, Moltke had worked out a number of tactical problems, including the need for multiple parallel communications lines to bring the maximum number of troops to potential fronts. This was the origin of what would in WWII be called the Blitzkrieg: lightning fast deployment of forces before the enemy could prepare. In 1859 Moltke mobilized Prussia's army for war in Italy and began its deployment. The conflict ended before those troops fired a shot, but the great strategist learned a number of logistical lessons from the exercise and reorganized the army and its plans to use railroads more efficiently in future.

In 1860 he added a railroad division to his general staff in order to ensure that the Prussian army and its German counterparts had fully integrated railway transportation into their plans. As a contemporary wrote of him, Moltke never made a military decision without consulting the German railroad timetables.

All of this was before the US Civil War started and Lincoln's belated decision in 1862 to nationalize the existing American rail network, which had NOT been designed with military needs in mind. By that time Germany had been integrating trains and military planning and drills for almost two decades. Thanks to Moltke's foresight, Germany was decades ahead of the United States.

In fact, Prussia's rapid victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866--which was effectively a German Civil War of even greater scale than the US Civil War--owes much to Moltke's decades of logistical preparation.

My first thought was that why would anyone read this unless they were Mormons as I started to read it and it was as bad as a sacrament meeting.

The good part was the whole front page of the Style Section was an artistic lead in for the actual article on page 8 and contained artful images of not only a Beehive, but also a border with Sego Lilies and open books in the corner which I presumed to be BoM's, which could qualify as YA lit I suppose.

The gems from the article:

" Brigham Young said novels 'were falsehoods got up expressly to excite the minds of the youth' ". So, another tie in with the BoM?

One author who used to be Mormon: "There's this sort of forced innocence," Ms. White said of being a devout Mormon. "Even though you're and adult and you have children, you have to engage with and move through the world in a P.G. way, as though you are still a child."

One writer who was forced out of his job at BYU for his book, "Altman's Tongue", because a student at the Y who read it wrote to the G.A.s and told them that after reading it, "I feel like I have eaten something poisonous." He resigned, and said," One thing that happens when you grow up Mormon is that you have this system of self-censorship that is built in."

That last one reminded me how many remnants of what was built into me as a BIC Mormon still remain.



I do wonder what Mormons who read it thought. Although, we know don''t we.

Because Mormonism provides you with a much richer and rooted heritage than most Americans have.... whether you agree with it or not. Mormonism has a history and a mythology. The average American has junk food outlets and trashy televised prolefeed as their cultural references.

I'm not a fan of everything in modern Mormonism, particularly its push to make us "good global citizens" and the pay, pray & obey mentality... but the history is some of the most fascinating in American history.

>> Because Mormonism provides you with a much richer and rooted heritage than most Americans have...

I'm at a loss as to where you are coming from with this. Most Americans have either a long history here, or a rich immigrant story. My dad's side goes back to the Mayflower, and there are tons of interesting stories in his line including an ancestor who fought at 2nd Saratoga. My maternal grandmother escaped across a Russian border to immigrate here at age 16. Within a few years, she brought over her two younger sisters.

As for the Mormons, if you include being chased away from many communities in the 1800s due to being poor neighbors, then sure. If you include young European women being bamboozled into immigrating, only to be made "plural wives," then sure. If you include the handcart pioneers who were ordered across the plains while being grossly underprepared, then sure. I suppose that's a "rooted heritage" that is somehow superior to that of others. /s

Maybe you just think it is richer because you live in that bubble? To outsiders, it looks cultish and has the cultural characteristics of a small insular mindset.

Not wanting to be good global citizens is not complementary to the culture either.

First to mention Christmas Wrote:
---------------------------------
>
> but (mormon) history is some of
> the most fascinating in American
> history.


Yeah, I thought this way, too, prior to going through the temple, pre-mission, in 1965 ... because I lived a sheltered life inside of my mormon bubble and believed the history I was being taught, like the seagull story.

There was never any mention of the original 9/11 story, Mountain Meadow Massacre.

In my mission, we were taught that when tracting, if a Black person answered the door, we were to pretend we were looking for some fictitious person, so we could quickly move on to someone "worthy."

Imagine being taught to do ghawd's work by refusing to share his gospel...

The infamous Westboro Baptist Church has an equally *fascinating* history, ne c'est pas?

where you went for you mission? I may hazard a guess. Around 1973? France?

Ramses Wrote:
-------------------------
> where you went for your
> mission? I may hazard a
> guess. Around 1973? France?

The Mexican Mission, 1965 - 1967

Mascot: The mighty Pulquero
Colors: Carnation yellow and diarrhea brown
Song: Wichita Lineman

Thanks, Elderolddog,

I thought you were an old friend who served in France at the time mentioned. He is from AZ and gladly left the church long ago. But we recently reconnected after 50 years.

First to mention Christmas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> . . . The average American has
> junk food outlets and trashy televised prolefeed
> as their cultural references.

"Prolefeed?" What a pretentious and atavistic neologism, particularly coming from someone who is infatuated with the royals and celebrities.

Physician, heal thyself.

Personally, being possessed of very little in the way of good taste, I wouldn't mind being able to buy 40 lb. bags of Rib Steak-flavored Walmart Prolefeed!

Especially when it was on sale, at $2.99/bag!!!

I probably wouldn't like it as much under its old name, Soylent Green...  But as Prolefeed, yum-yum!!

I can see the marketing possibilities already:

"Prolefeed, just the ticket when you're all alone watching Access Hollywood reruns and feeling peckish!"

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> "Prolefeed, just the ticket when
> you're all alone watching Access
> Hollywood reruns and feeling
> peckish!"


His full name was Eldred Gregory Peck, born in 1905 in La Jolla, CA!!

"Mormonism provides you with a much richer and rooted heritage than most Americans have"

Well, North Korea has a rich and rooted heritage. Mormonism is completely made up. Its historical disasters are spun into faith promoting atories. Does this mean life is better with good brainwashing?

Brainwashing is good for you, because a clean brain is a healthy brain, and closer to ghawd than a dirty brain, like mine...

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Brainwashing is good for you, because a clean
> brain is a healthy brain,

A diverse, inclusive brain.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Mormonism provides you with a much richer and
> rooted heritage than most Americans have"
>
> Well, North Korea has a rich and rooted heritage.
> Mormonism is completely made up. Its historical
> disasters are spun into faith promoting atories.
> Does this mean life is better with good
> brainwashing?

North Korea has been around for less than half the lifespan of Mormonism, but it is certainly going to be a strong cultural influence on anyone from there.

Thank you!

The archive indicates that the word "peckish" has been used 13 times on this site. A few of those were by me. Most of the rest were by posters who were confirmed to be alive at the time although some were also by EOD.

A good word and useful, methinks, as apparently do you!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2023 09:32PM by Lot's Wife.

I heard “peckish’ quite regularly in Canada, and had to figure out what it meant by context. I’m always surprised when I (rarely) hear it in the US.

The word is definitely used more regularly in the Commonwealth countries. It's just my personal theory, but I think the impoverished American working vocabulary is a result of having let all those shady Eastern Europeans into the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

;-)

It's a great word, and I agree with Lottie that it's more British English. You really don't hear it in the U.S.

If I was an church leader, then my self description would be prickish.

-Hey you people at the water fountain. Don't try to drink water. I turned it off so you can maintain your fast. Now stop talking and get to Sunday School class!

I'm feeling peckish! Don't mess with me, Messy. You know how I get when I'm peckish. ;)

Book of Mormon (the musical)
Big Love
Twilight
Sister Wives
"Educated"
Under the Banner of Heaven

Let's create a list of where LDS (or LDS-themed content) has broken into mainstream popular culture in a major way: authors & writers, movies, best sellers, TV productions, theater...

We just might be amazed.

You might be able to add Battlestar Galactica to your list (the original series).

Scooby Doo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You might be able to add Battlestar Galactica to
> your list (the original series).

The new series too (but less obvious)

Off the top of my head:
* Angels in America
* Around the World in Eighty Days (novel)
* Fall Out (game)
* Hell on Wheels
* Last Days
* Monty Python's Meaning of Life
* Mrs Brown's Boys
* Napoleon Dynamite
* No Time to Die
* Ocean's 11 (remake)
* Orgazmo
* Paint your Wagon
* Settlers of Catan (board game.)
* Sherlock Holmes (Study in Scarlet)
* South Park
* Spsce Jam
* The Stand (novel)
* Starship Troopers (novel)
* Yes Man

Some significant cultural figures who have links to Mormonism

* Alice Cooper (father but not in main LDS)
* Bachman Turner Overdrive
* Black Panthers (major founder figure became LDS)
* Imagine Dragons
* The Killers
* Lindsey Sterling/Stirling
* New York Dolls
* Phil Cunningham
* The Osmonds
* Portlandia
* Spiders from Mars (David Bowie's band) & Mott the Hoople

Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, David Bowie, Johnny Thunders, Saoirse Ronan, Trey Parker etc are all figures who have worked with Mormons.

Other refs in:
* Better Call Saul & Breaking Bad
* The Expanse
* New Girl
* The Office (remake)
* The Simpsons
* Stranger Things

Although they are, by comparison, rare occasions, I enjoy it when The Cat makes a mormon reference on RfM!

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Although they are, by comparison, rare occasions,
> I enjoy it when The Cat makes a mormon reference
> on RfM!

Or "anybody" posting about how intolerant everyone tbat she disagrees witb is. 《Quelle ironie!》

Yeah, it's a real pity when people have to ask for basic human rights.

Quelle ironie!

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah, it's a real pity when people have to ask for
> basic human rights.

Basic human rights are being gradually taken away across the world. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In fact, your caring nurturing instincts are being used to enable that erosion of human rights.

Basic human rights in most instances include:
* Freedom from persecution/violence by the authorities or other people.
* Freedom of movement
* Freedom of expression
* Freedom of belief (and unbelief)
* Autonomy of property
* Bodily autonomy
* The right to privacy

The acceptable exceptions to these are fewer than we are led to believe.

All of these have been eroded in recent years, often using apparent "good causes" to worsen the lives of various groups. Fear is also a great motivator.

It is a right not to be threatened with prison/hospital etc for speaking out against the authorities or belonging to a particular cultural/ethnic group. It is also a right to be able to travel freely without penalty or having one's location continually monitored by phones, CCTV and your transport etc. All of these have been violated in the west in recent times.

It is also a right to be able to discuss topics which affect your everyday life. It is not right for a group of a privileged group to dictate what you can and can't say/talk about... with very few exceptions. (Electoral processes, healthcare and pollution are NOT valid exceptions... libel and a few defense matters are.)

Many of these principles apply on the left too and all decent-minded leftwingers need to see that and think outside their box.

Some abuse some of these rights, which allows them to be taken away by others.

* Freedom from persecution/violence by the authorities or other people.

This does not mean you have the right to rob or attack other people, anymore than the authorities have the right to attack you without just cause (which they rarely have).

* Freedom of movement

This means that you can go on vacation when you wish or go to a store or friend's home. It does not mean you can turn up somewhere a long distance away unannounced and be automatically entitled to a series of freebies and somewhere to live. Very few exceptions to this.

* Freedom of expression

Tbis does not mean performing sexual acts in public, it means that you can talk about various subjects without fear of persecution or exclusion by "no platforming" or so called "fact checking" (which is often NOT checking the facts.)

* Freedom of belief (and unbelief)

You have the right to be an atheist or a Muslim, but not to force that on other adults or to intimidate someine for their religion/irreligion.

* Autonomy of property

That it cannot be stolen/confiscated off you without sufficient justification. Governments abuse this all the time.

* Bodily autonomy

The so called left and right apply these in some isntances and not others. Abortion and FGM are two example, The right not to have some kind of electronic implant may become an issue in the near future.

* The right to privacy

In most cases, the public have the right to be left alone and not monitored by government and big tech. There are very few valid exceptions to this. It is also an abuse to force people into using big tech by excluding them from everyday life e.g. shutting physical payment facilities, QR code readers etc.

All of these rights are open to abuse by private citizens and the authorities but the basic rights should be maintained.

Fascinating. But so vague as to be meaningless.

Can you spell out your complaints, like with cases or laws so we understand what you are saying, or is the goal to stay ominously mysterious?

I'm especially interested in material where the LDS connection is fairly explicit, although many of them have touched or connected to LDS indirectly, or by inference.

I'd never heard of most of these authors, but then, I don't read YA fiction.

The last author interviewed, Mette Ivy Harrison, is an ex-Mo and an interesting subject. I didn't know she'd written YA stuff, but the NYT article is worth it for finding out about her. I read The Bishop's Wife but not the following novels, but I did recommend Vampires in the Temple to friends. What fun! I need to read the rest of the ones in this series.

> I read "The Bishop's Wife" ...

So did I !!

As I understand it, she started writing in the YA arena and then wrote "The Bishop's Wife" ...

I wrote a brief 10-page report, which I enjoyed doing, but only got a B-.  I think I lost points for being too harsh, plus I was graded on a woman's firm but yielding curves.



https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FSI9xNdAvgvQ-2bOS6f37WUUiKW3aZoFF3X4qMYAI1Y/edit

Wow. I agree with your girlfriend!

So what does religion have to do with someone’s ability to write? I had a Jewish business partner and he really got pissed off when people would say so you are Jewish when the subject matter had nothing to do with religion.

>> So what does religion have to do with someone’s ability to write?

It has nothing to do with their ability (or talent) for writing, but can influence what they write. For instance in her Twilight series, one can argue that Mormon author Stephenie Meyer was influenced by the concepts of eternal marriage, and more broadly, eternal life. Her novels are also *very* PG in terms of content. The relationship between Edward and Bella (before they are married) is chaste in the extreme.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2023 06:18AM by summer.

unconventional Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> With me there’s always the question that if
> you’re so gifted, talented, and smart, then why
> not also have integrity and be courageous?
>
> In other words, get out of Mormonism.

There are some who left the church. These are not young adult writers but rather nature-inspired authors, the first a poet and the second poetically-inclined composer of prose.

1) May Swenson, Levi's aunt, who was a celebrated poet and left the church.

2) Terry Tempest Williams, who has written several great meditations on nature, family, and religion. She's still Mormon but as apostate as most RfM posters.

I'm sure there are others.