Return-path: Envelope-to: lojban-newreal@lojban.org Delivery-date: Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:53:07 -0700 Received: from nobody by stodi.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.94) (envelope-from ) id 1mBjQR-00DMoc-96 for lojban-newreal@lojban.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:53:07 -0700 Received: from [45.85.249.188] (port=53488 helo=mail.highexpectations13.club) by stodi.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.94) (envelope-from ) id 1mBjQ9-00DMmr-3B for lojban@lojban.org; Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:53:06 -0700 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; s=dkim; d=highexpectations13.club; h=Date:From:To:Subject:MIME-Version:Content-Type:List-Unsubscribe:Message-ID; i=gustavo.washington@highexpectations13.club; bh=hcEAD0wCv5UdUXOO2Yd+JIyHDfg=; b=voOUYUuWBXZ3SPO+Q9mQN4A6AGGrSShfIp20OsX8UbCo4NiF9OFhDgpXCUJoWgxK2B+nXQP/sn97 0PjtBBts9tIsvIFQvjzjJ0vIlcegiaimHsGDdDFDaNHf6EZUBn0k5O44LON+EEeO7XBDm1G2VGZz KQPMEfgT6OxmCqQheYU= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; q=dns; s=dkim; d=highexpectations13.club; b=dx266kDqB2NULOgdgMZvFMhKxQafljVN83o26QLK3wYC70Ql1731MuZImyx1pU3hGywCEyRB7Bpn Yc1irs8ckoBE5f88VjUWmS8PKCnzPpbOoImT/+6NQNFSav0dzmny3CVC2qPGSWdSzTu1P0OgEWSD 2SwD1BPbs8WE2rxY8gg=; Received: by mail.highexpectations13.club id h1h15s0001g8 for ; Thu, 5 Aug 2021 15:52:44 -0400 (envelope-from ) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2021 15:52:44 -0400 From: "Gustavo Washington" To: Subject: Enjoy These Eye Catching LED Beach Balls- Sure To Have Your Guest Buzzing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_267_1847111025.1628192709636" List-Unsubscribe: Message-ID: <0.0.0.2C.1D78A3374EC5576.C5A12C@mail.highexpectations13.club> X-Spam-Score: 4.4 (++++) X-Spam_score: 4.4 X-Spam_score_int: 44 X-Spam_bar: ++++ X-Spam-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system "stodi.digitalkingdom.org", has NOT identified this incoming email as spam. The original message has been attached to this so you can view it or label similar future email. If you have any questions, see the administrator of that system for details. Content preview: ** Light Up Your Space ** Light up and upgrade your space with these LED Glow Beach Balls. Fully customizable by remote with several color options, transition colors on the go or set a timer to create the perfect light show. Y [...] Content analysis details: (4.4 points, 5.0 required) pts rule name description ---- ---------------------- -------------------------------------------------- 0.8 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60% [score: 0.5000] 1.7 URIBL_BLACK Contains an URL listed in the URIBL blacklist [URIs: highexpectations13.club] -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record 0.0 SPF_HELO_NONE SPF: HELO does not publish an SPF Record 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message 0.0 HTML_FONT_LOW_CONTRAST BODY: HTML font color similar or identical to background 0.0 MIME_QP_LONG_LINE RAW: Quoted-printable line longer than 76 chars -0.1 DKIM_VALID_EF Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from envelope-from domain -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's domain 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature 1.3 THIS_AD "This ad" and variants 0.8 RDNS_NONE Delivered to internal network by a host with no rDNS 0.0 T_REMOTE_IMAGE Message contains an external image ------=_Part_267_1847111025.1628192709636 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ** Light Up Your Space ** -------------------------- Light up and upgrade your space with these LED Glow Beach Balls. Fully customizable by remote with several color options, transition colors on the go or set a timer to create the perfect light show. You can control the look and feel from anywhere whether you're lounging in a beach chair or relaxing in the pool. From parties to ambiance, the BeachGlow LED Beach Balls have you covered. Shop Now For August Day Savings! -> http://www.highexpectations13.club/a7f6k23C9K5WA86Q10b4695L82aU18QhscFDrfhscFDrEsvZ7tQNon997vFr1jr05nTpsv/petulance-punted Schwartz, Denker, Pollack Digital Press 2420 Simmons Road Oviedo, FL 32765-9767 Update Email Preferences http://www.highexpectations13.club/6835YV2395R86lG10t4689x82at18JhscFDrfhscFDrEsvZ7eQNon995rl10w5C2svN/concretes-Auberge ------=_Part_267_1847111025.1628192709636 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20
=20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20 =20
3D"logo" 3D"beach

Light Up Your Space

Light u= p and upgrade your space with these LED Glow Beach Balls. Fully customizabl= e by remote with several color options, transition colors on the go or set = a timer to create the perfect light show. You can control the look and feel= from anywhere whether you're lounging in a beach chair or relaxing in the = pool. From parties to ambiance, the BeachGlow LED Beach Balls have you cove= red.

=20
 
Shop Now= =20
 

Schwartz, Denker, Pollack Di= gital Press

2420 Simmons Road

Oviedo, FL 32765-9767

Upd= ate Email Preferences
=20

 

=20

 

=20

 

=20

 

=20

 

=20

 

=20

 

=20

 

=20

Standing = at the roadside, I saw a line of 18-wheelers parked beside the Bowl, their = cargo spaces open. They held chairs. A coordinated army of cast members app= roached the trucks, took hold of the chairs, and carried them to the Bowl, = wave after wave, trundling them by the thousands and fixing them in rows on= the grass. A small city was taking shape here in a matter of days. It was = a huge extrusion in the physical world of one guy's imagination, of a wild = saga inscribed in the brains and bodies of his followers. The kingdom, I sa= w, was here. Whether the vision that had birthed it was fact or fiction, hi= storical record or fever-brained concoction, hardly seemed to matter.

=20

 

=20

Interlude: The Vision

=20

 

=20

Two hundr= ed years ago, in a wood three miles from this field known as the Sacred Gro= ve, a teenager arrived on an early-morning walk. He was shy and apparently = unremarkable ? poor, uneducated, the fifth of 11 kids. Joe Smith. He'd grow= n quieter of late, tormented by his sinfulness and the hypocrisy of those a= round him.

=20

Across th= e region people were starved for the supernatural, for more than the standa= rd church service could provide. Unlettered hicks spoke in tongues; farmers= saw stuff in cornfields, preached the Second Coming of Christ in the flesh= ? and soon. The Smiths were steeped in that enthusiasm, practitioners of a= backwoods occultism that led them to scour the land for buried treasure. H= e had a divining rod ? a forked hazel branch he carried through the country= side, which he believed pointed toward riches in the earth ? and with it a = seer stone he held to his eye for the same purpose. Ludicrous and Tom Sawye= rish, maybe ? but then, the Western world was in a cusp-moment, caught betw= een premodern magical thinking and an Enlightenment rationalism whose conqu= est was far from complete.

=20

So: a tee= nager awash in magic, on an early-morning walk. He came to a clearing in th= e woods, knelt down to pray but couldn't speak. Suddenly he heard footsteps= behind him, shot up, and spun around, only to find no one. He stood there = unable to shake the thought that he was being stalked, tracked down ?by som= e actual being from the unseen world.? He would die. Just then, a pillar of= light tunneled through the trees and staggered him. You're forgiven, said = a voice. All the churches have grown putrid. Go off and live virtuously.

=20

What happ= ened next is either unutterably enchanting or unsuitable for adult discussi= on. He went up to bed one night and began to pray, and as he did so his roo= m flared with light and a paranormal being in a white robe hovered before h= im. He stated his name as Moroni; he had come to tell Smith of a new gospel= buried in a hillside nearby ? he specified where ? inscribed on gold plate= s and bearing ?an account of the former inhabitants of this continent and t= he source from whence they sprang.? Buried with the plates was a pair of se= er stones like those he'd used to hunt after gold, which he would need to t= ranslate them. Go and find them, the thing urged him, dig them up, and tran= slate them for the world. Then he vanished and the room grew dark.=20

That was = how it started: as a poor boy's dream of treasure, transmuted into divine l= onging. Gold gave way to God. He bided his time ? got married ? then set ou= t one night with his new wife, Emma Hale, toward the hill. He found the app= ointed spot and began to dig ? and while he toiled the being materialized a= gain, watching over him. Hours later Smith descended the hillside with the = plates swaddled in his coat like a live thing. Hale never saw them directly= , but rather caressed them under cloth, feeling their metallic hardness, th= e grooves of their inscription.

=20
=20
=20
 
=20
REPORT THIS AD
=20
=20
=20
 
=20
REPORT THIS AD
=20
=20
=20

The chara= cters on the plates, he said, were written in something called reformed Egy= ptian. They needed translating. So he retired to a room with an assistant a= nd, placing the covered plates on a table and one of the seer stones in a t= op hat, gazed into the hat and did something oracular. In the darkness of t= he hat the seer stone glowed, and above it a parchment materialized, upon w= hich the characters appeared, and below them their English translation. Smi= th spoke what he saw while the assistant, rapt, transcribed. He unspooled a= saga of ancient American tribes from Jerusalem ? their feudings, visit fro= m Christ, the better tribe's extinction. The work was finished by June 1829= , hitting the shelves at a local bookstore as the Book of Mor= mon the following year. It was a feat of magic: Smith pulled = a world religion out of a hat.

=20

Whether y= ou find the product unreadable (Mark Twain called it ?chloroform in print?)= or discover in it a mystical document on par with the Bhagavad Gita is a m= atter of personal temperament. If you are like me, you are apt to see in Sm= ith an early writer of speculative fiction. It's not just the supernaturali= sm of his saga; it's that it has a strong element of the seriality that typ= ifies the genre: whatever Smith's plates really consisted of ? and no one o= utside his innermost circle ever saw them ? he used them as the basis for a= sprawling piece of Bible fanfic. The Book of Mormon is a superfan's paean = to the King James Bible: there's a reworking of Exodus, but instead of Mose= s there is Lehi, leading his people not to Canaan but to America. An ark of= sorts bears them there. There are ancient submarines worthy of Jules Verne= Above all there are Jesus's dealings in the Americas post-resurrection ?&= nbsp;The Further Adventures of Jesus Christ.

=20

There's a= term known to lovers of science fiction ? namely, retroactive continuity (= ?retcon? for short). It describes how writers take an existing series and r= einterpret its details to make possible the series' continuance. At its bes= t, retconning can breathe new life into a stagnant franchise; at its worst = it's a cringey affront to the audience's memory and intelligence, the autho= r scarcely acknowledging some preposterous contradiction with what came bef= ore. Think of Star Wars: in The Return of the Jedi&n= bsp;Palpatine dies decisively, hurled down a reactor shaft by Darth Va= der. But in The Rise of Skywalker, in a WTF-caliber retcon, h= e's simply?back. (?Somehow,? a character remarks airily, ?Palpatine returne= d.?) Mormonism constantly retcons the Bible: in John 10:16 Jesus tells his = disciples cryptically, ?Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: the= m also I must bring.? Does he mean the Israelites in the next county over? = No, Smith revealed; he means he has to go materialize amid chocolate, maize= , ocelots, preaching before Native Americans. For that matter, Adam and Eve= lived in the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area.

=20

Transpose= d to the religious realm, retroactive continuity becomes a gesture of defia= nce, a refusal to let the series ? the Judeo-Christian franchise, nearly tw= o millennia old ? come to an end. The U.S. into which Smith was born was un= dergoing a spiritual stagnation not unlike our own: in the late 18th and ea= rly 19th centuries, religious participation was shockingly low. Just 17 per= cent of Americans in 1776 belonged to a church. In his ?Divinity School Add= ress? a few decades later, Ralph Waldo Emerson bemoaned ?the universal deca= y and now almost death of faith in society.? ?Half parishes,? he noted, ?ar= e signing off.?

=20

How do yo= u thwart a large-scale decay of faith? It is as a response to this question= that Smith and Mormonism speak pressingly to us now. Smith's answer was to= insist that revelation was ongoing, that ancient scripture could be opened= up and revised ? continued ? with new visions that drew on the old but ret= readed them for a nascent U.S. ?Men have come to speak of the revelation as= somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead,? Emerson complained= So Smith revived it, retconning the Bible into a new myth, a sequel with = America at its center: America was the site of Eden, of a Christ visit; in = the end, it would be where humanity gathered to await the Second Coming.

=20
 
=20
REPORT THIS AD
=20

?He waged= a resistance movement against disenchantment,? Richard Bushman, Smith's 90= -year-old biographer, born into the church, told me. That was the conceptua= l engine at the heart of this sci-fi faith and the pageant that celebrated = it. They were modern re-enchantment projects, huge sweaty efforts to counte= ract disbelief with the jumper cables of a resuscitated myth. Here, in the = middle of contemporary life ? on a hill in upstate New York ? God was fully= , thrillingly alive.

=20

 

=20

Tuesday late-afternoon

= =20

 

=20

The cast = Wi-Fi password was ?ComeUntoChrist.? It was 4:30 now and hot, and I was tir= ed and irritable. There was no coffee to be had on pageant grounds, I was b= eyond the reach of my 4G LTE service and, worse, weary of the constant supe= rvision. They were so damned nice, the escorts ? but their ni= ceness couldn't conceal the fact that I was being surveilled. It was odd: t= here's a thriving subreddit called r/exmormon, where apostate Mormons vent and defiantly p= roclaim their indulgence in masturbation, Jim Beam, lattés. Had I be= en after dirt on the church, did Salt Lake City really think I needed to tr= avel halfway across the country to get it?

=20

But there= was a Hill Cumorah Wi-Fi network, and it was cool if I used it (I imagined= 90 percent of the internet being blocked) ? and I was walking now with a h= andler named Kristin a stone's throw from a restroom hut. I decided to stag= e a mini-rebellion: I would go into the hut and camp out, getting my intern= et fix and some alone time. What if Kristin gave up and left before I came = out?

=20

She walke= d me to the hut and I went inside, entering a stall where I stayed forever = ? answering texts, checking all the things. At last I washed up, drew a bre= ath and left the hut, glancing about. The coast was clear. I felt an influx= of giddiness that was choked off when, some 25 yards away, I spotted Krist= in beaming at me and waving. I plodded my way to her like a guilty spaniel,= but when I reached her she showed no sign of annoyance. ?Hey!? she cried. = I half-expected her to add, ?How'd it go?!?

=20

She hande= d me off to my next chaperone, Scott, the middle-aged ex-CEO of a street ho= ckey league. Scott's kindness was more than skin-deep, a preternatural good= will that made me briefly forget my annoyance at being monitored. His affec= t was fully Fred Rogers, his eye contact unswerving as a Mack Truck. What w= as my background? he inquired. Former academic, I said. Scott gazed mutely = into my eyes and thence my soul for some five seconds. ?That's why you're s= o thoughtful,? he said at last.

=20

We headed= toward the stage. ?The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the = greatest organization in all the world,? Scott said, ?because it can pull p= eople together to get great things done like this, in such short periods of= time.? He cited the church's readiness to aid communities stricken by natu= ral disaster: when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, droves of Mormon volu= nteers rushed to the scene, bringing food and manpower well before the U.S.= government had lifted a finger.

=20
He cited the church's readiness to aid c= ommunities stricken by natural disaster: when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orl= eans, droves of Mormon volunteers rushed to the scene, bringing food and ma= npower well before the U.S. government had lifted a finger.
=20

When we g= ot to the stage I saw that dress rehearsals were underway. Here I had my fi= rst glimpse of the costumed ancient Americans. The latter, I should pause t= o explain, are the reason the pageant and the Book of Mormon can make for d= istressing experiences. The book posits that two tribes, the Nephites and L= amanites, lived in the pre-Columbian Americas, and that the Lamanites, havi= ng killed off the Nephites, became the peoples now known as Native American= s. What makes this origin story especially painful is its timing: the Book of Mormon was published in March 1830, two months before President Jackson signed t= he Indian Removal Act, which authorized the U.S. government to force Native= peoples off their ancestral lands and relocate them west of the Mississipp= i. And it was marketed as a history of the Native Americans, who came, it revealed, from Jerusale= m. While Indigenous pe= ople were being shunted westward in death marches like the Trail of Tears, = their history was being quietly overlaid by the visions of a white kid from= upstate New York. It was its own Indian Removal.

=20

I should = clarify that however gruesome these origins, the LDS church is now a multie= thnic phenomenon with more members outside the U.S. than in it ? and plenty= of these members balance clear-eyed critique with a regard for what they f= ind redemptive in the faith: often, its contention that revelation is continuous and anyone can have it. Still, this mu= ch is clear: Mormonism is a modern re-enchantment project that took shape o= n a continent populated, to begin with, by people who never saw themselves = as bereft of wonder. ?We as Indigenous people ne= ver were kicked out of our Garden of Eden,? Elise Boxer, both a practic= ing Mormon and an enrolled citizen of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux T= ribes, told me. ?That's where we live.?

=20

Gazing at= the stage now, I saw that on either side, two groups of about 20 teens ? w= hite as Wonder Bread, clad in skirts rather like Navajo quilts ? practiced a battle dance while = the soundtrack blared. They brandished spears. One group played the Nephite= s, the other the Lamanites; it was a call-and-response. At its close the tw= o groups chanted, ?Hah!?

=20 3D""/ ------=_Part_267_1847111025.1628192709636--