Today marks the closest that I can get in a non-leap year to the anniversary of being released from my mission (29 February 1980) — 30 years ago.

Coincidently, in two weeks’ time, I will be in Brazil on a business trip and have arranged a short side-trip from São Paulo to Blumenau to see how much things have changed since I lived there from July 1978 to February 1979. Blumenau, Santa Catarina was my first area and probably has the strongest memories for me. Everything was new and fresh and I was seeing it with unjaded eyes.

I lament that everyone I befriended back then is most likely dead (I have always had an affinity for people older than me).

I am more excited about the sidetrip than the overall business trip, and will certainly enjoy my first foray back to Brasil since 1997.

As always, one is amazed at the lack of humanity in the human race. Even among “the elect”.

Living History: Slaves arrived in Utah with Brigham Young
By Pat Bagley

(The Salt Lake Tribune) – Listed on the Brigham Young Monument on Temple Square are the members of the first pioneer company to enter the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847.

Three of the names are set just a little apart from the others under the subhead: Colored Servants. These are Green Flake, Oscar Crosby and Hark Lay.

Crosby and Lay accompanied their Mormon masters to California to establish a colony in San Bernardino in 1851. California law prohibited slavery and it is assumed the two became freemen.

Green Flake has a deeper history in Utah. He was baptized in April 1844, by John Brown, an elder but not the radical abolitionist of Bleeding Kansas fame. Loaned to Young by his Southern master, along with a mountain carriage and team, Green was to go ahead with the first company. It was in that wagon, with Green Flake at the reins, that Young entered the valley.

A trickle of blacks entered the state over the following years, both as freemen and in company with their masters.

The real status of these “Colored Servants” became obscured over the years by apocryphal stories of blacks being offered their freedom, but devotedly choosing to remain with their “masters.” In reality, when offered freedom, most blacks grabbed their liberty with both hands and high-tailed it to California.
(more…)

Hope It Continues

Study: Young Americans less religious than their parents
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN

(CNN) — Ministering to young adults at New York’s Riverside Church, the Rev. J. Lee Hill Jr. hasn’t had much success in recruiting for Sunday morning services.

But his mission trips to New Orleans, Louisiana, since Hurricane Katrina and his efforts to connect with older teens and 20-somethings — the so-called millennial generation — via Facebook have paid big dividends.

“Church is difficult because young people today want to engage actively,” Hill said. “They just want to experience God.”

A study released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life appears to bear that out. On the one hand, it finds that young Americans are significantly less religious than their parents and grandparents were when they were young. But the report also suggests that many of the beliefs and faith-based practices of 18- to 29-year-olds mirror those of their elders.

One in four American millennials — which it defined as those who were born after 1980 and came of age around the millennium — are not affiliated with any faith tradition, Pew found. They characterize their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic” or “nothing in particular.”
(more…)

The funny thing is, we are sometimes not that far from these irrational fears and attitudes in this country.

Police arrest five ‘gay’ Kenyans

(BBC) – Police in Mtwapa, just north of the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa, say they have arrested five men whom they accuse of being homosexuals.

District officer George Matandura said two of the men had been found with wedding rings, attempting to get married, in Kikambala beach resort.

The other three men were handed to the police by members of the public; two of them had reportedly been beaten.
(more…)

I just found out that this site had been hacked and that after a minute or two on here, it would automatically redirect the viewer to another site.

Believe me, I fixed this as soon as I could. It involved changing of passwords, overwriting the header.php file (which is where the code actually was performing the redirect) and deleting the sorry sack of shit who had somehow set himself up as an Admin (WTF, WordPress?!?).

I always have the latest, most secure version (2.9.1 as of this writing), so this is upsetting, to say the least.