Sometime in late 2003 or early 2004, Steve Evans told me I needed to check out his[fn1] website: rameumptom.blogspot.com. At the time, the nascent bloggernacle was so young that By Common Consent didn’t yet have a name (I think the name was voted on sometime during that first year). He may have also pointed me to Times & Seasons, or I may have found it linked on his blog. But I found T&S at approximately the same time.
I’m not sure what it is about this time of year that leads to the anniversaries that we have this week. In the U.S. many are obsessed with the coming 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Today is the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, leading to an effort this year to get many in the U.S. to memorize the address. And on November 19, 2003, Adam G. posted the first item on Times and Seasons, a post entitled “Whatever I say three times is true.” Since I wasn’t involved at the time, I’ll defer to someone from that time to give us a history of how and why T&S started. Better for me to simply point out the anniversary, say “Happy Birthday, Times and Seasons” and ask what it means and where we should go.
Scott at Bloggernacle Times has been putting on a very impressive Behind the Music retrospective about the old Banner of Heaven blog. The hair, the women, the trashed hotel rooms — it’s all there, complete with interviews with band members (Brian G. comes clean about the infamous “no brown M&M’s” contract), groupies band aids, and even the occasional critic. In fact, about the only point that Scott seems to have missed so far is the group’s hidden apologetic purpose. What apologetic purpose, you ask? Only that a widely read book — also widely perceived as hostile towards the church — was google-bombed halfway into oblivion. Now, curious souls who google “Banner of Heaven” are as likely to read about X-boxes or the speculation train as they are to learn about Mountain Meadows. Apologetics, meet Web 2.0. And the apologetic stone cut without hands will roll forth virally, until it has overcome the entire Googleverse. Amen.
Could there ever be a Mormon advice columnist, dispensing advice to a Mormon audience? Or is that what Bishops are for?
Can I remind us of something? The rhetoric here and elsewhere on the bloggernacle, the Internet, and evidently in the personal lives of some of us, seems all too often to be based on the idea that there is a worthiness test for compassion.
Looking through the news over the past few days, I was surprised at the number of ponzi-schemes perpetrated by Mormons in the news these days. I’ve seen three in the news in the past week, two of which involved men who were Bishops at the time.
Merry Christmas from Christmases past!
