Refractions and Reflections

Having been deeply involved for most of my life in a religious tradition most people would probably classify as "hyperspiritual," I have made it a point these last few years to try to examine spiritual phenomena through as objective and reasonable a lens as possible. Now engaged in studying History, I found one of this week's lessons particularly interesting. It was an excerpt from Laurie Winn Carlson's book A Fever in Salem , in which she hypothesizes that the physical complaints prevalent during the Salem Witch Trials were plausibly caused by an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. She goes so far as to list side-by-side the symptoms from the trial documents with those of a 1930s encephalitis epidemic. Allowing for discrepancies in terminology, it seems the manifestations of the symptoms would have looked the same. Here is a duplication of Carlson's list: 1692 SALEM                   ...

After completing my graduate degree coursework in September 2013, I decided to use 2014 to catch up on my reading for fun (instead of primarily for assignments)!! One of my year-long goals was to read at least one book per two weeks. I am now in the midst of my twenty-sixth, so...CHECKMATE! ;) I even caught up on a few classics I'd never had time for. Overall, I'm very satisfied with my year of reading. Here are the books I read this year: 1) The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson 2) A Better Atonement by Tony Jones 3) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 4) The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger 5) Dorothy Parker: Complete Stories 6) Anna Karenina  by Leo Tolstoy 7) Wicked by Gregory Maguire 8) Something Other Than God  by Jennifer Fulwiler 9) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 10) Three Lives by Gertrude Stein 11) The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 12) Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen 13) Southern Living: Easy Gardening (Spring 2010) 14)...

---1--- Nelson Mandela passed away today. I am embarrassed to admit, I don't know much about him. I know he was a president of South Africa, and I think he had something to do with ending apartheid. I intend to remedy this lack of knowledge!! However, I did come across this awesome quote from him: ---2--- I'm on Book 7 of Harry Potter. Early into it, Hermione explains to Harry and Ron what she has discovered about horcruxes and how to destroy them: "But even if we wreck the thing [horcrux] it [a division of Voldemort's soul] lives in," said Ron, "why can't the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else?"  "Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being."   Seeing that Harry and Ron looked thoroughly confused, Hermione hurried on, "Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn't damage your soul at all."  "Which would be a real comfort to me, I...

---1--- First, in honor of Halloween, here is the best article I ran across in relation to monsters this week. it still had me thinking the day after I read it. "How Monsters Point Us to God" by Paul Pastor in Christianity Today . It talks about how the creation of monsters reveals our fears, including our fears about God. ---2--- I took the GRE today!! I got "unofficial" scores on the Verbal and Quantitative Reasoning sections (I got a 162 and 147 in them, respectively). I was disappointed with my score on the Quantitative (math) portion, because the degree I am applying for is in physics. BUT, in my defense, I haven't had math since I was a sophomore in high school (15 years ago), so I think the fact that I did as well as I did should indicate at least a potentiality that I can do well in the subject. I also finished the rest of the application process, including my letter of interest. ---3--- Here is part of that letter of interest, in which I ...

---1--- First, I read a couple of REALLY great blog posts this week elsewhere, and I wanted to share them. Both participate in 7QT, so some of you may have already read them. The first, in fact, is the post in which the host of 7QT, Jennifer, shared the video of the forum she participated in this week on Exploring God. If you didn't watch the video, I highly encourage you to watch it. It's just really good. The second was a post on sin by Leah Libresco over at Unequally Yoked. I wrote on sin, too, the day before she posted it, so it caught my attention. She sets up an analogy wherein she compares general "sin" to "punching someone in the face." She goes further, in reference to the line in Amazing Grace, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear," and says: Punching people in the face is pretty bad, but what’s  worse  is punching them and not  noticing  and losing the opportunity to repent or make amends.  Then the relationship betwe...

A few years ago I left a bookstore with Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City . An entrancing read, it made me want to read more of his works, and I soon ordered Thunderstruck on paperbackswap.com . I never got around to reading it, though, and so I finally started it yesterday. It segues nicely into the next story post I wanted to write - more from my friend Millie - about work ethic and innovation in entrepreneurship. Larson's habit is to weave two dissimilar lives together in a sort of double biography that no one would ever think to thrust together. For example, in Devil in the White City he tells the story of Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the phenomenal structures of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, as intertwined with the tale of another inhabitant of Chicago at the same time, serial killer H. H. Holmes. Thunderstruck mingles the paths of Guglielmo Marconi, discoverer of wireless telegraphy (the precursor to radio and telephone technology)...

---1--- On selling my body.... As I've mentioned before, I'm looking for a second job since school is out. Until I find one, I decided maybe I would try donating plasma...and I did in fact try, last Friday. My brother was horrified. "You've sunken to selling your body?!" he exclaimed. "Well, yes...I guess you could look at it that way," I replied humorously. I was surprised that it did not hurt. The needle going in the arm was just a slight stick, and then it was relatively painless. However, I failed to hydrate as well as I should have, and since I work third shift and went to the place not long after I woke up Friday around noon, all I ate beforehand was a granola bar, and that only because the instructions say to eat well before you donate. Well, I learned they tell you that for a reason. I passed out after they had only drawn what looked to me like maybe 6 or 7 ounces of plasma. I still got the full payment, which I thought was generous, and the...