Aleah at 18

 

The missing circle or Where is God

One thing noticeably absent from my last post was a description of how my belief in God and the downstream beliefs about Jesus and Christianity have changed.  What surprised me about the response to my last post was that no one really asked about that either, except for my friend Bro. Dunstan.  (Embarrassingly I misspelled his name in the first version of this posted.  Fixed.)

In general, I have been deconstructing not only my relationship with and understanding of the LDS Church, but also God.  I am not sure I am quite ready to label myself as an atheist, but don't know of a theistic tradition I want to adopt. 

So in the same spirit of my last post, I will try to explain my thoughts around this starting first with four modifications of my original Venn diagram - because everyone loves a Venn diagram!  For simplicity, each of red ellipses represents "God". I also am avoiding parsing Bible or Book of Mormon verses or scripture intentionally in this post.  This is just how my brain has been obsessing about this topic recently. 

LDS doctrine 

What I taught as a missionary and believed as a member is most succinctly summarized in the missionary manuals - Link.  

Basically, God is both our creator and father of our spirits.  Definitely we also believed that God was male - not as much open discussion but loudly whispered beliefs that there was an unnamed female wife/mother as well.  Or multiple heavenly mothers... That we were created/organized as spirits first in a premortal life and then the world was created for us by the gods so that we could be born in a fallen mortal world, get bodies, be tested, and then return to heaven as resurrected, perfect beings eventually to become like God. LDS doctrine usually describe God as having a physical perfect body because he was also at some point in the eternities on a planet like earth, lived life, was resurrected and now promoted to God.  

Christ is a separate being that started as the first spirit created and then born on earth with a mortal mother and God as the physical father.  His role is to mediate between us and God and to overcome death and sin so that we can return to wherever God is.  He also has a physical immortal human-like body after his resurrection.  Post-Talmage Mormon Doctrine links Jesus with Jehovah before his birth and that he was a part of the godhead before and after his life on earth, but is not the same being as God.  

The Holy Ghost is like a third member of the godhead as a separate being of spirit because he hasn't been born yet and exists to influence us for good.  The devil is also a spirit creation of God but rebelled before creation and exists as a spirit to tempt and test the rest of us to do evil. 

In my diagram, I would say this is actually most like the top right diagram - Universe independent of God.  Maybe better said - God independent of the Universe, because God created the universe and It operates following the laws of nature and he/she/it exists outside and beyond those rules.  Humans have free will and operate independent of God.  In Mormon doctrine, He has a human-like physical body and exists somewhere kind of outside the temporal universe or on a planet near a sun called Kolob.  He existed at some prehistory/precreation point on his own world and was part of that creation.  That could be illustrated with a fifth diagram where the red ellipse representing god is part of the world, but would need to have a series of Venn diagrams representing that he progressed from being part of the world to being something more than that and that he was created by some other god.  Maybe an infinite number of Venn diagrams inside of other Venn diagrams and multiple gods.  It's Venn diagrams all the way down.

He can influence and impact the world and humans - but within the laws of nature and free will, subject to the laws that were set up before we were created.  In the Mormon world view that is why we have scriptures, angels, prophets, and the Holy Ghost - all ways that God can influence us in the world without taking away our independence from Him. The LDS church exists because of Him trying to restore the right ways to worship and follow him before the end of the world so that we can have faith, repent, etc to be judged worthy to return to live with Him. That is why they have missionary work, temples, new scriptures, etc. 

To be blunt, I don't believe in this God anymore.  I don't think this is how the world works.  Back to the diagram starting with:

Universe as God

God is not just the creator of the universe and doesn't exist independently.  He/She/It is the universe - a pantheistic interpretation of God.  I am imagining this view of God as a god of nature and forces and kind of incorporeal, but also that we are a part of God in that everything is part of God. In this description of God, God is to the parts of the universe almost like our cells are part of us.  The entirety of creation is part of this organism that is God.  Maybe that is too biological of a metaphor.  In this view if there is an afterlife it is becoming more indistinguishable from this Universal God.  

Do we have free will in this scenario?  Not sure.  Do our cells have free will?  Do red blood cells ever have an existential crisis about their job ferrying oxygen around the body and want to be more? I don't know, but we and other creatures all feel like we do - we think we have free will.  All other life is part of this living universe and is part of God somehow.  Humans are not a separate community from the world - inspiration tends to be in this world view about losing sense of self and belonging to the unifying bigger existence.  

Which religions fit in this category? I think a lot of new Age beliefs approach this.  Also religions where nature itself is god and communing with those forces is how we get closer to God.  In some ways this is an attractive idea - the world can have purpose and meaning, but that meaning is mostly that we are part of this bigger universal thing.  I like that idea.  Not sure I believe it really is true, but I do like it. 

World as God

I think the biggest difference with the last scenario  is that in this view of God - humans are kind of a special creation from the rest of the world.  We have free will and are more independent of God.  Also that the world was created for humans.  Our communities can exist independent of God, but there are interactions where some groups are inspired and led by God and others may not be.   God in this case could be like the Universe as God. Inspiration I think still tends to becoming one with nature.  

Is this a Christian God? Possibly there is a flavor of this somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be to me.   I think you could also capture a lot of nature polytheism into this kind of description of god where each god is a component of the world maybe?  I don't know.  Venn diagrams don't capture all the complexity of world religions I guess. 

I like this even less.  Because it still has a deity that is essentially integral to the nature around us, but we are independent of it?  What would that kind of God want from us?  

Universe Independent of God

This version of God is outside of time and the Universe.  He/She/It most likely created the universe and us.   So many different versions of God could be described this way.  In part I think this also implies that there is one god or set of gods that is universal for the world and all humans.   In a pantheon, those gods interact with each other and individuals, communities, and the world.  You could envision this universal god many different ways and it could have different level of interaction and control of the physical, human, and personal life. 

I think that this is the kind of God most Christian church's really believe in when they think of God - an "Omni" god - omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient that is also perfect, eternal and more than anything Good. There are a lot of variations in beliefs about the specific nature of this god and how that relates to Jesus, Holy Ghost/Spirit - whether trinitarian, binitarian, nontrinitarian, etc. but this god is not part of our world.  It is outside and supreme over the world.  

Like I described above, this to me is the way LDS church sees God, with some caveats.  I think one of the things that is a Mystery about the nature of god is that we talk about God being at the same time personal and impersonal - a judge and a comforter.  Maybe that is why trinitarian or not, the roles of Jesus and the Holy Ghost are important to be able to have a vision of a God that is incomprehensible, yet also something/someone that people feel like they have a close personal relationship to.  I certainly yearned for that and maybe as someone that is a little bit apostate now I have lost really my understanding of how that works.  I don't feel that personal connection now to God.  Did I have it before? At times I felt this strongly, other times I definitely did not.  Like when my son died the Idea of a all powerful personal god was not comforting - it made me angry.  And I didn't see how the vision of this god fit with that grief and loss. 

God of One Community

This is more common than I thought as a Mormon.  I think a lot of the historic gods of a specific culture and people including Judaism and early Christianity fit actually in this category - with the caveat that the same time God's nature may be that God and the community are part of the world or independent of the world.  My illustration is not complex enough to capture that.  Missionary work in this world view is adoption into the community of that God and membership is defined by that belief.  It also can be a pluralistic world view in that different communities could have different Gods that coexist potentially to rule and modify the world.  Exaltation is leveling up that communion with God and leaving the rest of the world behind. 

Even though I think most Christians, and certainly Mormons, would not accept the pluralistic implications or limitations to the scope and role of god that this implies, Christianity and Mormonism have echoes of this in how we talk about membership and conversion  as adoption into the community or family of the church.  Judaism is an ethnoreligion like this and I think the Old Testament and even most of the New Testament show this kind of view of God.  It comes through I think in how LDS leaders and members talk about being part of "Israel" - representing God's community and Gentiles - not god's community.   Patriarchal blessings have echoes of this too where each one declares the member's "lineage" as a tribe in the house of Israel.  It is behind the racism of the past LDS church teachings and leaders as well that excluded black people from being members of this community with varying justifications for why.  I think pairing this view of the community and God together with a patriarchal history and description of god, a strong single leader/prophet, and a doctrine of becoming like that patriarchal-potentially-polygamous God - whammo you get polygamy and misogyny. 

This was a part of my faith crisis.  I began to feel that if God was more than the god of our community that we wouldn't have the messy doctrine and uncomfortable history of the church.  And if we were God's special community that He was not actually doing a good job of leading this community or we were doing a bad job at following.  I worried about leaving this community because it meant rejecting the community - which I didn't want to do, and also it's god.  And maybe that fear was justified because that is part of what still bounces around my head a lot.  

Conclusion

I wrote the last blog post so that people who know me would understand some of the reasons why we decided to leave the church.  There was a real comfort in feeling like I had those answers and I am the first to admit that with this change in my life, I don't have them any longer.  I still study the scriptures, but I don't believe the stories they tell about Jesus, the prophets and the church are a clear message like I once did. I don't really know what God is like anymore.  

 
If there is a god though, I think God is bigger and more than I was taught in the church.  It’s a big universe.  If there is a grand design - a plan that we are all part of, then the LDS church is just one player - and a relatively small one with 16 million/8 billion people - less than 0.2% of the world. This is an old world with life that has been evolving for billions of years. I don't know what is before or after this life, but I think it is myopic to think we are in the end days. One planet in a big solar system.  One solar system in a galaxy with billions of stars. One galaxy in a ginormous universe. It is billions of years old and will keep on spinning for billions more.   It makes me feel small - but small I think in a good way. 
 
If there is an eternal design, inevitably I am a small part of it, but still a part of it.  I was as a member of the church, and I still am.  Like the metaphorical Adam and Eve, I choose to step out of the sheltered garden of the church and into the world.  When I was on my mission, attended BYU, married Leila, and had my family - I felt strongly that was where I needed to be. I feel the same about this decision. I am part of the rest of the 99.8% of the world - that is what I am joining. Intentionally.  I really feel like that is where, if there is a grand design, I am supposed to be. Even if that means losing my faith.

18 months later - Update after leaving the LDS church

As I was riding in to work today, I was thinking about trying changes in my life this last year and about what I needed to do today. Maybe it was the procrastination talking, maybe it was the beautiful cool morning ride with almost no traffic, but I had kind of this moment of inspiration, where I thought of how to talk about changes in my life since leaving the Mormon/LDS/Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Just before Easter, Mar 2021, we went to church - like we pretty much have done all of my life, every single week. The year before had been disrupted by covid and we had been mostly attending zoom sacrament meetings, but things were opening back up. The Stake presidency/High Council talk that week was about being “All the Way In.” Leila and I went for a walk afterwards and I wanted to know what that meant for us. I had been having a faith crisis for a while - and wasn’t sure what that meant for our family or for Leila. In a life changing moment we decided that we were actually out. We would leave the church. We talked and talked about why and what that would mean for a week or two before deciding to tell the kids at dinner on my birthday. Why on my birthday - I don’t know. It made the day kind of weird. Certainly not the conversation we usually have after cake and presents.

From there we talked to the bishop, people in the ward, and our families. But I haven’t written about it for social media, in part because I didn’t want to be confrontational about it and I wasn’t sure how to put it all in context. So here is my attempt to do that.

First, because I am me - a diagram, then definition of terms and then a FAQ like explanation.

Definitions

Self	Community	World
Identity	Family	Nature
Morals	Intimate partners	Environment
Feelings and Thoughts	Friends	History
Actions	Colleagues	Culture
	Neighbors	Economics
	Parasocial/online community

Examples of interactions

1. Self x Community - How we act and what we choose to do with other people. How we act in relationships, friendships, work relationships.
2. Self x World - Where we live and work, decisions about how we interact with the natural world. What we value and choose to do with resources - agriculture, development, garden, house, how we travel, where we travel, hobbies, etc.
3. World x Community - Stuff the community does to influence the world, or things that the world influences the actions of the community. For example: Governments, politics, culture, language, selection, adaptation, technology, history, pollution, agriculture, climate change.
4. Self x Community x World - That is all the things I do or have done - a combination of interactions between inner and external life. Who I am at work and school and home. If there is an answer for how and why I act the way I do it hides in this combination of my self, our community, and our world.

Why did I leave the LDS church

1.         Self - Ultimately, my identity, morals, thoughts and feelings began to be in conflict with the doctrines of the church. I no longer was able internally to “doubt my doubts” - I began to see things in the church and its teachings that conflicted with what I understood was true and right. The process of this faith crisis/deconstruction and the details of this I am happy to talk about for hours and hours, but isn't particularly unique to me.  The things that I struggled with were things a lot of people are challenged with - the history of racism, patriarchy, and polygamy, the truth claims of mormon prophets and scripture, my belief and doubts about god, and what I believed was right and wrong. 

        I can remember the moment where I felt like I was breaking - I was standing in our room, next to the closet, crying, trying to tell Leila about my concerns and my feelings about the church, and she told me - you know, it is OK to not believe.  And once I let that be an option, that I knew that was what was right for me now. 

2.         Community - I have heard people say that the people in the church aren’t perfect, but the church is. I think the opposite may be more true. I love the people and community that I had in the LDS church and there were points in my life where they were life saving and essential. For example, when my parents were divorced and we needed help - our ward was there for us. BYU was good for me. My mission in Nicaragua was a lot of things, but I met so many people that I loved there. Then, I met my wonderful wife and we had a family together. Our wards have been safe places where I found a lot of friends and support my whole life. I felt like I owed the church allegiance for all of that support in my past.

        But, there were problems in the church and its community, like misogyny, racism, and intolerance, from the institution and its history that began to erode that allegiance. My children did not feel that same connection, especially my LGBT children that did not feel like they could be accepted there. I could see the strain on my wife and daughters from patriarchal gender roles and expectations. I didn’t fit those either. I found I disagreed with the leaders of the church about gender, sexuality, and how it defined itself as the “one and true church”. I started to feel like it would be better to leave than stay.

3.         World - There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that says that all things testify of Christ and sometimes that is what I was taught to believe about the church.  But many things in the world didn't fit with the teachings and actions of the church. Evolution made a lot more sense than the creation myths.  The Book of Mormon, Abraham, and Moses - uniquely LDS scripture's truth claims weren't supported from all the things I learned about the world. The history of the church was not as simple and faith promoting as I learned in the church.  I found the stories of polygamy and the beliefs of the prophets really hard to support.  The culture of like Utah and Idaho Mormons is sometimes criticized, but it grows out of the doctrines and teachings of the church that I didn't like.  The economics of the church's finances was a huge blow to my testimony.  When I learned the extent of church's reserves of stocks, real estate, and for profit business, I was shook.  

Why did we all leave the LDS church

Everyone has own story that I am not sure is my place to tell here.  That is why I just talked about my thoughts and feelings. In general, the older kids all had their own issues with church doctrine, practices and history. Some had already decided that they didn't believe, and just hadn't told us.  Once we were at dinner and one of the girls asked kind of out of the blue, "Was it OK that Joseph Smith married someone that was like 14 years old?" I said I didn't think so and they kind of nodded and dinner conversation wandered back to normal small talk. Others felt as LGBT youth that the church wasn't an accepting place for them.  For others, it was a lot easier to do other fun things on Sunday instead of church.

In March 2021, when Leila and I started intensely debating whether we would stay or leave and what that meant for our family and when we talked to the kids, we allowed the kids to choose their level of activity, but we wanted to also set some boundaries.  That was mainly what we had to talk to the bishop about.  Mostly, the ward has been great at that.  I can tell at points that there are questions about what is going on with the Gardunia's and some leaders really would like to try and reactivate the kids, but for now none of us are attending. 

What has changed?

1. Self - It has been the biggest of changes, and the smallest of changes.  Mostly I think my identity, morals, ideas, etc. haven't changed, but internally I have spent a ton of my brain space deconstructing and thinking about the church and what I still believe and what I don't.  A huge part of my identity was defined by being a member of the church and my roles that I played there and I still carry all those past versions of myself. The biggest revelation is that even with abandoning those roles, that I am still me and a me that I like.  My sense of right and wrong is mostly the same - although I have started drinking tea and coffee regularly and occasionally alcohol.  I realize just how judgmental I was of others and it is freeing to let that go.  That has helped I think improve my relationship with my children - especially Emily and her girlfriend, and reveals some painful shortcomings that I have had. My core values though are the same -  I still want to be the best father, spouse, friend, and plant breeder in the world. 
2. Community - I miss my friends from church and that community.  I don't think it is intentional on anyone's part to grow apart, but the church keeps everyone so busy and I am busy.  There just isn't time to add extra effort to keep in touch the same without the weekly and regular touchpoints that came from activity in the church.  We have tried to be better connected to people in the neighborhood and our family.  A huge part of my time is still swallowed by work unfortunately.  I still consider myself in a way part of that community of people and this hasn't changed that.  So please don't let this change in my life deter you from reaching out or connecting. 
3. World - in the end, the church is just a small fraction of the world, although it felt like a huge percentage when I was in it.  Me leaving the church hasn't seemed to make much impact either way on either the church or the world, but the biggest change is trying to reevaluate my interactions with the world of history, philosophy, culture, and economics.  For a concrete example - where to donate money now.  Most of my charitable donations went to the church for 45 years.  Do I donate the same amount to other places? if so where?  Still trying to figure that out but mostly supporting environmental and social organizations that I think are doing some good in the world.  

Monastery - St Anselm College

 

Album - Water To Drink Not Write About

Testing.  Will probably pull down. 

Art goals for 2022

 

I need to draw more.  2002 I drew almost every day.  

2021 Social media thoughts

 I have liked facebook on the whole, but it isn't always good for me. I spend time on it to procrastinate sometimes. I find myself getting upset and riled up about political or social media controversies that seem designed for my ADHD brain. It sucks me in.

I have spent some time trying to make this a better place for me. In part I have refrained on commenting on political things - except on Ann Wagner's dumb posts, but she is my representative so I guess I have just one venue for political trolling. The last few years years of the Trump presidency it was clear my political engagement online wasn't good for me or anyone else I also have not posted that much and decided to post from instagram and to put less of my life in the social media frame. I love the way John Green (vlogbrothers) has discussed framing with social media. This has been helpful, but it means there is stuff going on with my life that I haven't shared here. So please reach out and keep in touch. I have a bunch of social media accounts now. I have been posting my work/genetics thoughts on Twitter (@BrianGardunia) and have longer personal thoughts and writing still on my blog (Graduategrumblings.blogspot.com). Even though that is a public blog, I tend to write quite personal things there, but I have stopped using it for daily/weekly regular updates. For example, I have not written about leaving the church here on Facebook. LinkedIn tends to be a spam creator, but it was really useful for trying to recruit people for Bayer/Monsanto and looking for jobs. I don't make videos and tiktok is like cocaine for my ADD brain so I have avoided that platform. The question I have is still how I will continue to use facebook or instagram. Should I stop, when do I stop? Another area that is obvious with social media platforms is that they are commercial money making machines where we as users are part of the product they are selling. Ads are part of the experience and definitely part of what makes Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc money. The social media platform cares more about them than us. Users are really data mining opportunities for ads and sales. I don't love this about social media. To make it more bearable, I have been aggressive about manipulating the algorithm by clicking consistently on certain kinds of ads. Facebook is now full of three kinds of ads for me: 1. Language apps - especially Natakallam a nonprofit that leverages refugees to teach languages like Arabic. 2. Shoe ads - I like shoes. I started clicking on shoe ads now almost 10 years ago when I tried to get tickets to a sold out Brandi Carlile concert at a resort in Mexico that was part of a lesbian travel package. I started getting ads for gay and lesbian cruises and thought maybe clicking on shoe ads would make a very vanilla adscape I could ignore easily. 3. Native American news - I started on this rabbit hole last year at the end of the Trump administration as a way to still get news but from a different lens that didn't make my blood pressure boil. Highly recommend. There are a lot of interesting things I have learned by filling my feed with Native American news and art. This is certainly long enough that it shouldn't be on Facebook. I will copy to my blog and elaborate there, but I wanted to post here to see what the conversation could be about how you are managing what you keep in the frame for social media and how you consume and use social media. What do you do to better manage your time, your profile, and how social media affects your life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZgkUUEf56s

Tick tick tick

Decision making in a commercial breeding program - BrIN Learning Series

If you ever thought - "man, I wished there was an hour long recording of Brian giving a powerpoint presentation about his job I could watch. . . " You are in luck.

I presented to a group at the international breeding and seedbank centers around the globe and they recorded the presentation.

I was staying at a friends cabin in Colorado and so it is early in the morning as I sat on the porch. I didn't realize they were recording the session until I started talking and I had modified an existing presentation, which I should have run past legal for approval, but didn't. So I was nervous and then my computer died right at the end so it is by no means a TED talk.

The Wizarding World, Muggles and Mormons

Becca and I finished the Harry Potter series in record time this last year due to you know - Covid19.  I am convinced that J.K. Rowling actually is magic.  Harry Potter is totally entrancing and each of my kids has totally fallen in love with reading because of it.  They also have confessed that they have waited on their birthdays for possibly, maybe, but seriously hoping they were getting a letter from Hogwarts.  Because they also want to be wizards. 

This time through the series, something struck me.  There is a dark substory.  The backstory to why Voldemort and the Deatheaters even come to power and that war is a disturbing one. It is Dumbledore's dark past too.  Harry is mixed up in this as he is destined to confront Voldemort and bring balance to the force - sorry wrong series - that is Anakin Skywalker. After a lifetime of abuse from his adopted parents and brother, he is thrilled to learn on his 11th birthday that he is not like them; he is a wizard.  This is thrilling because it not only gives him an escape from his life, but opens the door to a secret and magical world. He is a mix of savior and counter to Voldemort's dark aims - he befriends repeatedly halfbloods, but he is just as set apart from the muggle world.  But he offers a better way to be set apart and yet not be an enemy to the rest of the world. 

There is a dark side to this world though. Magical people internalize this separateness and see their secret knowledge and power make them different and better than their nonmagical neighbors.  They call the majority non-magical people muggles or mudbloods.  They want to restrict marriages between them to keep their race pure.  Their racist attitudes are built into the mythology and the history of their school.  It is the fight between Slytherin and the other founders.  This is the evil that is behind Voldemort.  He is just the face of that intolerance.  And unfortunately, it really didn't end with his death. 

I see some echoes of that in Evangelical and Mormon theology.  It may be behind our own racist past and led to the denial of the priesthood and temple ordinances to black members all the way to the 1970s. I am not saying it was an inevitable result, but it is the soil that these kind of dangerous ideologies grow in.  I see it in our political movements as well - polarization and separation of news sources, people having social and political bubbles, "America first", anti immigrant rhetoric, weaponizing patriotic language

1. Magical world view - expanded cosmology, nature, and apocalyptic world view, a rejection of science. Our religion was founded by this kind of thinking - Book of Mormon was translated with a rock and they used divining rods, etc. for trying to scry god's will.  Plus I worry that planning for a savior to come and solve the problems for us in a Millenial conflict keeps us from really addressing the problems we have.  
2. Secret knowledge and levels -  Temple, second endowment, but it also levels of priesthood and church callings.  The hierarchical thinking about knowledge and transparency.  I think this is one of the reasons the LDS church stopped revealing results of its audits.  It does them, but it isn't open to the whole body of the church.  It is need to know information. But this kind of culture makes it relatively easy to suppress and ignore past history that is negative.  Just shut that away because it will hurt people's faith and keep that knowledge to the people who are in higher levels and can handle it. 
3. Set apart - being a Chosen people means others are not chosen. In Harry Potter, you literally get a special invitation and come to a secret school in a secret location. But it means that the magical community is isolated even when surrounded by muggle towns and neighbors. It would have been such a different book if they had banded together with muggles to fight Voldemort. For us in the LDS church, it also means that we aren't fully in our communities.  Think about even the language we use to describe ourselves - a ward family, brother, sister, gentile, active, inactive, apostate, nonmember, investigator.  We are invested heavily in our church lives - activities, seminary, church, missions, church schools, social networks, business networks, etc.  And it enables us to be separate to be a holy and peculiar people, but it may mean we aren't truly invested in our communities.  It means we see the rest of the world as other. 
4. Power and authority reinforced through social control - In Harry Potter they have separate schools, a separate ministry, different shops, etc.  And Voldemort isn't the only enemy to Harry - it is the ministry itself that is trying to hold on to power and keep control and although they are against Voldemort - the worst of embodiment of the separatism that keeps Muggles out of their lives, they justify plenty of terrible actions to keep power and maintain their isolation.  And they do it out of love - out of trying to do their best to keep their culture and their people safe. 

Harry Potter shows a better alternative to Voldemort - embracing people that are diverse and different within his community - Hermione, Hagrid, Firenze, Lupin, Dobby, Kreacher, the goblin in the last book, Buckbeak, even the ghosts at the school and the captured dragon in Gringotts, and all of his friends that are kind of different and unique. He wins not because he is a better magician than Voldemort, but because he in the end has help from all the people on the fringes - even the Malfoys that are kind of apostate Death Eaters by the end.  But they are still all within the magical world.  I would love to see another series of books on what happens if they were exposed.  What if Hogwarts students went to a regular school - and say learned math and history instead of Muggle studies and Arithmancy.  What if they used technology and magic together.  

What does this mean for me?  As we have stepped back from our safe Mormon world during this year, it is a scary muggle world out there.  I loved feeling like I was part of a special, set apart generation, saved for these latter days. I went to BYU - the closest Mormon thing to Hogwarts and have been set apart for many callings since.  I have been embedded in this set apart community and it has been my culture, my history, and a safe place.  It gave me roles and heroes to build my life around. I see my kids chaffing against those expectations though.  And maybe it is time to start to build more connection with the rest of the world. 

References

American segregation https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en

https://boaporg.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/muggles-mormons-and-theology/

Bach memories

Link for Yascha Heiffitz playing my favorite Bach: Link

When I was in fifth grade I remember having a pen pal at school.  My teacher had another classroom from Brooklyn that wrote us letters.  We were each paired up with a student in that class.  I don't remember the name of the kid I wrote to.  I remember really clearly him asking me if I liked Run DMC and I am pretty sure I told him that I liked running and playing a lot but I didn't what what DMC was.  I asked him if he liked Bach. I had a tape collection of classical music - it wasn't very big, but I played the Bach and Beethoven tapes over and over again. He had no idea what I was talking about. It made me realize that I might be a wierd kid.  

I wish I could find those old letters.  It would be fun to track down the boy that I wrote to see what happened with his life 30 years later.  I wonder if he remembers that strange kid from Teton, ID. 

I am a poor letter correspondent I am afraid - even on my mission I was sporadic about writing, but that was when I have done the best.  I enjoy keeping in touch with people and it is important to me, but I don't always do what is needed to maintain those connections.  One of my oldest friends is a monk now and writes me occasionally and I know he would write more if I were better at writing back.  I really value connection and long term friendships, and keep trying to put down roots somewhere.  At the same time though I feel a need to move to go new places and do new things and sabotage myself.  Even now I feel this itch to get out of St Louis and move somewhere new.  

So if you haven't heard from me in a while, know that I mean well and look forward to the next time we see each other in person.  And if you want a good pen pal, you should totally write to Becca.  She sends letters out every week to her friends and anyone that writes to her.  

24 Hours of Reality: "Earthrise" by Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman really stood out to me at the inauguration. The three moments that made me cry were when Vice President Harris walked out with the capital police officer that helped protect senators, when Jennifer Lopez called out in Spanish, and during Amanda Gorman's poem. 

This video is another of her poems from a few years ago as a call to action to do something about climate change.  I want to do something about climate change.  I worry about it so much, like an unhealthy amount.  I see it in the change in diseases and pests, in our warmer winters, in dying trees. I bought an electric car a few years ago and since my accident have not replaced it, instead relying on public transportation and my bike, and in the last year mostly working from home.  I related so much to this reply all podcast. 

But, I want to do more.  I think we must do more.  

Yesterday, we had a seminar at work about climate change that left me for the first time hopeful.  The speaker at Bayer - a professor in agriculture and climate change made a pretty convincing case that agriculture can truly help reduce greenhouse gases.  Here were roughly his conclusions:

1. Carbon-negative farming techniques - banking organic matter in soil.  These include: cover crops, no-till, optimal nitrogen fertilizer applications, and bioenergy crops.  I am a little skeptical that bioenergy crops are the solution, and he didn't talk about coproduction of wind and solar energy as part of farming.  There are a lot of windmills going up throughout the Midwest and I think with better energy storage and local energy utilization methods they could be a key component of sustainable carbon-negative farming techniques. 
2. Agriculture will be a major player for good or for ill in climate change.  Think storing carbon while producing food vs chopping down rainforest for soybean fields.  Runoff of Nitrogen, phosphorous, and soil into rivers and the ocean vs efficiently converting that into organic matter - improved soils, feed, food for livestock and people. 
3. Technologies available now
• Nitrous oxide abatement - precision N application and management
• Carbon sequestration - Cover crops, no till
• Cellulosic bioenergy - He didn't count this but anytime we can use all the biomass for animal feed that has to be better than grain fed systems.
4. Areas for research
• Plant N use efficiency
• Increased carbon sequestration - more roots, stabilization, better capture of organic matter in the soil
5. References
• Syswerda et al. 2011
• Basso, Shuai, Zhang and Robertson 2019 Sci Reports
• Prin 2004
• Robertson 2012
• Tian et al. 2016
• Global Carbon Budget

Gardunia's in 2020

Merry Christmas and looking forward to the New Year!

So this was a year. . . So much seemed to happen this year that we weren't really expecting.  Going into January we were expecting to start preparing to move to Scotland and thinking about all the changes that would bring.  I travelled to Mexico for meetings at CIMMYT and did not expect that to be end of my travel for 2020. I had tickets purchased even for trips to Africa, Scotland, and Mexico that were never used. Then as we got closer to March, it was beginning to look like Covid was going to disrupt those plans.  I started working from home.  The kids activities were cancelled, school moved virtual, and I must have checked the covid monitoring site at John's Hopkins a billion times.  

Although there were rough spots globally - climate change effects on wildfires, melting glaciers, and environment, all the protests for racial justice and equality, all the election craziness, this was a year that we were able to learn a lot of new things. I went skiing for the first time.  Aleah mastered beading and bread making.  Emily has really leaned into ceramics.  Leila has been working on new patterns sponsored by Michael Miller fabrics along with YouTube video tutorials, paper patterns, and distributing to fabric stores.  Colleen at the beginning of the year took gymnastics, rock climbing, and now has joined the swim team.  Kate programmed actively on Scratch this summer and has loved using the wacom pad to do graphic art.  Becca and I read a ton of books this year - all of the Harry Potter books, Narnia, and so many others.  She also has become the best pen pal, writing letters to her friends from school. 

Interviews with the kids about this year below - minimally edited for clarity.  

Becca

Best - Wild Kratts autograph - they wrote her back and sent a signed post card. First letter from Cindy, going to the cabin. Calling Esther and writing letters. Visiting Cindy. Making tamales. 

Worst - pollution and covid

School - Zoom, independent study always having to wear masks

Media - Wild Kratts, SheRa, Gravity Falls, Hilda, audiobooks on Epic and Sora. 

Books - Serpents secret, Harry Potter, Narnia, Wolves of the Beyond, Frog and Toad

Kate

Best - playing with Nora and the Gardunia/Cannon Bubble.  Making cookies, brownie recipe - double chocolate from Martha Stewart's Cookies. 

Favorite memory - Nora and Kate made a really huge cookie.  Added too much milk and then mixed too much.  Bubbled in the oven and then put it in ice cream

School: Online - likes being able to manage self - own space and can take breaks. Doesn't like that it is more fact-based and less experiential because harder to show, see, and experiment online. 

Worst - wildfires, covid19

Video: Dr Who - Top recommendation, Sherlock, Shera - Catra + Adora forever, Nightvale, webtoon, Scratch, 

Music: Dode, Alex Benjamin, AJR

Books: SuperNova, Renegades, Life of Pi, Last Wings of Fire book

Aleah

Best - bread and beading. Favorite bread: Rosemary focaccia https://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/6144-rosemary-focaccia

Favorite memory of the year - getting the robot through the maze in robotics

Worst - quarantine and the library being closed.

Recs - Mandalorian, Magnus Archives, Wolf 359, Alice isn't Dead, Gravity Falls, House on Mango St, webtoons, 

Colleen

Best - in school at the beginning of the year and going to the cabin this summer. New hobbies - Swimming hard - 2 hr practices 4-5 days a week.  Gymnastics and climbing last spring. Zoom meetings and wacom pad. Pride Month and black lives matter on YouTube

Worst - staying at home for covid19, six grade camp cancelled. Time doesn't make any sense

Media - Good Place, Gilmore Girls, The Office, Parks and Rec, DeAngelo Wallace, the Come-up

Internet - webtoons, Sora, Zoom, Spotify

Books - Cassie West, reading Land of Stories with Becca, Hunger Games, Cinder, Matched, Allie Carter

Music - Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Melanie Martinez, Olivia Obrien, Haley Steinfield, B. Miller

Looking forward to covid vaccine, going back to school, life not being so boring.  

Emily

I didn't interview her for this -  I can't believe she is already 20 years old!!  She continues to do well at Truman.  She lives off campus and has been working at Starbucks and HyVee. Celia, her girlfriend, did her basic training for the army this fall. She has been focusing on ceramics - making a bunch of pots, cups, mugs, planters, and next year will work in the ceramics studio part time.  Check out her instagram for all of her art and updates. 

Leila

Best - Hanging out with family , quarter system at highschool made it easier, especially with online, pool opened this summer, working out almost every day this year - Jillian Michael's Kickbox and youtube: SugarPop. Lots of walks in the neighborhood. Food recomendations - Aleah's bread, Cheesy eggs - 1/2 onion, bell pepper, cheese, 3 eggs. Pero + hot chocolate

Worst - The stay-at-home orders, spring virtual school, election stress, constant uncertainty, school start, constant change with not enough info.  Business has been a little stagnant.  

Quarantine hobbies - historical costuming - started making shift and stays.  would love to go to Versaille costume party 2021. 

Rec Podcasts - Code Switch, Nice white Parents, No Compromise, Throughline.  

Media - Historic clothing videos: Abby Cox, Bernadette Banner, Fashion Justine.  Exercise - Sugarpop fitness. TV - Wolfblood, Poldark, Community, The Crown, The Good Place, Sherlock with Kate at night.  

Looking ahead to 2021 - New block of the month pattern, paper patterns for sale, 6 new patterns, following more activists and quilters. 

Brian

If you made it this far, more about my year. 

Good -  Skiing, long bike rides, and hiking with friends. Trump losing the election over and over again. Working from home and online school went a lot better than I thought it would.  No wasting time commuting to work and cutting work travel meant I was home more - no more staying late at work or being out of town.  I have a new job - getting to focus on one crop, mostly, and also on becoming a better leader and scientist.  I can't say I am not appreciated at work any more.  I really feel like this is a chance to build a team and really do something exciting with cotton this next year. 

I did all the quarantine hobbies - bread - still trying to perfect sourdough rye, gardening, made furniture, faith crisis, running.  I got a new bike and rode the Katy trail and some longer rides to the Arch or to the Mississippi river. I went with a friend last week, crashed, and was totally wore out at like mile 35 - so more work to do.  I blame it on getting old. . . 

Bad - Not moving to Scotland, depression, doubts and losing faith in my religion, anxiety and stress about future and the election.  It is crazy to me that Trump and many of his party refuse still to accept the results of the election. 

Just not being able to make plans.  I totally agree with Colleen time seems to be faster and slower than I expect.  I miss being with people from work, from church, or even just strangers - I miss things like parades, concerts, races, working out at the gym, talking to friends in the cafeteria at work, and all the interpersonal random conversations that seem so impossible now.  

Next year - Hard to really seriously make plans, but thinking about cotton genetics, building a new team, and travel to either UK or New Zealand this summer as part of collaboration with AbacusBio.  I think we will try to go as a family and stay for a couple of months.  I would like to do some more long distance swimming events - maybe all of the Saturday swims at Simpson Lake and then a long distance race this summer?  

Recommendations:

Media - The Expanse Season 4 and 5 were so good.  The Mandalorian was better then the last Star Wars movies.  Youtube: VlogBrothers, The Microcosm, Pitch Meeting, Yale courses online - The Philosophical Foundations of Politics, New Testament History, The Science of Wellbeing.

Plays: The Band's Visit

Music - Brandi Carlile, STL 

Books - I reread mostly old favorites - The Chosen - Chaim Potok, Ursula LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness, The New Testament - translation by Thomas Wayment, The Man in the High Castle, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, The Yiddish Policeman - Michael Chabon, Educated - Tara Westover, Stalin - Stephen Kotkin, Dune - in Spanish, Harry Potter series - English and Spanish, Plastic Magician and Spellbreaker by Charlie N Holmberg, The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold - Highly recommended, The Fated Sky - Mary Robinette, Murderbot series - Martha Wells, The legend of Hermana Plunge by Angela Liscom Clayton, Dragonback series - Timothy Zahn. 

Podcasts - El Hilo, RadioAmbulante, RadioLab, This is Uncomfortable, Reply All, Throughline, Dear Hank and John, Levar Burton Reads, The Anthropocene Reviewed, Nice White Parents, Preach.

Extra fun. Becca made this video about the cat.  She is getting older and moving slower.  She had a bad limp for most of the year as her arthritis was getting worse, but the new medicine seems to help. 

Can I submit an amicus brief to the Supreme Court?

 I would like to say Amen to Pennsylvania's brief to the latest Trump attempt at overturning the election results:

For their whole filing

From the introduction:

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT 

Since Election Day, State and Federal courts throughout the country have been flooded with frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising large swaths of voters and undermining the legitimacy of the election. The State of Texas has now added its voice to the cacophony of bogus claims. Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees. Its request for this Court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas’s preferred candidate for President is legally indefensible and is an afront to principles of constitutional democracy. 

What Texas is doing in this proceeding is to ask this Court to reconsider a mass of baseless claims about problems with the election that have already been considered, and rejected, by this Court and other courts. It attempts to exploit this Court’s sparingly used original jurisdiction to relitigate those matters. But Texas obviously lacks standing to bring such claims, which, in any event, are barred by laches, and are moot, meritless, and dangerous. Texas has not suffered harm simply because it dislikes the result of the election, and nothing in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution supports Texas’s view that it can dictate the manner in which four other states run their elections. Nor is that view grounded in any precedent from this Court. Texas does not seek to have the Court interpret the Constitution, so much as disregard it.

Why is the Republican party and leaders standing by this attempt to deny the reality that Donald Trump lost this election?

Here is the statement from other states opposing this case:

1.  California, 
2. Colorado, 
3. Connecticut, 
4. Delaware, 
5. Guam, 
6. Hawaii, 
7. Illinois, 
8. Maine, 
9. Maryland, 
10. Massachusetts, 
11. Minnesota, 
12. Nevada, 
13. New Jersey, 
14. New Mexico, 
15. New York, 
16. North Carolina, 
17. Oregon, 
18. Rhode Island, 
19. Vermont, 
20. Virginia, 
21. U.S. Virgin Islands, and 
22. Washington

Here are the states supporting this case and their arguments:

1. Missouri, 
2. Alabama, 
3. Arkansas, 
4. Florida, 
5. Indiana, 
6. Kansas, 
7. Louisiana, 
8. Mississippi, 
9. Montana, 
10. Nebraska, 
11. North Dakota, 
12. Oklahoma, 
13. South Carolina, 
14. South Dakota, 
15. Tennessee, 
16. Utah, and 
17. West Virginia. 

106 Republican legislators also have submitted a statement supporting this case.  I won't list them all, but so disappointed to see this.  I was talking to my friend Young Wha about this case and it really does seem like we are living in different realities.  One where we live in a democracy, and another where loyalty to the president supersedes facts and where even the facts exist in an alternate reality.  

The other groups submitting documents in support of this case are evangelical christian groups - like https://thejusticefoundation.org/ that fights against "forced" abortions? A Christian family org?  Nothing this president has done deserves this support.  

Nothing in this election shows fraud, just that people were allowed to vote using mail in ballots. Which is crazy because so many states allowed mail in ballots and Trump won those states. List here. They aren't in this case.  

2020 so far

Like three months sped by, then we hit March and it has been a year. 

Civilization and the Lies We Love

Let's see if this actually works.  Blogger is getting buggier all the time. 

I have realized some of my favorite youtube/podcasters are as much sermons as they are entertainment.  John Green worked at a hospital as a chaplain.  LeVar Burton went to seminary to become a priest.  At the end of LeVar Burton reads for example, he talks about some of his challenges and experiences.  They are moments of vulnerability and insight that I am surprised at every time.  

You could easily make this into a Sunday talk - add a few scriptures and done.  I think there is such light and inspiration in so many places.  

Not Knowing It All

My name is Brian and I am a chronic know-it-all.  The character I most relate to from Harry Potter is Hermione Granger.  I built an academic and professional career out of being the guy with all the answers. For the last few years I have struggled with my faith, and landed in a place where I no longer know it all and I am beginning to feel like that is OK. 

I already wrote about my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs Olic-Hamilton.  She made us write and write, and we flew through a novel every couple of weeks.  She sent me home with her type writer so I could type my essays. I was way into that class.  Part way through the year she pulled me aside after class and asked me if I could do her a favor.  I was eager to help.  She asked if maybe I could wait to make comments in class until she called on me, that she appreciated that I had such "insightful" opinions, but that it would really help my fellow students if I would keep quiet most classes.  She promised me that if I waited for "especially tricky discussion points," she would call on me for "my insightful ideas."  I ate that stuff up, because I was also an insufferable know-it-all.

In college, my favorite class was Genetics taught by a graduate student (Polly Randall), while the professor was on leave.  It was such a great class.  Before each class I read all the chapters, did the homework, and came eager for the lecture.  Leila and I were in a study group together for the class. We usually sat together.  She used to wack me on leg and shoot me dirty looks during class because, and this is embarrassingly bad behavior, I would answer questions from students before Polly had a chance to.  That and I would roll my eyes and sigh when people had dumb questions.  Because I was also an impatient and annoying know-it-all.  

There are many other examples, but mostly as a grown up I try not to be an obnoxious know-it-all, but to leverage it to be a successful researcher and scientific leader in my very small and narrow field.  

Regarding religion, I did serve a mission for the LDS church and taught people that it was the one and only true religion on the face of the earth.  I had prayed about this and it felt . . OK.  I can't say I was totally sure even then, and I struggled to find where I believed.  I wanted to know.  

Sometimes I felt like I did.  And other times I certainly did not.  I almost didn't serve a mission.  I was at BYU and that seemed like the thing to do so I put in my papers. When you got your mission assignment and call in those days you were supposed to send back an acceptance letter.  I wrote mine declining the mission call, because I wasn't sure I was sure enough.  I didn't have the guts to actually mail it in though.  It sat in my backpack in the folder with my notes for a week or two.  One night my orchestra gave a fund raising concert for the BYU foundation and Pres. Hinckley was the keynote speaker.  I sat behind him with the letter like the telltale heart beating loud in my mind all night.  I felt so strongly that if he was a prophet, and he had called me on a mission, that I should go.  So after the concert I rewrote my letter and I went.  

I got to Nicaragua and dove into learning the language and teaching.  My mission was hard in lots of ways - I was sick a lot from parasites, living conditions were sometimes primitive, and there was always danger from crime and plenty of other risks from a country that was just getting on its feet after years of civil war and strife.  For example, the tallest building in Nicaragua then was a rather short skyscraper that was still broken and empty after the earthquake in the 1970's.  We didn't always have electricity or running water.  I was robbed multiple times, saw a lot of protests, and sometimes had to walk because the roads were blockaded.  But, we never lacked people to teach.  We were welcomed into people's homes and they were eager to learn about our religion.  Many did join. I loved teaching and felt like it was the right place for me to be, but even then there were questions and doubts that I had and set aside.  I saw the church grow from just a few members to be ready to have stakes in the short two years I was there. 

Then I came home, back to BYU, met Leila in that fateful genetics class, and flew through school.  I got a masters at BYU, then a PhD at TAMU. We had five daughters and one son stillborn and buried in Bryan, TX.  That was a low point in my faith.  I took that really hard.  My journal is silent though.  I didn't write.  I don't even have super clear memory of that time, but my memory of the feeling of the time is one of anger, bitterness, and not really finding comfort in my religion.  My bishop at the time made come comment about he knew that our son was in a better place and that he knew that we would see him again.  And if there was one thing I knew at that time it was that I didn't know that.  I felt like I had lost and I didn't feel the comfort of faith - the surety of knowing that there would be a second chance. 

But, life keeps churning and somehow I am now 43, and pretty sure that I don't know what I thought I knew about many things.  I look at my personal history and my church's history and there are many things that I find faith in, but then other things that are jarring.  I have doubts or problems with pretty much all of the LDS church essay problems: polygamy, the Church's racist past, Book of Mormon historical evidence, Book of Abraham translation and others like LDS 100+ billion dollar endowment or the church's LGBT policies or the crazy Adam-god stuff Brigham Young used to teach.  It shakes me.  I don't know today with the surety that I seemed to have when I was a 19 year old missionary.  I read some of my journal entries from those years and I was so sure of so much.  I have wanted to know with that kind of surety again, and I have felt guilty for doubting - for not doubting my doubts. 

I guess where I am now, after living with that guilt for a couple of years, is to let that guilt go. I can remember the sense of relief when I came to the simple conclusion that I didn't have to squeeze my beliefs into the box I felt like the Church had given me.   Maybe, it was OK not to know, or agree. Maybe not believing, was OK and I didn't have to doubt my doubts to have my faith. Though the consequence would be that accepting my beliefs that didn't fit in that box and not ignoring that or feeling like I should force them to. And I am beginning to feel like that is the right thing. It means I can disagree with the Church's stance or policies or doctrines.  I get to decide what I believe is true.  

Some of my doubts aren't really doubts even.  They are beliefs in themselves - like evolution.  For example, I don't really have doubts about Adam and Eve or Noah being real people, I am pretty sure that they were not.  That as myth there is meaning there, I believe, but I don't know if it is the same one I once thought it was.  Evidence shows that the earth is old, that plants and animals evolved over time, and that protohumans evolved in Africa and then spread throughout the world.  I don't know for sure, but that is what makes the most sense with what I know now. 

In true Know-it-all anonymous fashion, I am not sure where this will lead, but I think it is better to not know it all, than to be a know-it-all.  

Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self Part 2

Parasites, cholera, dengue fever, and Covid19

The other thing I keep thinking about with Covid19 is my mission in Nicaragua.I had a great mission.  It was fun, it was life changing.  I made friendships that changed my life in so many ways.  I lived in Nicaragua from 1996 to 1998. the economy was still a mess and the church was really new.  We had a short period where we had to stay home and not go out because of unrest around the elections in our area, but mostly I think about how disease impacted me personally and the economy.

I was sick most of my mission.  I had diarrhea from intestinal parasites, E. coli, Giardia,  or food poisoning pretty much the entire time. The lowest moment was when I was in Grenada about half way through and it was really hard. I was also leading the mission district, the church district and the branch. We had almost no local leaders - the district president had used all of his budget to help a family whose son committed suicide and then tried to cover for that by using all of the budget from the branches, and then tried to cover that up and made such a mess. One of branch presidents confessed to me that he had an affair and that she was pregnant. Another had invested the budget to keep it out of the district presidents hands into the local farm coop, which went bankrupt.  His daughter was also either possessed or severely mentally ill. He was probably mentally ill. His whole family had a history of violence and hechizeria. That is a long story in itself. We ended up releasing all of them and calling all new leaders and I was stuck with the job of finding those new leaders. 

The other missionaries just added to my stress. Elder Hernandez, a missionary in my district, hated me and tried his best to make me look bad and to make my life miserable. One of the missionaries that I lived with tried to kill himself and then ran away to Honduras. All of that on top of being so sick. I was losing weight. I had a cough that wouldn't go away, diarrhea, a skin rash, and a fever that simmered and kept me awake at night.  My companions during this time were pretty good, but between my health and the stress I was breaking. I wasn't sleeping and physically I was falling apart. At the worst point, I dropped to almost 110 lbs and must have looked like I was dying. The mission president's wife saw us while she was driving to Managua, pulled over, ordered us into the car and drove me straight to the hospital.  At the hospital the doctor checked my symptoms - fungal infection on my skin, in my lungs, parasites, bacterial and amoeba infections, and losing weight. Plus on top of that I had gotten this terrible, terrible haircut so I looked like Tom Hanks from the end of Philadelphia. He came to the only logical conclusion - I must have HIV.  I did not have HIV.  He checked. But, I did get medicine for all of the things, and orders to stay at the mission home until I had gained some weight and got some help dealing with all of the mess in my area.  

I did get better, but we were usually dealing with one of us being sick - sometimes with malaria, dengue fever, but mostly intestinal problems from bad water or food. We worked at hospitals as volunteers and saw a lot of really sick people. One of my areas was hit pretty hard with cholera.  The water system was a mess and so we only had running water a few hours at a time.  Many people used river water or contaminated well water. The river in Matagalpa was bad enough that all the fish died while I was there and I can remember watching them float on the top of the water from a bridge while sipping fresco de malacuya.  Dengue or malaria was a problem for us and the people in Nicaragua.  I never got either, but some of my companions did. I did have a fever once so high that I began to hallucinate - seeing ants crawling all over people and things around me. I still have health impacts from that time. I have serious liver damage, possibly started from either the diseases or treatments that I had during those years.  

What does this have to do with Covid19 and our current quarantine conditions? 

It was the first time that I lived with pretty real risk of getting sick from serious diseases.  It was also clear how overwhelmed the health care system was. For the first six months of my mission we volunteered in the hospital in Leon most mornings. All the beds were full - sometimes with two people/bed. The hospital didn't have enough supplies or medicines.  Patients had to bring their own medicines most of the time. The Russian equipment was old and not always functional. They only had one set of electrodes for the EKG machine. That we were even allowed to work as nurses, orderlies, record keepers, etc with no training really showed how desperate they were for help.  Most of the time we did intake, helped set bones, moved patients around between departments, helped with minor surgeries, cleaned up after patients and treatments, ran errands for the doctors or nurses, and whatever else was needed.

 The impact of having these diseases was a drag on the economy as well as the physical health of people.  Nicaragua's economy was the worst in the Americas with high unemployment, educational problems, system corruption, a weak and unreliable democracy, but having a pretty high rate of malaria, dengue, cholera, yellow fever, parasites, poor water, etc. made it worse.  I think another impact of disease was more subtle. Just knowing that there was this risk changes behavior of people and investments. If you know that to go to Nicaragua you are encouraged/required to get a whole list of vaccines and potentially take medicine to prevent malaria, treat all liquids consumed as potentially contaminated and that food wasn't safe to eat, you might reconsider visiting Nicaragua.  You may choose to go to Costa Rica instead. You would stay in different hotels and eat different food.  You might not do business there or send your kids to study there.  

Covid19 quarantines are obviously hurting businesses and people that have lost their jobs. So many are closed and so many people unemployed, but I think some of the other impacts to the economy are because of the psychological impacts of people being scared - of the disease, of other people, of the government, etc.  Scared people are not rational and that encourages conspiracy theories. I think that is why Facebook is flooded right now with Plandemic and other nutjob videos. It is fear that is behind the protests where people bring their guns to the capital. Rational people can have a discussion and disagree amicably.  We aren't there right now and that is scary.  Nicaragua was that way too. Everyone polarized and tons of absurd rumors spreading that encouraged people to vote for strongmen like Daniel Ortega. Scared people don't want democracy - they want someone strong and are susceptible to extremism.  

The uncertainty also hurts the economy.  I feel this in my own life.  I want to plan summer vacation and activities, but I can't because I don't know what summer will be like.  Will we have the pool open? Will church open? Will I travel for work? I don't know.  I feel this at work.  Projects that require travel or international recruiting or investment - at a standstill.  Reduced capacity for lab and field work.  Prices dropping for corn, soy, meat. Animal production reducing herds and flocks. You can't invest confidently without the ability to make a plan and expect those plans to happen.  Nicaragua was full of this.  I understand now better people's unwillingness to make plans.  You just can't when so many things are out of your control.

There are some interesting differences.  Most of the diseases that we worried about were spread by a vector that we couldn't shut ourselves away from.  Mosquitoes were everywhere and we had mosquito nets and bug repellent, but they will bite you.  You can't hide from them completely and they spread many of the diseases - Malaria, dengue, now also Zika.  The water carried E. coli, amoebas, giardia. The food carried hepatitus, parasites, and bacterial food poisoning.  This disease is really carried by us. We are the vector.  We are the host and the carrier.  Quarantine and lockdowns does prevent infection and spread, where most of our diseases in Nicaragua we worried about were not something we could shut ourselves away from.  We could avoid eating street food, but we couldn't avoid eating and drinking entirely, and after a few weeks it was clear that no food was really safe, so I ate street food indiscriminately.  As annoying and potentially detrimental global shutdowns, travel restrictions, and quarantines are they do slow or prevent the spread of this virus.  

At some point we will have to figure out how to live with this disease.  The lockdowns will have to end and my guess is that the disease will not disappear. We will have to figure out how we can better test for, treat, and live with Covid19 like we live with other diseases.  Hopefully there will be a vaccine developed that will prevent infection.  Vaccines are a miracle.  When I worked in the hospital and saw measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diptheria, hepatitus, etc in real life, it really cemented how amazing vaccines are.  I hope one of the long term impacts of Covid19 is the end of the antivax movement.  But, even with a vaccine, we will need to learn to live with that risk and to face those fears.  Nicaraguans lived with a lot of fear every day - the economy, disease, crime - all worse than now, but still bravely and almost everyone we met were happy and worked so hard taking care of each other.  Besides a vaccine, that I think is the solution - we can combat fear through action. I don't mean arming yourself with a stupid gun.  Action - look for people that are hurting and help them.  Chose to live bravely in face of fear.

Chile Earthquake and COVID-19

By Esteban Maldonado from Santiago, Chile - Terremoto
27-FEB-2010 Vespucio Norte 23,
CC BY-SA 2.0,

I was in Chile in 2010 to look at corn plots in Rancagua. In the middle of the night my room started to shake - but it was slow and at first I thought, "what are the people next to me doing?" Then it sped up and got strong enough that I could hear glass breaking, ceiling tiles falling down. The mini-fridge pulled away from the wall and walked across the ground. I sat in the doorway of the bathroom while the water splashed out of the toilet and thought - I could really die.

Then, spent the rest of the week worrying about how we were going to get home and looking at corn plots. Restaurants were closed, gas was rationed, power was out, cell service was poor or nonexistent, the airport was closed, and there was some real damage - old buildings downtown, some of the older bridges and overpasses, a huge storage tank of wine broke near the farm spilling thousands of gallons of red wine. People died.

There was a surreal moment when we were driving and there was a film crew along the side of the bridge filming the collapsed older bridge next us. That is the image that was shown on TV - not the new bridge engineered to withstand a 9 point earthquake. It would have been a better story to me to show both bridges - one made to withstand the stress and one that did not. Buildings like my hotel were built with earthquake dampening features that made them safe even with strong stress.

The coverage of covid19 reminds me of that. It was both true that the earthquake had big damaging effects, and that the country was resilient and prepared. Both things were true. The same here. We can withstand this, but only if we take in that whole picture. I was really impressed with how the Chileans I worked with dealt with the aftershocks and the aftermath of the earthquake. They helped each other, they cleaned up, they waited in line, they rebuilt with stronger and better bridges. They didn't freak out. They knew this was a risk and knew that it probably would happen again.

We can do the same here. Quarantine will end, the disease will probably come back or there will be a different one. How do we look around - see who needs our help and what institutions need to be rebuilt on a better foundation? If we do that, then we will be prepared. I have seen a number of posts on all sides about how wrong the quarantine is or how the federal government screwed this up or that. In reality - we need to keep track of what we did wrong or right, but it doesn't do any good to be angry about it. Of course we didn't handle this right. No one involved really has done this before. What I am most interested in is how do we clean up from this mess and then get ready for next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake