Wednesday.
Tomorrow is the walk through...
Friday is closing...waiting...
...be sure to listen to the rocking finale!
there are a couple of reasons we put our waterlines underground here in the states...
The book as noted on the bottom of the cover revolves around the 1984 murder of "a woman and her infant daughter...by two brothers who believed they were ordered to kill by God."
In order to tell the story though it embarks on an amazingly complex history of the Mormon faith and various Fundamentalist offshoot sects.
There is nothing like polygamy, inbreeding, and short time between generations to complicate the heck out of a cast of real life characters.
Anyhow... The history is masterfully researched, fascinating and shocking but my real reason for writing is because of Chapter 23 which details the trials and appeals process for Ron Lafferty, one of the convicted brothers.
The way in which the trial proceeded was governed by the fact that this ruling could set precedents on how crimes committed based in religious zeal are treated. Also the part I found very interesting was how a secular court system, and court appointed psychiatrists, in a predominantly "God-believing" nation would classify extreme religious beliefs/zeal in regards to sanity. It is not uncommon in this nation for people to make decisions based on what they think God wants them to do / tells them / speaks through leaders / puts a peace upon them about / or dreams. Just the act of prayer or believing that it is heard or sometimes answered is a product of faith not fact. Faith doesn't stand up in the court room and depending on where you draw the line of radical or not it becomes delusion which leads to insanity pleas and dragging capital murder cases out for decades. For the most part all of this boils sanity down to majority rules. It is a whole lot more complex a set of thoughts presented within the chapter and I cannot begin to rewrite / summarize them but I appreciate this kind of thinking.
I have probably completely confused everything that I am trying to explain, but in summary Jon Krakauer has written a mesmerizing, thought-provoking, true-crime story and I highly suggest checking it out if you can handle the dry nature of history (as I suppose some think it) and exceedingly complex one presented here at that. Well enough of my own writing! I need to finish the last couple chapters!
Stream the entire album at www.pastemagazine.com
The best new/indie/fantastic music magazine around in my opinion.
The "Paste Station" always has a huge assortment of great tracks worth checking out even if you have to sneak stream it at work sucking up everyone else's precious bandwidth.
"Let a pop song run through its life cycle all the way to the end, through, and let the modes of production that governed its birth run their historical course - let them, I mean, be entirely replaced by newer technologies - and if a body still remains to be exhumed, see whether it hasn't taken on weight and substance." -- John Darnielle expresses perfectly what i could have never put into words about pop.