What are you doing?

I know I haven't posted in quite awhile. I have very specific reasons for doing so. But I value the time you take to read this blog so I want to provide a brief update.

Home: I'm buying a house. I should close in early November. The logistics on the front and back end are rather daunting and it tends to absorb much of my free thinking.

New Blog: I'm working on a new personal blog. This blog has changed my academic fortune a great deal. I'm hoping a personal blog will do the same for my social life. It should be titled- Adventures in Babe Getting: A slightly outrageous chronicle of a single dad dating in the Mormon world.

New Posts: I have several posts on which I'm working. One of them examines the rhetoric of the pacifist J Reuben Clark. Mainly I show how his contradictory positions, demotion within the church, and tacit support for Nazi and Communist dictators make him a far less reliable source than many think.

I've argued before that anti war advocates cherry pick quotes that support their position. I thought I would list a few in return. These both derive from my reading the rest of the volume: Mormon Perspectives of War. But both of these quotes follow the same theme that I've discussed many times before, and I don't want to become the anti-libertarian blog so I want to cover some other topics before I return for more rebuttal posts.

I have a post that discuses Zeniff's words in Mosiah chapter 9. I want to see if his commander was really so bloodthirsty, and what the text meant by "austere." I'm also wondering what Zeniff means by the good among the Lamanites, especially when he calls them cunning and lazy just a few verses later. I have many questions from the text and haven't been able to organize them just yet.

Books: I am still trying to get my book published. The publishers are taking so long to get back to me, and I'm so frustrated having a manuscript on hand for over a year that I'm ready to self publish it.

I also have another idea in the very early stages. I've met about a half dozen military historians that have books that are published or the in the process of doing so. I thought a volume that took the best of each author would do many valuable things. It would promote the exchange of ideas among military historians, foster a sense of community and increase our readership. It wouldn't bring a big increase to our workloads since most of us can contribute a chapter from a published work, or a chapter that is waiting to be published. I think the new "FARMS" journal, The Interpreter, would be a good place for this project. This seems like the kind of project the old FARMS would love to pursue. But this is the first time I've shared the idea out loud. I would love to hear your thoughts about below.

Thanks for reading.