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Wastewater surveillance is one of the few tools that we can use to prepare for a pandemic and I am pleased that it is expanding rapidly in the US and around the world. Every major sewage plant in the world should be doing wasterwater surveillance and presenting the results to the world on a dashboard.
I was surprised to learn that wastewater surveillance is now so good it can potentially lock-on to viral RNA from a single infected individual. An individual with an infection from a common SARS-COV-2 lineage like omicron won’t jump out of the data but there are rare, “cryptic lineages” which may be unique to a single individual.
Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri and one of the authors of a recent paper on cryptic lineages in wastewater, believes he has evidence for a single infected individual who likely lives in Columbus, Ohio but works in the nearby town, Washington Court House. In other words, they poop mostly at home but sometimes at work.
Twitter: First, the signal is almost always present in the Columbus Southerly sewershed, but not always at Washington Court House. I assume this means the person lives in Columbus and travels to WCH, presumably for work. Second, the signal is increasing with time. Washington Court House had its highest SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels ever in May, and the most recent sequencing indicates that this is entirely the cryptic lineage.
Moreover the person is likely quite sick:
Third, I’ve tried to calculate how much viral material this person is shedding. (Multiply the cryptic concentration by the total volume). I’ve done this several times and gotten pretty consistent results. They are shedding a few trillion (10¹²⁾ genomes/day. What does this tell us? How much tissue is infected? It’s impossible to know for sure. Chronically infected cells probably don’t release much, but acutely infected cells produce a lot more. I gather a typical output in the lab is around 1,000 virus per infected cell. If we assume we are getting 1,000 viral particles per infected cell, that would mean there are at least a billion infected cells. The density of monolayer epithelial cells is around 300k cells/sq cm. A billion cells would represent around 3.5 square feet of epithelial tissue! Don’t get me wrong. The intestines have a huge surface are and 3 square feet is a tiny fraction of the total. But it’s still a massive infection, no matter how you slice it….My point is that this patient is not well, even if they don’t know it, but they could probably be helped if they were identified.
…If you are the individual, let me know. There is a lab in the US that can do ‘official’ tests for COVID in stool, and there are doctors that I can put you in contact with that would like to try to help you.
So if you poop in Columbus Ohio and occasionally in Washington Court House and have been having some GI issues contact Marc!
Hat tip to Marc for using the twitter handle @SolidEvidence.
The post The Poop Detective appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/06/the-poop-detective.html#comments) - “If you are the individual, let me know” And how is the ...by Rahul - “but they could probably be helped if they were ...by dearieme - Seems very speculative. If wastewater surveillance is expanding ...by Rahul

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In the summer of 2002, my friends and I had just seen Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and we were entranced by it. It was all we could talk about for the rest of the week, wishing we could have his amazing superpowers.
It wasn't long before Carson suggested the Spider Cave. Carson was the oldest of us, with him being eleven, he knew the most about the legend, if you could call it that. The Spider Cave is a cave that's about a ten-minute walk from our small town. It was aptly named, as everyone avoided it for one reason. The sheer amount and size of the spiders inside.
Near the entrance, which most people around here have passed, but never set foot in, is covered with small ones scurrying around the ground or hanging from the roof. They're all pretty shy, retreating deeper into the cave if anyone got too close, but then again, most people didn't.
Chuck told us that his uncle, Rick went into the cave when he was our age with a couple of his friends. They got pretty far into it too, but they claim to have found an old bicycle covered in spider webs, which spooked them enough to send them running.
So, with all of this stigma around the cave, none of us wanted to follow Carson inside. Excluding myself, none of us were afraid of spiders, but we were either told by our parents to avoid the cave, or just aware that we wouldn't find a radioactive spider in there.
We all went home, but Carson was determined to get superpowers. And after being sick for two days, he showed up on the last day of school, and it looked like he got them. Quickly, he showed us his right hand, and the big, ugly spider bite on top of it. We were all disgusted by it, but changed our tune when he flipped his hand over.
You know that scene in the movie, where it zooms in on Peter's hand and you see the barbs sticking out of it that he uses for wall-crawling? Carson had those barbs all over his palm and fingertips. His arm also looked larger, a far cry from Peter Parker getting buff overnight, but it was enough to convince us to go to the cave and get spider-powers of our own.
After school, Carson led us deep into the cave, and I was trembling all the while. I was the oldest, behind Carson, but I was deathly afraid of spiders. The only thing that kept me going was fear of humiliation and my desire to get superpowers. Still, I had to stare at the floor, I couldn't handle looking up at the countless spiders dangling from the ceiling.
Eventually, we were led into an open area of the cave, with a beam of sunlight shining in from a hole above us. I remember Carson saying something about this being the spot, and then I saw them. In the corner, there was a dozen or so spiders, except these were big, really big, with gleaming white fangs and hungry eyes. Carson said they were the ones that gave him the superpowers though, so Chuck and Tyler tentatively stepped forward.
Then, two of the spiders, each about the side of one of our hands, crawled forwards. Chuck was giving instructions to Chuck and Tyler, but I didn't hear them. I was sweating like a pig, and my breathing was growing rapid. Then, Chuck extended his right hand and a spider crawled onto it.
The spider on Chuck's hand bit into it, and stayed there with its fangs pulsating for what must've been ten seconds, until the fangs had turned from white to black. Then, it scurried back into the corner. Tyler asked if it hurt, and after Chuck, now grinning like an idiot, told him that he felt nothing, Tyler extended his hand and the second spider repeated the process.
A third spider had began to make its way towards me, and it was at that moment, I got sick, and as my friends went to ask if I was alright, I bolted out of the cave. I sat outside the cave entrance for a while, until my friends stepped. Carson began trying to convince me to go back in, saying something about how lame it would be to be the only one without powers, when I noticed something strange.
The barbs on his palm were now on both side of his hand, but not just there. They had spread all the way up to his elbow, and it almost looked like they were twitching. I was going to point this out to him, but then Tyler and Chuck begin bombarding him with questions.
"How long did it take for you to start feeling sick? For how long did it last?"
"You've were bitten over two days ago, what powers can you use now?"
Chuck pointed out that Carson had spider webs dangling from his wrist, but after a minute of Carson waving his arm, the web just fell to the ground, causing them to shrug and pass it off as taking more time to develop.
I'll never forget what I saw after that.
Carson muttered "My arm feels kinda heavy."
"That's because you have super strength, I think. Now show us some wall-crawling." Chuck replied eagerly.
Carson put his left hand on the cave wall, but it wouldn't stick. Then he tried it with his right hand, but the wall of the cave was rough, and suddenly a large piece of skin on his right palm ripped away like it was paper. Carson didn't scream, or show any signs of pain though, he just stumbled backwards a bit, then looked at his palm. Then he screamed.
It wasn't barbs for wall-crawling that were sticking out of his palm. It was legs. It looked like the spiders had eaten all of the meat off of his bones, to make room for their webs, eggs, and the spiders themselves. The spiders immediately began to swarm out of the hole in his hand, while he shrieked and waved it in the air.
As soon as the spiders touched the ground, they scurried into the cave. Carson's entire right arm looked deflated, and as the Chuck and Tyler realized what awaited them, they began to panic too. We all ran home, and my friends were promptly taken to the doctor soon after.
Carson was hospitalized, of course, and after Chuck's parents saw what had happened to Carson, they made the decision that their son's arm had to be amputated. And allegedly, as the arm was severed, there was very little blood, but a horde of spiders that scurried out of the window and, wouldn't you know it, in the direction of the cave.
Tyler's parents were going to have the same done to him, but after it was discovered that Tyler had as many as five more bites, two on his left leg, three on his right, his parents became indecisive. By the end of the week, the "barbs" had spread to most parts of his body. He didn't make it.
Nothing really was done about the cave. People said there was no point blocking it off as it had more entrances than they could count, and nobody wanted to go near it. The older generations wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, and everyone our age knew not to go near it after what happened to my friends.
So, why am I talking about it? I decided to visit my hometown this week, and decided to pass by the Spider Cave. Near the largest entrance, I saw one of those big spiders, looking like it had been stomped repeatedly. Its fangs were black.
I heard a new Spider-Man movie came out recently. I hope there aren't any dumb kids who got the same idea that we did.

Hey PubTips, please tear my query apart. Q: HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROWS (2019) - too old to comp??
Dear Agent,
I’m excited to share with you TIDESPEAKER, a YA Fantasy complete at 87,000 words. TIDESPEAKER can be pitched as ‘MANSFIELD PARK with magic’. It will appeal to fans of the gothic atmosphere and coastal setting in HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROWS by Erin A. Craig, as well as the neurodivergent protagonist and enemies-to-lovers romance in UNSEELIE by Ivelisse Housman.
As soon as Orith Fraine, a Floodmouth, turns eighteen, she's sent to serve a noble family on a lonely tidal island. It's a dangerous position for one of her kind - Orha, who can speak to the elements - since she's expected to wrangle with the monstrous tides that constantly ravage the Queendom's coastline.
If that wasn’t upheaval enough, Orith is offered a deal by rebel Orha group, the Cage: spy for them on House Shearwater’s island and help them break down the family’s defences. In return, they’ll reward her with a safer position elsewhere. Plus, she’ll find out what happened to her only friend, who went missing from their training institution after failing an exam.
Orith is thrown headlong into a new world: one of menial chores but also glittering balls, political intrigue and lethal secrets. She’s repulsed yet strangely captivated by the four aristocratic Shearwater siblings, particularly the younger son, Llir, who, like his brother and sisters, is hiding something. Something big.
As the Shearwaters are threatened by a rival House, then play host to a pair of charismatic visitors, Orith finds herself rapidly running out of time. Her loyalties grow murky, her missteps more destructive, and she soon finds herself forced towards a risky allegiance, a bitter betrayal and the making of even deadlier enemies.
I’m a neurodivergent copywriter who has worked with words for over a decade, and live in Hampshire with my husband and toddler daughter.
Thank you for your consideration!

Posts in this series (note: link will only work properly in new Reddit): https://www.reddit.com/lds/collection/363e4ce4-8cec-40ad-8ea9-5954cf1fe52d
Sorry for taking so long to get this posted! I’ve been putting in more than 60 hours a week at work lately, and I just didn’t have time to properly research this post.
This week, the topic under discussion is Joseph’s wives and the way that he personally practiced plural marriage. It’s true that some of the circumstances a little unusual compared to how later members practiced it, and it’s also true that sealing practices in general were unusual compared to how we practice them today. The world was also very different in the 1840s than it is today in the 2020s.
All of that means that it can be very difficult for us to understand what was going on and why. I’m going to do my best to break this all down so that it makes sense, but just remember, it’s okay if it makes you uncomfortable. It’s okay if you don’t like the idea of plural marriage. It’s okay if you don’t ever want to practice it. I don’t, either.
But I do have a firm testimony that it was commanded by God. That testimony didn’t just magically appear one day. I had to earn it. I had to get on my knees and pray, and I had to ask Heavenly Father whether He instituted it or not. I had to study the issue and the circumstances surrounding it. More importantly, I had to ask Him to help me understand the reasons why He instituted it.
That’s the only way to really know for yourself.
So, having said that, let’s get into Faulk’s claims.

• The Women

Due to the secretive nature of Joseph’s affairs, the actual total number of wives Joseph took is unclear. Written records, primary accounts and second hand accounts puts the number between 29-65 women.

They were not affairs, they were sealings. Sixty-five is also a pretty exaggerated number. Most reputable sources put it at around 30-35. And again, remember that sealings are different than marriages, even though we often perform them together today. Many of those sealings were for eternity only, not for both time and eternity the way that sealings are done today. In fact, some of those wives, such as Cordelia Morley and Rachel Ivins Grant, did not have any kind of union with him at all while he was alive, and were sealed to Joseph for the very first time after he was already dead.
One thing to remember is that the sealing power is to seal us all together as one giant family. It’ll be one unbroken chain connecting all of us together. Many of these sealings of Joseph’s were done for that specific reason, to bind families together in the next life. That’s why there were things like adoption sealings, where people would be “adopted” into each other’s families through the sealing process. Siblings were sometimes sealed together. Women who were married to men who were not members of the Church would sometimes to be sealed to righteous Priesthood holders for the next life.
Also, it drives me batty that Faulk keeps repeating that Joseph took wives. None of them were married to him against their will. They all had a choice in the matter.

Most disturbing was the fact that many of these women were already married, much younger and related to each other.

Why is that “most disturbing”? The women were all of legal marriageable age, and there is no evidence of any sexual relations between Joseph and any of the civilly married women, or with any of the youngest wives.
One of the reasons it’s believed that Joseph was sealed to so many women who were already married is because he was trying to satisfy God’s commandment while not hurting Emma. If he was sealing himself to married women, he wouldn’t have to actually marry them and live together as husband and wife. As the Gospel Topics Essay Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo says:

These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma. He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships. This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having “demurred” on plural marriage even after he had entered into the practice. After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.

Joseph’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, was sealed to Joseph when she was fourteen. We’ll discuss her in some detail a little later in this post. But that union was done for dynastic/adoptive reasons at her father’s request, to join Heber C. Kimball’s family to Joseph’s in the eternities.
And, believe it or not, some of the women who practiced plural marriage probably found it easier to do so when the other wife was biologically related to them. After all, they already loved them and knew how to live together with them in harmony.
At this point in the LFMW, Faulk posts a small chart taken from Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness. You can find that chart here.

1. Married: Between 8-11 women were married to other men at the time Joseph took them for his wives.

And every single one of them remained married to their husbands after they were sealed to Joseph. That’s because, again, sealings and marriages are not the same thing, and sealings for the next life had no bearing on their marriages in this one. Joseph did not live with these women as husband and wife.

He sent several men on missions for the Church then married their wives, or married their wives in secret and then sent the husbands on missions afterwards.

Many of the husbands in question knew about the sealings and even participated in them. Joseph also did not send the husbands on missions so he could marry their wives in secret.

• Marinda Nancy Johnson-Hyde-Smith

In September 1831, Joseph and Emma Smith moved in with the Johnson family while Joseph and Sidney Rigdon worked on translating the Bible. While staying with the Johnsons in March, 1832, Joseph Smith was dragged out by a mob and tarred and feathered. Marinda’s brother Eli led the mob because he felt that Joseph had been too intimate with Marinda.

Um. No. Eli Johnson was Marinda’s uncle, not her brother, and he wasn’t the leader of the mob. The mob also didn’t attack him for that reason. Marinda herself said that Joseph had never acted inappropriately while he was staying in her father’s home. This accusation was first introduced during the infamous 1884 Braden-Kelley debate, and repeated by Fawn Brodie, Grant Palmer, and a host of others.
The mob was led by Symonds Ryder and Ezra Booth, because they thought he’d try to steal their property under the Law of Consecration. They’d both already apostatized for various reasons, then led a smear campaign against Joseph and the Church through local newspapers for a while before leading the attack. The only evidence that Eli Johnson was even involved are brief reports that he was the one who provided and heated the tar. According to at least one account, he wasn’t even an active participant, but just left it out for them to use. The mob tried to castrate then murder Joseph and nearly did kill Sidney Rigdon, and were unsuccessful in all attempts.
However, as we all know, Joseph’s infant son tragically died from the effects of the frigid weather that night. Pretty tough bunch of guys, right? Gathering up a violent mob to go murder a baby.

Soon Marinda married apostle Orson Hyde. On April 6, 1840, Orson was sent on a 3 year mission to Jerusalem. Shortly after his departure, Joseph married his wife Nancy Marinda Johnson-Hyde while Orson was gone. In Joseph Smith’s journal, in a list of his marriages he wrote “Apr 42 Marinda Johnson to Joseph Smith.” In 1858 Orson and Marinda separated.

The separation of Orson and Marinda Hyde had nothing to do with her sealing to Joseph, which had happened 15 years earlier. The rest of this is also pretty heavily distorted. Orson Hyde was sent on his mission on April 15, 1840, and returned on December 7, 1842. There are two sealing dates for Joseph and Marinda, making it unclear when it actually happened. It was written down in Joseph’s journal by his scribe Thomas Bullock as taking place in May of 1842. This entry was apparently not recorded until after July 14, 1843, however, and the affidavit Marinda signed stated that the sealing took place in May 1843, after Orson was home.
Regardless of which date is accurate, Orson was not sent on a mission so Joseph could steal his wife if the sealing happened 2-3 years after he left. They were not sealed “shortly after his departure” at all. In fact, even the earliest sealing date is closer to the date he returned than the date he left.

• Zina Diantha Huntington-Jacobs-Smith-Young

Zina was 18 when her mother died and after went to live in the Smith’s home. Soon she met Joseph’s friend, Henry Jacobs. Joseph was to officiate their wedding, but never showed. Instead, bishop John C. Bennett performed the marriage. Later, Zina asked Joseph why he didn’t show, “He told her it had been made known to him that she was to be his Celestial Wife and he could not give to another one who had been given to him.” (Henry Jacobs, History of Henry Bailey Jacobs)
During Henry and Zina’s marriage, Joseph sent Henry on 8 missions. At one point Joseph sent a message to Zina through her brother Dimick. It read, “Tell Zina I have put it off and put it off until an angel with a drawn sword has stood before me and told me if I did not establish that principle and live it, I would lose my position and my life and the Church could progress no further.” After four proposals and pressured with the responsibility for the life of the prophet, Zina finally accepted. (Brian C. Hales, Mormon Historical Studies 11, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 69–70.)

That last line there is a pretty big exaggeration of what the article actually says. In fact, the article doesn’t talk about Zina Huntington at all. The only place she’s mentioned at all is her inclusion in a chart of the different accounts of the angel with the drawn sword. I’ve included a screenshot of the only three mentions of her from Faulk’s cited source. In fact, it’s actually a paraphrased line from Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness.
Zina, however, clarified that she came to accept the principle through searching the scriptures and praying, and that she received an answer from God that it was from Him. It wasn’t because she felt pressured into it at all.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to pin down exact details when it comes to Zina’s timeline, as there are a lot of discrepancies. When I wrote my response to the CES Letter, I cited liberally from a book titled 4 Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier. This book used to be housed on the Internet Archive, but has since been taken down. Forgive me that I can’t show exact pages anymore on those citations. Many years after all these events took place, Zina gave testimony saying that she first learned of the principle of plural marriage from Dimick, who had heard it from Joseph. Other sources, seemingly reliant on her diary, say that she learned it from Joseph while she was staying at his home. Some sources say that Joseph proposed to her three times while she was living at his home and that she refused him each time out of respect for Emma. Other sources say she declined to give him an answer and kept putting him off, also out of respect for Emma. Some sources say that Joseph wrote Zina a letter saying he’d been threatened by an angel with a drawn sword, while others say that it was a verbal message passed to her by Dimick, who had been sent to offer her another proposal (even though she was already married to Henry Jacobs at that point). Some sources say that Henry was present for that initial sealing to Joseph, but absent from the other resealing to Joseph for eternity and sealing to Brigham for time. Others say Henry was there for the sealing to Brigham, but are silent on whether he was there for the first sealing to Joseph. Zina said in her later testimony that it was just Joseph, her, and Dimick present at their initial sealing, but that Brigham later resealed them after he returned from a mission to England, meaning that she would have been sealed to Joseph three times in total. However, in signed affidavits collected by the Church, Zina, Dimick, and Dimick’s wife Fanny all verified that Fanny was there at the sealing, too. Etc.
Because of all of this, it’s difficult to know exactly what happened, who was aware of what, and when and how they all became aware of it. However, Zina did say that the Lord had prepared her for the doctrine prior to her hearing it:

I will tell you the facts. I had dreams — I am no dreamer but I had dreams that I could not account for. I know this is the work of the Lord; it was revealed to me, even when young. Things were presented to my mind that I could not account for. When Joseph Smith revealed this order I knew what it meant; the Lord was preparing my mind to receive it.

Additionally, Henry was called on his first mission in May of 1839, before he ever even met Zina. The guy was a prolific missionary who served repeatedly throughout his life. None of those missions overlapped with Joseph’s sealing to Zina.
In fact, according to family tradition, he was present when Joseph told Zina that the reason he hadn’t officiated their wedding is because she was meant to be his plural wife. Henry accepted the news because he was close to Joseph and trusted him. Zina was the one who hadn’t received an answer yet and still had reservations.

After Joseph’s death, Brigham Young also took Zina for his wife while she was still married to Henry Jacobs. Brigham called Henry to serve a mission in England and told him to find another wife. While Henry was in England, Zina began living at the Young house with her children and soon bore a child with Brigham.

Let’s walk through all of this. First, many of Joseph’s sealed wives who were already civilly married to someone else just stayed married to their husbands after his death. They had the choice on whether to re-seal themselves to Joseph or not, and the single wives had the choice of which members of the Twelve they wanted to be sealed to for time. Zina wasn’t forced to leave her marriage to seal herself to Brigham. She chose to do that.
Brigham supposedly told Henry to find another wife, though that can’t be corroborated. He also supposedly had to tell Henry to stop writing love letters to Zina after they were married.
Brigham eventually had several dozen wives and 57 children, in addition to being the leader of the Church and the governor of Utah Territory, owning multiple businesses, and directing the settlement efforts across a very large area. Dude was a busy guy, just saying. Zina did not live with him and did not spent tons of alone time with him. She lived for a time in a separate home with her children, and for a time in a house with several of his other wives. The time she spent alone together with him was sporadic and infrequent.
How would Brigham know that Zina was getting love letters from Henry Jacobs unless she told him? And if she enjoyed receiving those letters, why would she tell him? Why not hide them from him? It would’ve been pretty easy to do so—all she had to do was keep her mouth shut. It’s not like Brigham was snooping through all of his wives’ things in his limited free time. The only reason for her to bring the letters to his attention was if she didn’t like receiving them.
Imagine it from her point of view. You get divorced and move on. You describe that marriage as an unhappy one at several points throughout the rest of your life. You marry someone else and even have a child with them, but your ex keeps contacting you, telling you how much they still love you and still want to be with you. How uncomfortable would that be? It’d be an extremely awkward situation for anyone.
To me, it’s far more likely that Zina went to Brigham and asked him to intervene because it was making her uncomfortable than it is that Brigham found out on his own and flew into a rage and forbade Henry from contacting Zina despite her protestations.
Aside from a very few notable exceptions, most of Brigham’s wives and children spoke of him in glowing terms. Zina herself mentioned his kindness repeatedly.
Henry, meanwhile, was married three more times and all four of his marriages ended in divorce. I don’t know what led to the end of the other three marriages, but I do know that he’s the common denominator in all of those marriages.
It seems clear that Zina left him in what is sometimes called a “folk divorce,” which was a thing in the 19th Century where the man and woman decided to dissolve their marriage and go their separate ways, leaving each of them free to marry again. She chose to marry Brigham for time, and Henry struggled to move on afterward...for a time. Brigham asked him to back off, and he did.

• Vilate Kimball

Shortly after Heber’s return from England, he was introduced to the doctrine of plural marriage directly through a startling test. He had already sacrificed homes, possessions, friends, relatives, all worldly rewards, peace, and tranquility for the Restoration. Nothing was left to place on the altar save his life, his children, and his wife. Then came the Abrahamic test. Joseph demanded for himself what to Heber was the unthinkable, his Vilate. Totally crushed spiritually and emotionally, Heber touched neither food nor water for three days and three nights and continually sought confirmation and comfort from God. On the evening of the third day, some kind of assurance came, and Heber took Vilate to the upper room of Joseph’s store on Water Street. The Prophet wept at this act of faith, devotion, and obedience. Joseph never intended to take Vilate. It was all a test.” (Heber C. Kimball, Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer by Stanley B. Kimball, p.93)

Yep, because blessings come after the trial of our faith. Heber and Vilate were sealed for time and eternity that same night as a reward for their faithfulness. Theirs was one of the very first sealings of this dispensation.

Teenagers: Ten of Joseph’s wives were teenagers.

Here, Faulk posts another little chart, which I have also linked.

• Helen Mar Kimball-Smith

Instead of taking Heber C. Kimball’s wife, Vilate, as Joseph had done with others, he married Heber’s 14 year-old daughter, Helen, in May of 1843.

This is presented somewhat disingenuously. Joseph and Helen were sealed two years after Heber and Vilate were sealed. The two incidents are not connected at all. And, as mentioned earlier, Joseph and Helen were sealed at Heber’s urging. He wanted to link his family to Joseph’s in the eternities.

“The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.” (Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo, LDS.org, Oct. 2014)
In a letter written by Helen Kimball, her father had asked her if she would be willing to be sealed to Joseph Smith, Joseph himself came to her and said,
“If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.” She talks of her mother’s hidden grief “to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path [of polygamy].” “I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.” (Helen Mar Kimball, Mormon Polygamy: A History, by LDS Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner, p.53)

Ooh, this is super dishonest framing! The first two lines in quotation marks are indeed taken from an autobiographical letter written by Helen to her children in 1881. The first is from page 482 of a book titled A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History, and the second from page 486.
But that third quotation, about how she’d never have been sealed to Joseph if she knew it was anything more than a ceremony? That’s taken from page 19 of an early anti-Mormon pamphlet called Narrative of Some of the Proceedings of the Mormons: Giving an Account of Their Iniquities by Catherine Lewis, published in 1848. She claimed to have heard Helen say this to her mother at some point, though everything in the book is suspect. It’s all pretty badly distorted from reality, which you can see for yourself just by reading it.
Helen herself certainly never backed up its claim. She did admit to being upset as a 15-year-old at being prevented from going out to dances with her friends because of the sealing, so it’s possible she said something like that at one point in her frustration and disappointment. But the circumstances surrounding it are certainly skewed, since Catherine reports it in the context of Helen refusing, after Joseph’s death, to be sealed for time as her father’s plural wife. That surely never happened. And in fact, after a few more years, Helen became a very vocal defender of plural marriage and of Joseph Smith for the rest of her life.
So, I’d take that statement with a very big grain of salt. That Faulk presents it here as if it was a direct quote from Helen’s own letter to her children is repulsive.

Joseph told a reluctant Helen Mar Kimball that if she married him it would ensure her salvation and the salvation of all her family. Imagine the burden on a 14 year old girl’s emotions of the salvation for her entire family riding on accepting Joseph’s proposal.

Except that Helen herself admitted that she didn’t understand what he was trying to teach her, and neither of her parents, who were there at the time of the proposal, understood it that way at all.

• Nancy Winchester Smith

While records show Nancy was married to Joseph, no dates were written. At the time of Joseph’s death, Nancy was 15 years old. It is possible that, like Helen Mar Kimball, Nancy could have been 14.

It’s not confirmed that Nancy Winchester was a plural wife of Joseph Smith, though evidence leans that way. We also have no idea when that sealing would have taken place, because no records of the sealing exist. We don’t know much about her at all. Her brother Benjamin was a known and rather hostile critic of Joseph’s who never mentioned the fact that they were sealed, so either he didn’t know about it, he didn’t see anything wrong with it (which is highly doubtful), or it never happened and her inclusion on the list was a mistake.
Eliza R. Snow listed her as one of his wives, and so did Orson Whitney, the son of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Helen was one of Nancy’s good friends so there’s solid evidence to believe it, but it’s not confirmed.

Unlike what is commonly taught in Sunday school lessons, marriages to young teenagers were not “common in pioneer days.”

Not true, and Faulk’s evidence for this claim doesn’t even say that:

“In 1890, when the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting marriage data, it was recorded that the average age of a first marriage for men was 26 years, and the average age of marriage for women was 22 years.” (http://classroom.synonym.com/agemarriage-us-1800s-23174.html)

Note that this quote says the average age was 22 years old. That means that some women were much older and some were much younger. 1890 is also half a century later than 1840, and society can change a lot in 50 years.
Craig Foster wrote a great article for the Interpreter a few years ago) which demonstrated that in frontier America in the 1800s, females often married quite young, and their husbands were usually older and more settled. It was much less common in the settled cities along the East Coast, but on the frontier (which included Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and especially Utah), it was relatively common. Men in their 20s-40s marrying teenagers was not unusual.
Even today, it’s legal for teenagers to get married. Let’s not forget that most of Joseph’s teenaged wives were 17-19 years old. Many of us in this church know women who got married at 18 or 19. While they are technically still teenagers, calling them teen brides is implies that they were underage.
The entire concept of “underage” did not exist in the 1800s. In fact, the concept of “teenagers” didn’t even exist back then. You were either a child or an adult, and there was no in-between.
Applying our societal standards to a past society and judging them for their lack of adherence to our norms is a logical fallacy known as “presentism.” I get it—today, it’s unusual and it makes us squirm to hear of girls aged 14-16 getting married. But it was also not out of place in that day and age. And, most importantly, there is no evidence of any sexual activity between Joseph and his youngest wives.

3. Mothers and Daughters: Joseph married a mother and daughter pair.

• Patty Bartlett Sessions (Mother – already married to David Sessions)

She was sealed to Joseph for eternity while her husband was a faithful member of the Church, and though she and her husband both later received their endowment, they weren’t sealed at that time. She also didn’t re-seal herself to Joseph in the temple after his death the way that many of his other plural wives did. The reasons why are unclear. After her husband’s death, she was sealed for time to another man. Around 1867, after submitting an affidavit concerning her plural marriage to Joseph, she was offered the chance to be re-sealed to Joseph again, though I’m not sure if she accepted or not.
We don’t know the reasons for this sealing, just like we don’t know the reasons behind many of Joseph’s sealings to civilly married women.

• Sylvia Sessions Lyon (Daughter – already married to Windsor Lyon).

Windsor Lyon was excommunicated from the Church in November of 1842. Joseph and Windsor remained good friends for the rest of Joseph’s life. There are conflicting dates from two unsigned affidavits saying that Sylvia’s sealing to Joseph either took place in early 1842 or early 1843. Brian Hales favors the later date.
If he’s right, this appears to be one of those sealings where Joseph was sealed to a woman whose husband wasn’t (at the time) a faithful member of the Church so that she could still obtain exaltation.

Sylvia bore children with both husbands; three children with Windsor and one with Joseph. (Josephine - February 8, 1844)

No, no, no. She most certainly did not have a child with Joseph. For a long time, it was considered an unproven possibility, but was never definitive. However, even the possibility was ruled out by DNA testing in 2016, seven years ago.
The fact that this is still in the LFMW after all this time caught me by surprise. We know the LFMW has been updated since its first posting, since the original FAIR rebuttal addresses differently worded accusations. There was plenty of time to correct the inaccuracy. In fact, this particular objection appears to have been added to the original text, rather than removed.

4. Pairs of Sisters: Joseph married 3 pairs of sisters.

• Emily Dow Partridge and Eliza Maria Partridge.
  
• Sara Lawrence and Maria Lawrence.
  
• Zina Huntington Jacobs and Presidia Huntington Buell.
  

Yep, he sure did. Zina and Presendia (her name is not Presidia) were both sealed to Joseph for eternity only, with no marriage in this lifetime. But Emily and Eliza Partridge and Sarah and Maria Lawrence were all sealed to Joseph for time and eternity.
Again, though, I’m not sure why this is supposed to be a point of scandal. None of them were married against their will. They all had the choice, and they all agreed to these arrangements. Is it unusual? Sure. It’s weird, I think we can all agree with that. But is it sinful? Nope. When God commands polygamy, it’s not sinful, and levirate marriages have been around for thousands of years. This is somewhat similar to that practice, particularly in the case of Mary and Mercy Fielding and Hyrum Smith. Or, one could argue, between Zina Huntington and Brigham Young.
Remember, when plural marriage was first introduced, they weren’t really given a rule book. There are some directions and guidelines given in D&C 132, but they only cover certain situations. In the Nauvoo days, they were basically winging it. They had to adjust to the new commandment that completely upended their entire lives and then figure out the best way to live it. There was trial and error, heartache, sacrifice, and suffering involved. It was not easy for any of them, and they did the best they could. If they made mistakes, they need our grace, not our judgment.

When I was getting started, an actor I knew gave me some really good advice. While deciding whether or not to take a certain role, consider three factors: the money, the show, and the people. If at least two of those things are good, accept the job. If they’re paying you well and you love the play, you won’t mind putting up with shitty people. If it’s a great show with a cast full of friends, but you’re not getting paid so well, that’s still alright, it’ll be artistically fulfilling. If it’s a bad show but you love the cast and you’re making money, you’ll probably have the time of your life making fun of the playwright backstage and laughing all the way to the bank.
What my friend failed to mention is that as an aspiring actor, you don’t usually get to be that picky. When I got the call from my agent that a production of The Bacchae was urgently seeking a new chorus member, all I could see were dollar signs. My survival job had just fallen through (the family I nannied for was moving upstate, insisting that Manhattan had just gotten “too dangerous” for their toddler), and my savings were only going to cover my rent for another month.
It was raining the day of my audition, and my train got delayed. I showed up panting (I had to run from the subway station) and my hair a disaster. Luckily, in The Bacchae, the chorus is full of… well… Bacchae. Fervent followers of Dionysus, wild women, drunk and running through the countryside. In the climax of the play, they crowd the protagonist in a frenzy, literally ripping him limb from limb.
I’ll never know if it was my frenetic energy from barely making it to the theater on time, or my actual acting, but I got the part. My costume fitting was the next day– they weren’t kidding about urgently needing a replacement. Which thrilled me, because I wasn’t kidding about urgently needing the money. At the fitting, I discovered something my agent failed to mention about the production: this wasn’t just any version of The Bacchae, it was a recreation– an attempt to perform the play in the traditional Greek style. In other words, everyone was wearing masks.
I’ve never been fond of masks. We had to do a few assignments with them in my college acting courses; covering your face can enhance the physicality of your body, something like that. But I never liked wearing them, or seeing other people wearing them. It wouldn’t be fair to call it a full-on fear, but the stiffness, the lack of expression, gives me a weird feeling in my stomach. And wearing one, your field of vision limited, your mouth covered, making it harder to breathe, harder to project your voice– I don’t like it. It’s as simple as that.
But I needed the money. My costume wasn’t ugly, per se, just strange: a long white dress, or maybe toga is a better word, the fabric about the thickness of a burlap sack. My mask, stark white, paper mache, covering my entire face except my eyes, the mouth carved to imitate a grin. No shoes. My hair tucked into a wild black wig– we wore wigs, they explained to me, so the chorus could be identical, indistinguishable. We moved as one, spoke as one, and were meant to look like one. They even made sure to cast women of the same height. In our costumes, it was impossible to tell which of us was which.
It didn’t help that I was an outsider to the rest of the cast, joining the show weeks into rehearsals. Everyone seemed annoyed that they had to teach me the blocking, the inflection of the lines (so my voice didn’t stick out from the other chorus girls), and where to go backstage during scenes with no chorus. A few people tried to be nice to me, but quickly gave up when they realized I knew nothing about Greek theater, or masked theater, or the avant garde. My last show had been a regional production of Cats, for God’s sake. I was totally out of my element.
Things got especially sour when I tried to ask what had happened to the girl I was replacing. Nobody wanted to talk about it. People gasped when I brought it up. The clearest answer I got was a whispered, hesitant, “she fell,” but the person wouldn’t elaborate any further. The cast seemed superstitious, uncomfortable, like talking about her would cause them to suffer her fate: removal from the show. And it was clear that, aside from me, everyone else loved this show. The actor playing Dionysus, the couple of times he deigned to talk to me, just kept gushing about how honored he was to play this role, how electrifying it felt to put his history minor to use, to show people a piece of the world’s theatrical beginnings.
I thought the show was fine. Kinda boring, kinda scary. I don’t think I “get” The Bacchae. In brief, the story is about Dionysus, son of Zeus, disguised as a human. He and his followers (the chorus) show up in a town, but the leader of the town, Pentheus, is upset about it. He doesn’t understand why all these women are acting crazy, and he arrests Dionysus, not believing him to be an actual God. As punishment, Dionysus possesses Pentheus’s own mother with the same madness as his followers, and together, with their bare hands, they rip Pentheus apart. His mom walks back into town holding her son’s head, thinking it to be, in her madness, the head of a lion. When she realizes what she’s done, she is overwhelmed by grief, and futilely attempts to put Pentheus’s mutilated corpse back together. Dionysus returns, basically saying, “well, he said I wasn’t a God, and that’s blasphemous, so he got what was coming to him.” Pentheus’s mother is exiled.
It’s incredibly dark. In the reviews, critics called it daring, challenging, a bloody spectacle, a feminist masterpiece. I don’t really get what part of “a man who’s a God possesses women’s minds, driving them to murder” screams “feminism,” but hey, I’m the girl who commuted to New Jersey every day for four months to do Cats, what do I know?
Here’s something I do know: the other chorus girls did not like me. And they took their jobs seriously. As we waited to enter for each scene, there was dead quiet in the wings. Usually, there’s some light joking, maybe quickly running lines, maybe physical warmups, shaking out your nerves– I tried to do this once. Before our entrance at the top of the show, we all gathered in the stage right wing, all twelve of us, a perfect and identical dozen. It was a dress rehearsal. No audience. I did a few jumping jacks, trying to hype myself up. Another masked girl grabbed my bicep, hard. When I turned, she just shook her head “no.” Just a simple, silent, “no.” We don’t do that here. We stand silently in the wings, focusing on our craft, breathing, waiting for our entrance. I never tried it again.
When you can’t talk to your coworkers, acting becomes a lot less fun. The collaboration element is totally gone. And honestly, the “acting” element was gone for me, too. How am I supposed to find my character or sense of identity in a role when my role is “don’t let your voice stick out, don’t take a wrong step, blend in perfectly with eleven women who dislike you?”
So before the shows, instead of chatting, or doing jumping jacks, I wandered the theater. I’ve always loved theaters; the dramatic architecture, the ornate prosceniums, the stark contrast of backstage, so dark, so dusty. The theater was no Broadway house, but it had a fly system (which we didn’t use, because the Greeks wouldn’t have been able to fly anything in), just over three hundred seats (including a mezzanine– fancy!), and lots of backstage space. I could say more about it, because I spent hours during the run of the show wandering, but it wouldn’t be terribly interesting to anyone who’s not me. Just know, it was a beautiful old theater– and I mean OLD. Built in the 1910s, just before the Great Depression. I used to love imagining how many generations of people had performed on that stage, imagining what they’d think of this show, or what they’d think of me.
About a week into my wandering, on some fifteen-minute break, I was looking at the ladder that led up to the catwalk– a long, thin metal walkway stretching across the stage from above, usually used for hanging lights. I wondered how long it had been since it was used during a show. I wondered if it was even safe. What would the view be like from up there, seeing the entire stage from thirty feet in the air?
I slowly looked up the ladder. I wouldn’t actually climb it. That would be crazy, right? I’m not particularly good with heights. As my eyes lifted, I made eye contact– or rather, mask contact– with someone. A fellow chorus girl, up on the catwalk.
I stopped breathing for a second. What was she doing up there? I started to say something stupid, like, “Why are you up there?” when just as quickly as the face appeared, it vanished. I saw her white robed form retreat down the catwalk, heading for a different ladder, probably. It was weird. Why did she run? Embarrassed to be caught somewhere she shouldn’t be?
I allowed myself to entertain a little fantasy: maybe she was just like me. Maybe she also hated the other chorus girls, and didn’t “get” The Bacchae. Maybe she was exploring the theater for fun on our break, enjoying the old architecture, like I did. I had no idea who she was under the mask, and she had no idea who I was. She probably thought I was one of the normal judgemental girls, and ran off before I could tell on her to the stage manager.
I was filled with unfounded hope. Could I make a friend here? Was it possible? After two and a half weeks of silence from the other girls, it was hard to imagine. How would I find her? How would I let her know it was me– that I had seen her on the catwalk, and we were the same?
After that day, I got much more observant. When the director called for a break, instead of immediately retreating into the depths of backstage, I watched my eleven doppelgangers carefully, tracking who went for water, who went back to the dressing rooms, who ran off towards the vending machines. It was hard to tell everyone apart, but people had to take their masks off to drink water eventually. I memorized faces and tried to keep track of them. I started to get a handle on everyone’s patterns, narrowing down potential adventurers.
It was impossible. Eleven people is too many to observe. But I’m an actor. Memorizing shit is literally my job. By week four, just days from opening, I had three potential girls. I tried to stick close to them during rehearsals, picking one to follow each day, but nobody ever wandered towards the catwalk. Maybe the girl, whoever she was, had been scared away from adventuring when I caught her. I started to lose hope. We were opening soon– I should focus on making my entrances, not making friends.
But then I saw her again.
This time, it was half an hour before the curtain went up for our invited dress rehearsal. The press was there. I was nervous. I knew I had my part down, but when you’re doing a show, no matter how prepared you are, there’s always the lingering fear that you’ll freeze up, forget everything, and ruin everyone’s hard work. It just means that you care. I was surprised that I cared so much. I still didn’t even get the play. I couldn’t let the other girls see me weak. I barely show my real feelings to people I care about, much less mean actresses who look down on me. To get away from it all, I wandered down to another unused part of the stage: the orchestra pit. We did have music in the show, but the Greeks didn’t have orchestra pits. So it was closed off, being used as storage.
I loved it down there. I loved looking through the storage bins, finding props from long-forgotten productions– sometimes I would find something incredible, something I swore was from the day the theater opened, something old and valuable– and usually, I could never find it again. Those bins were a treasure trove. Of all the weird little spaces I found backstage, the pit was my favorite. I felt like a real explorer down there, illuminating my path with my phone flashlight, getting spooked when a mouse ran over my foot (of course the theater had mice, it was more than a hundred years old! And besides, every building has mice in New York City).
That day, I wasn’t there to look around. Just to sit. Just to catch my breath. I tiptoed down the creaky steps, and plopped myself on the ground, surrounded by bins. I inhaled and exhaled, smelling the mildew-y scent of old props on every side of me. And that’s when I heard a noise. Not a mouse noise– I was used to those. Something bigger. I turned my phone flashlight on immediately, calling, “hello?”
And the light landed on a mask, just like mine. Mine which was currently off, because I was doing my breathing exercises. I felt exposed– she could see my face, but I couldn’t see hers. I stood up. “You scared me!”
She didn’t respond. She looked at me for a second, and started to retreat the other way, towards the stairs at the other side of the pit.
“Wait!” I called. “I won’t tell anyone I saw you!”
She stopped for a second. But then she kept walking. I stood and followed. “Please stop. Can I at least know who you are? I don’t fit in with most of the chorus girls–”
I reached for her long white toga. I swear, I had it in my hand, but somehow, she slipped away. I staggered a bit, almost tripped, confused that I hadn’t made contact with her costume. And when I looked back up, I only saw a glimpse of her disappearing up the stairs. I tried to follow, again, but I found that side of the pit’s stairs reached a dead end. I didn’t understand how she’d gotten out. And when I looked back down at my phone, it was time for places. Disappointed and defeated, I rushed away to the other stairs, making my way to the stage right wing to wait for my entrance.
I counted heads immediately when I arrived. Maybe she hadn’t made it back yet. But, alas: twelve. All accounted for. I nudged a girl next to me, subtly. “Who was the last one here besides me?”
She just stared at me for a moment, which came off as very creepy through the blank dead stare of her mask. “How the fuck am I supposed to know? We all look exactly the same.”
I sighed. “Okay. Thanks.” For nothing, I thought bitterly.
The invited dress went well. The press liked it, as I’ve already said. I was distracted the entire time. After that day, I made it a habit to count all the girls when the stage manager called for “places.” If I was right about this girl, she, like me, would be one of the last, if not the last one there. She would be wandering, exploring, getting away from the bullies.
I wish I hadn’t done this. I wish I’d given up when she disappeared on a dead-end staircase. I wish I’d never seen her on the catwalk. Because when I started counting heads, I noticed something impossible. Sometimes, before we went on, I counted thirteen identical masked faces.
It was a chorus of twelve. It was supposed to be twelve. I’d recount. Recount again. Thirteen. A chill went down my spine. We all looked the same. Same masks, same togas, same wigs. Who was the imposter? How could anyone be an imposter? It didn’t make sense. How would they get into the theater? How would they get a costume?
I started counting more often. Between scenes, in the dressing rooms, even on stage during dull moments. It fluctuated. Sometimes I’d count twelve for a whole day, an entire show, and sigh in relief, feeling like some curse was broken. But the next day, at least once, I’d count thirteen.
And it seemed as if one masked pair of eyes was always trained on me. I don’t know how she knew it was me. We looked the same. But she’d stare. It felt scary, but also ridiculous– I couldn’t be sure it was the same person looking every time. I couldn’t be sure it was unlucky number thirteen. But I felt like it was.
I felt a lot of things. I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. The other girls already didn’t like me– I couldn’t have them thinking I was crazy. And admitting the presence of the thirteenth would mean admitting to my adventures into forbidden backstage areas. I couldn’t lose this job. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I wasn’t eating well, or sleeping well– maybe this was all a hallucination. And somehow, my biggest feeling was that if I told someone about the thirteenth, I’d never see her again.
And I needed to see her again. The obsession had only gotten stronger. I knew, somehow, deep inside, that she was the one I had seen on the catwalk and in the orchestra pit. I no longer wanted to be her friend– I wanted to corner her. To ask who she was, and why she was sneaking in as if she was one of us. I wanted to ask what she wanted from me.
Because she must want something from me, right? Why else would she stare? Why would she appear only to me?
The timing never lined up. The show had opened at this point, and I had a job to do: delighting the audience. I couldn’t skip my entrance to catch number thirteen. The chorus formations would look ridiculous with a missing person. And as much as the other girls hated me, I owed it to them as my costars to make them look good.
Logically, I knew there was only one person the thirteenth could be: Catalina, the actress I’d replaced. She must be jealous of me. Bitter. Maybe she wanted to take my role, like I’d taken hers. It would be insane, but it was all that made sense. She was the only other person who had the costume, who knew the keypad code to get into the theater. She must have recovered from her fall and come to find me.
It was almost like a game. It definitely made the show more interesting for me. Before I realized what was happening, I dreaded performances. I felt stupid, taking on this role in a show I didn’t even understand. But now I had so much to do. I had to plan.
I started showing up early, an hour before my call time. I walked my old spots, thinking I may see her. The other chorus girls were impressed that I was showing up early, thinking it showed some sort of dedication to the show. I think they even started to hate me less. They still detested any attempts at conversation in the wings, but in the dressing room, I started to have a few breakthroughs. In particular, I started a semi-friendship with Erin. Ironically, she had been one of the three women I thought may be the thirteenth, until I realized the thirteenth wasn’t really one of us at all.
She was the only person who I could actually ask about Catalina. “Did she ever say anything about the theater? The building, I mean? Did she have a favorite part of it?”
Erin would laugh at my seemingly random specificity. “We weren’t close, Michelle. I have no idea what she thought about the theater.”
“What did she do on her breaks?”
Erin thought for a second. “I don’t know. I never saw her at the vending machines, or the dressing room. I guess she found some quiet place to run lines.”
That confirmed it, for me. A quiet place like the catwalk. Or the orchestra pit. We were three weeks into our five week run when I came up with a plan to catch Catalina. It wasn’t a great plan, and I had no idea if it would work, but showing up an hour early every day was making me tired and producing zero results. I needed a new strategy. I realized that after seeing her in the pit, I only ever saw the thirteenth when all twelve of us were together.
So I told a white lie. One night after the show, when everyone was changing in the dressing room, I appealed to my fellow chorus girls. “Are you guys busy before the show tomorrow?” I innocently asked. “I’m feeling a little shaky on some of the entrances. If we could all get here just twenty minutes before our call time tomorrow, I’d love to run some stuff with you guys. I’ve been running it on my own, but without the entire team, I don’t always remember where I fit.”
To my surprise and intense joy, everyone agreed. They really did seem to respect me more when I looked like I was taking my role seriously. I could barely sleep that night, I was so excited to see if my plan worked. And hey, if it didn’t, I had two more weeks of shows to think up something else.
It was a Sunday night, our last show of the week. Mondays are often “dark days” in professional theater, meaning there are no shows that day to give the team a rest. I had planned this on purpose– if I failed, I had a dark day to reflect on that failure and try again.
At 5:40, twenty minutes before our call time, all the girls were assembled and in costume. We started running entrances. After ten minutes, I thought my plan had failed. We had run our first three entrances, and I never counted more than twelve heads in the wings. But around 5:55, as we got to our entrances in act two, offstage, I locked eyes with a mask. A thirteenth mask.
I quickly told everyone “I think I got it, you guys, thank you so much for coming early!” Everyone mumbled that it was no problem, that they were happy to help.
The thirteenth mask broke eye contact with me, looking around in confusion– perhaps distress. The girls started to trickle back towards the dressing room. The thirteenth turned and power-walked away. I shoved through the crowd to catch her, not calling out like I had in the past. I knew she didn’t respond to that. I knew I had to catch her now or never. Once we were out of the crowd’s eyeline, I began to run. She ran, too. “You’re not getting away this time!” I yelled, like some kind of cartoon superhero. My adrenaline was pumping, and blood rushed to my ears.
After I yelled, I suddenly became aware of another set of running feet behind me. “Michelle? Where are you going?” It was Erin’s voice.
“Don’t follow me!” I hastily called back, picking up speed. The thirteenth also picked up speed. Though she was running just as fast as I was, she showed no signs of exertion. I couldn’t hear heavy breathing, or heavy feet on the floor. It was like she was gliding. It infuriated me.
Erin didn’t let up. “Michelle, the stage manager is gonna wonder where we are!”
I ignored her. The thirteenth rounded a corner, and I realized where she was going: the catwalk. The ladder.
She ascended the rungs rapidly, like a spider. I clamored up much less gracefully. Erin’s voice had a heavy tinge of concern. “Michelle, what are you doing?! It’s not safe up there!”
“Then don’t follow me!” I yelled back, exasperated. “This is between me and her!” Despite my vocal warning, I heard Erin climbing behind me.
Once on the metal rail, I looked both ways, terrified she’d escaped me again. But her white toga was just a few feet away, retreating into darkness. I lunged at her. The entire catwalk shook. The thirteenth and I both grabbed the railing to steady ourselves. We met eyes. Or rather, we met masks.
“You have nowhere to go.” I stated.
I heard Erin reaching the top of the ladder behind me. “Michelle, come down, please. You’re scaring me.”
“I can’t. I finally have her.” I took a step towards the thirteenth. She took an equal and opposite step back. “Take the mask off.” I beckoned her. “I know it’s you, Catalina.”
I felt the rail shake slightly as Erin got on it. “What are you talking about, Michelle?!”
“She’s been sneaking in, Erin! She’s been standing in the wings with us before we enter! For weeks!” I took another step towards the thirteenth. In my peripheral vision, I could see how high we were above the stage. Thirty feet. You could die, falling from that height.
“It’s not Catalina. It can’t be. Stop this.” Erin called. Finally, frustrated, I turned towards her.
“Who else could it be?!”
Erin had taken her mask off. Her face was streaked with terror. “Catalina died, Michelle. She fell off this catwalk, directly onto her face, and she died. Please come down with me. I don’t know who you’re talking to, and I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it isn’t worth it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m talking to–”
I turned back, and she was gone. Vanished like a bad dream. “I swear to God, Erin.” I started to say. “She was right in front of me. I chased her here–”
I turned back to Erin. The thirteenth was behind her.
It made no sense. Nobody can move that fast. Nobody can be in front of me one second and behind me the next. It was inhuman. I stopped speaking. I stopped breathing. It sucks to learn that in a fight-or-flight situation, my answer is to freeze.
Erin must’ve seen how my face changed. “Michelle?” She asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”
Behind her, the thirteenth raised a hand to her mask. Her hands were impossibly pale. How had I never noticed that before? She gripped the mask in her hand. Time stretched. It must’ve only been a second, because Erin didn’t move. But it felt like years of my life passed me by as the thirteenth, inch by inch, raised her mask from her face. Or– raised her mask.
Because there was no face.
Under the mask, pale and gruesome, was a bloody flat edge. Broken, disgusting, it was impossible to make out eyes, or a nose, or a mouth. Inside a somewhat face-shaped frame of stark-white skin, all I could see was flesh, red and raw, squished in on itself. Like someone had fallen from a very high height. And landed on their face.
By the time I finally began to react, it was too late. The thirteenth– or, Catalina– or, the ghost, or– whatever the fuck that thing was. It moved its hands from the mask to Erin’s shoulders. And it pushed. And she screamed, agonizingly loud, as she flew over the side of the railing. And she screamed for the second or so she was in the air. I was screaming, too. And after the crunch of her body hitting the wooden floor of the stage, everyone else screamed, cast and crew alike.
I stared down at her limp form from thirty feet up. Her legs were twisted the wrong way. A pool of blood began to seep out of her. When I looked up again, I expected the thirteenth to be gone, but it wasn’t. With no eyes, it was also looking down at Erin. At what it had done.
And then, slowly, it turned towards me. On all fours, backwards, I scrambled away from it on the catwalk, terrified, not wanting to be next. The thirteenth’s shoulders shook rapidly, like a person laughing. But it made no sound. It never made a sound. Not going up the stairs of the orchestra pit. Not when it pushed Erin. And not as it climbed back down the ladder, rung by rung. I found myself alone on the catwalk.
Erin survived, somehow, paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently she fell on her legs, which, when you’re falling from thirty feet up, is a good thing. If she’d gone down head first, there was no chance. The show had to close, of course. When they lost Catalina a few weeks into rehearsal, she was replaceable. But with me refusing to go on, and Erin in the hospital, there was nothing to be done. I haven’t seen Erin since that day. I feel too guilty. But I was never arrested, so I guess she told the authorities that I didn’t push her. I don’t know what she told them. I don’t know what I would’ve told them, had they asked me.
I don’t do stage plays anymore. The family I used to nanny for gave me a star-studded recommendation, and now I make my living taking care of a five-year-old and a two-year-old for another filthy-rich family. I still act, but I only audition for film work.
I don’t even see plays these days. I won’t set foot in a theater. If the thirteenth had vanished off that catwalk, maybe things would be different. Maybe I could chalk it up to an extreme hallucination, some terrifying creature my mind brewed up to cope with the stress of the show and paying rent. Maybe I could even forget its bloody mess of viscera in the vague shape of a face.
But I saw it go down that ladder. Rung by fucking rung. And I know it’s still out there.
Erin was unlucky. Erin was a victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And if I step inside a theater again, some way, somehow, I know the thirteenth will get me on another catwalk.
This time, I’ll be the one going over the railing.
And I’ve never once landed on my feet.

My son and I will be going on our first cruise in March of 2024 (during spring break week). He will have just turned 3 (by 3 weeks). All help is appreciated. 1. Do they have kid friendly sized dishes in areas like the windjammer? 2. What excursions would be fun for a 3 year old in Costa Maya and Cozumel? He loves animals. We are going to the Daniel Johnson sloth and monkey farm in Roatan. 3. Should I take his strollecar seat on excursions? 4. Looking at some of the excursions, it shows children under a certain age are free. Then it says infants must sit in lap. My son will be 3, (and free), Would he need to sit in my lap being transported? 5. What activities like slides, mini golf, zip lining, etc would be suitable for a 3 year old if any? 6. In the souvenir shop, about how much do Christmas ornament/stuffed animal cost? 7.About how many crew members will we interact with during our cruise? I want to bring thank you cards for them. 8.Does harmony still have an escape room? If so, can you reserve it online? 9.Are cruise compasses consistent as far as activities offered? For example if I look at a cruise compass for March 2023, would it be similar for March 2024 same ship. 10. Can he attend some of the shows with me? Im thinking the water shows, the magic show, and the ice skating shows.

My neighbors son has a RipRacer and it is having an issue where when you pull the throttle, the rear wheel will not move, and the battery charge graphic on the screen tics down to empty rapidly. The voltage reading also appears to drop from the 50s down into the low 20s. This happens on a fully charged battery. I am trying to help my neighbors out, and wanted to see if anyone has ever seen or heard about this issue before?
We checked all of the connections and removed and reinstalled the battery.

Request/ISO Titles I'm Currently Looking For - The Super Mario Bros Movie, Renfield, Dungeons & Dragons, Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham, Secret Headquarters & VUDU Credits.
Currently at 4,000+ titles so I do have a great amount of movies that are commonly available through redemption but I do encourage any & all offers. I apologize in advance to anyone I'm unable to make a trade with & as always thank you for taking time out to look at my list 🙂.
All iTunes titles marked with * will port to MA.
Also to those that may be new to uvtrade sub, All Google Play listed do port to Movies Anywhere/Vudu/iTunes if you connect your accounts accordingly. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
--All Codes Split Where Applicable--
2 Fast 2 FuriousHDMovies Anywhere
2Guns (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
2Guns* (Split)HDiTunes
The 5th WaveHDMovies Anywhere
12 Rounds 3: LockdownSDVUDU
21 Jump StreetHDMovies Anywhere
21 Jump StreetSDMovies Anywhere
22 Jump StreetHDMovies Anywhere
22 Jump StreetSDMovies Anywhere
47 Ronin (Split4KiTunes
47 Ronin (SplitHDMovies Anywhere
Act of ValorSDiTunes
Action PointHDiTunes
The Adjustment Bureau*HDiTunes
The Adventures of TinTin (Split)HDVUDU
The Adventures of TinTin (Split)HDiTunes
After EarthSDMovies Anywhere
After EarthHDMovies Anywhere
The Age of AdalineHDVUDU
Aladdin [1992 Disney Animation] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Aladdin [Live Action] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Alex CrossHDVUDU
Alexander & The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day* (Split)HDiTunes
Alexander & The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Split)HDGoogle Play
Alien: CovenantHDMovies Anywhere
Alien Covenant*4KiTunes
All The Money In The WorldSDMovies Anywhere
Alice in Wonderland [1951, Animated] (Split)HDGoogle Play
AlohaHDMovies Anywhere
AlohaSDMovies Anywhere
Alvin and the Chipmunks: ChipwreckedSDiTunes
Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Road Chip*4KiTunes
The Amazing Spider-Man 2HDMovies Anywhere
America: Imagine The World Without HerHDVUDU
American AssassinHDVUDU
American HustleSDMovies Anywhere
American Reunion (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
American Reunion* (Split)HDiTunes
Amsterdam (Split)HDGoogle Play
Anchorman 2 (Split)HDVUDU
Anchorman 2 (Split)HDiTunes
The Angry Birds MovieHDMovies Anywhere
Annie [2014]SDMovies Anywhere
Another Cinderella StoryHDMovies Anywhere
Antlers (Split)HDGoogle Play
Ant-Man* (Split)4KiTunes
Arrival4KiTunes
The ArtistSDMovies Anywhere
Assassin's Creed*4KiTunes
Avengers: Age of Ultron* (Split)4KiTunes
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Split)HDGoogle Play
Avengers: Infinity War (Split)4KiTunes
Avengers: Infinity War (Split)HDGoogle Play
AVP: Requiem*SDiTunes
Bad GrandpaHDiTunes
Bad Grandpa.5HDiTunes
Bad Moms* (Split)HDiTunes
Bambi (Split)HDGoogle Play
Barbie and Her Sisters in a Puppy Chase* (Split)HDiTunes
Barbie and Her Sisters in a Puppy Chase (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Barbie Spy Squad (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Battleship*4KiTunes
Beauty & the Beast [Live Action] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Ben Hur (2016)4KiTunes
Big Hero 6* (Split)4KiTunes
Big Hero 6 (Split)HDGoogle Play
Big Miracle* (Split)HDiTunes
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like SonSDiTunes
The Big Wedding (Split)HDVUDU
The Big Wedding (Split)HDiTunes
Black Panther (Split)HDGoogle Play
Black Swan*SDiTunes
Black Widow (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Bling Ring (A24)HDVUDU
The Bob's Burgers Movie (Split)HDGoogle Play
Book Club (Split)HDVUDU
Book Club (Split)HDiTunes
The Boss* (Split)HDiTunes
The Boss (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Bourne Legacy (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Bourne Legacy* (Split)4KiTunes
The Bourne Supremacy (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Boyhood (Split)HDVUDU
Boyhood (Split)HDiTunes
BraveSDiTunes
BridesmaidsHDiTunes
Bridge of Spies* (Split)HDGoogle Play
Brooklyn's FinestSDiTunes
Bumblebee (Split)4KiTunes
The ButlerHDVUDU
The Bye Bye Man (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Bye Bye Man* (Split)HDiTunes
Call of the Wild (Split)HDGoogle Play
Captain America: Civil War* (Split)4KiTunes
Captain America: Civil War (Split)HDGoogle Play
Captain Marvel (Split)HDGoogle Play
Captain PhillipsHDMovies Anywhere
Captain Underpants: The First Epic MovieHDMovies Anywhere
The Case For Christ (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Cedar Rapids*SDiTunes
Celebrating Mickey (Split)HDGoogle Play
The ChoiceHDVUDU
Cinderella [Live Action]* (Split)4KiTunes
Cinderella [Live Action] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2SDMovies Anywhere
Contraband*HDiTunes
Coco*4KiTunes
CocoHDGoogle Play
Cowboys & Aliens*HDiTunes
The Crazies (2010)SDiTunes
CriminalHDVUDU
The CroodsHDMovies Anywhere
Cruella (Split)HDGoogle Play
Cut Bank (A24)HDVUDU
Daddy's Home (Split)4KiTunes
Daddy's Home (Split)HDVUDU
Dallas Buyers Club* (Split)HDiTunes
Dallas Buyers Club (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes4KiTunes
Dead Man DownSDMovies Anywhere
Deadwood Complete SeriesHDGoogle Play
The DescendantsSDiTunes
Deepwater Horizon4KiTunes
Despicable Me 2 (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Despicable Me 2* (Split)4KiTunes
The Devil InsideSDVUDU
Diary of a Wimpy KidHDMovies Anywhere
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long HaulHDMovies Anywhere
The Dictator (Split)HDVUDU
The Dictator (Split)HDiTunes
Die Hard Collection 1-4SDMovies Anywhere
Divergent (Split)HDVUDU
Divergent (Split)4KiTunes
The Divergent Series: InsurgentHDVUDU
Django UnchainedHDVUDU
Doctor Strange (Split)HDGoogle Play
Dredd (Split)HDVUDU
Dredd (Split)4KVUDU
Due DateSDiTunes
The DuffHDVUDU
ElysiumSDMovies Anywhere
The Emoji MovieHDMovies Anywhere
Empire of Light (Split)HDGoogle Play
EpicHDMovies Anywhere
EpicSDiTunes
The EqualizerHDMovies Anywhere
Eternals (Split)HDGoogle Play
EverestHDMovies Anywhere
Ex Machina (A24)HDVUDU
The Expendables 2HDVUDU
The Expendables 34KVUDU
ExposedHDVUDU
ExtractionHDVUDU
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Split)HDGoogle Play
Falling Skies: Season OneSDVUDU
Family Guy: Blue HarvestSDiTunes
Fast & Furious 6 Extended (Split)HDVUDU/Movies Anywhere
Fast & Furious 6 Extended* (Split)4KiTunes
The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift* (Split)4KiTunes
The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift (Split)HDVUDU/Movies Anywhere
Fatale4KVUDU
Fathers and DaughtersSDVUDU
The Fate Of The Furious [Extended Director's Cut]HDMovies Anywhere
The Fault in Our Stars*4KiTunes
Fifty Shades Of Grey [Unrated] (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Fifty Shades Of Grey [Unrated]* (Split)HDiTunes
The Fighter4KiTunes
Finding Dory* (Split)4KiTunes
Finding Dory (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Flash: Season OneHDVUDU
Florence Foster Jenkins (Split)HDVUDU
Florence Foster Jenkins (Split)HDiTunes
Footloose [2011] (Split)HDVUDU
Footloose [2011] (Split)HDiTunes
Frankenweenie [2012] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Frozen (Split)HDGoogle Play
Frozen* (Split)4KiTunes
Frozen "Sing Along Edition"* (Split)HDiTunes
Frozen "Sing Along Edition" (Split)HDGoogle Play
Frozen GroundHDVUDU
Furious 7 [Extended Version]* (Split)4KiTunes
Furious 7 [Extended Version] (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
FuryHDMovies Anywhere
Get Shorty: Season 1HDVUDU
Ghostbusters 'Theatrical + Extended' [2016]SDMovies Anywhere
The Girl On The TrainHDMovies Anywhere
Girls NightHDMovies Anywhere
The GiverHDVUDU
God's Not Dead 2 (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
God's Not Dead: A Light in DarknessHDMovies Anywhere
The Good Dinosaur (Split)HDGoogle Play
Good Will HuntingHDVUDU
GoosebumpsSDMovies Anywhere
GravityHDMovies Anywhere
The Great Gatsby [2013]HDMovies Anywhere
Green ZoneSDiTunes
The Grey (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Grey (Split)HDiTunes
Grown Ups 2SDMovies Anywhere
Guardians Of The Galaxy* (Split)4KiTunes
Guardians Of The Galaxy (Split)HDGoogle Play
Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Guilt TripHDiTunes
Hacksaw Ridge (Split)HDVUDU
Hard Target 2HDMovies Anywhere
HaywireSDiTunes
The HeatHDMovies Anywhere
The HeatSDMovies Anywhere
Heaven is For RealSDMovies Anywhere
HeistHDVUDU
Hell or High Water (Split)HDVUDU
Hell or High Water (Split)4KiTunes
HellBoy II: The Golden Army* (Split)4KiTunes
Hell Fest4KVUDU
Hercules (2014)4KiTunes
Here Comes The BoomHDMovies Anywhere
Here Comes The BoomSDMovies Anywhere
Hereditary (A24)HDVUDU
Hidden Figures*4KiTunes
HitmanSDiTunes
Hitman Agent 47*4KiTunes
Hocus Pocus (Split)HDGoogle Play
A Hologram For a KingSDVUDU
Home (2015)HDMovies Anywhere
Home Alone*4KiTunes
Homefront (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Homefront* (Split)HDiTunes
Hop (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Hop* (Split)HDiTunes
Hope SpringsSDMovies Anywhere
The Host*HDiTunes
Hotel TransylvaniaHDMovies Anywhere
Hotel TranslyvaniaSDMovies Anywhere
Hotel Translyvania 2SDMovies Anywhere
HugoSDVUDU
The HulkSDiTunes
The Hunger GamesHDVUDU
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Split)HDVUDU
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Split)4KiTunes
The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 1HDVUDU
The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 2HDVUDU
Huntsman Winter's War "Extended Edition"*4KiTunes
I, FrankensteinHDVUDU
I Am WrathSDVUDU
Ice AgeHDMovies Anywhere
Ice Age: Dawn of the DinosaursSDiTunes
Ice Age: Mammoth Christmas SpecialSDiTunes
Identity Thief*HDiTunes
The Imitation GameHDVUDU
ImmortalsSDiTunes
I'm Not Ashamed* (Split)HDiTunes
The Incredibles 2 (Split)HDGoogle Play
Inglorious BasterdsSDiTunes
Inside Man *HDMovies Anywhere
Inside Out (Split)HDGoogle Play
Inside Out* (Split)4KiTunes
Iron Man 3*(Split)4KiTunes
Iron Man 3 (Split)HDGoogle Play
Jack Reacher (Split)HDVUDU
Jack Reacher (Split)4KiTunes
Jack Reacher: Never Back Down (Split)HDVUDU
Jack Reacher: Never Back Down (Split)4KiTunes
Jake and the Neverland Pirates: Jake Saves BuckySDiTunes
Jason Bourne (Split)HDVUDU
Jason Bourne* (Split)4KiTunes
JoeSDVUDU
John Wick (Split)HDVUDU
John Wick (Split)4KiTunes
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum4KVUDU
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum4KiTunes
JumperSDiTunes
The Jungle Book [Live Action] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Jungle Cruise (Split)HDGoogle Play
Jupiter AscendingHDMovies Anywhere
Jurassic Park* (Split)4KiTunes
Jurassic Park (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Justice*HDiTunes
Katy Perry: Part Of Me (Split)SDVUDU
Katy Perry: Part Of Me (Split)SDiTunes
Kevin Hart: Let Me ExplainHDVUDU
Kick-Ass 2*HDiTunes
The Kid Who Would Be KingHDMovies Anywhere
Killing Them SoftlyHDVUDU
The King's Man (Split)HDGoogle Play
Knight and DayHDMovies Anywhere
Knight and DaySDiTunes
Knock Knock (2015)HDVUDU
Knock Knock (2015)SDVUDU
La La Land4KiTunes
Lady & The Tramp (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Last Duel (Split)HDGoogle Play
Last KnightsHDVUDU
Last VegasSDMovies Anywhere
Last VegasHDMovies Anywhere
The Last Witch HunterHDVUDU
Lea To The Rescue*HDiTunes
The Legend Of HerculesHDVUDU
The LegionHDiTunes
Life of Pi4KiTunes
Lightyear (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Lion King [Live Action] (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Little Mermaid* (Split)4K (Will Port To MA in 4K but only HD in VUDU)iTunes
The Little Mermaid (Split)HDGoogle Play
Little Women [2019]SDMovies Anywhere
Logan*4KiTunes
Lone Survivor* (Split)4KiTunes
Lone Survivor (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
LooperHDMovies Anywhere
LooperSDMovies Anywhere
The Lorax* [2012] (Split)HDiTunes
The LosersSDMovies Anywhere
Love Actually (Spilt)HDiTunes
Love The CoopersHDVUDU
Luca (Split)HDGoogle Play
Lucy* (Split)4KiTunes
Lucy (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most WantedHDMovies Anywhere
Madea's Witness ProtectionHDVUDU
MaggieHDVUDU
Maleficent* (Split)4KiTunes
Maleficent (Split)HDGoogle Play
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh (Split)HDGoogle Play
Mamma Mia! : The Movie*SDiTunes
Mamma Mia! : Here We Go Again [2018]HDMovies Anywhere
Marley & Me*SDiTunes
Mary Poppins [1964] (Split)HDGoogle Play
Max Payne*SDiTunes
The Maze Runner*4KiTunes
Mechanic ResurrectionHDVUDU
MegamindHDMovies Anywhere
Men In Black 3SDMovies Anywhere
MidwayHDVUDU
Midway4KiTunes
MindgamersHDMovies Anywhere
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children*4KiTunes
Mission Impossible 2 (Split)4KiTunes
Mission Impossible 2 (Split)HDVUDU
Mission Impossible Fallout (Split)4KiTunes
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Split)4KiTunes
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Split)HDVUDU
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Split)4KiTunes
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (Split)HDVUDU
Moana (Split)HDGoogle Play
Monster High: Electrified (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Monster High: Electrified* (Split)HDiTunes
Monster High: Welcome To Monster High (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Monster University (Split)HDGoogle Play
Monte Carlo*SDiTunes
MortdecaiHDVUDU
Moonrise Kingdom (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Moonrise Kingdom* (Split)HDiTunes
Mother!4KiTunes
The Monuments MenSDMovies Anywhere
The Mortal Instruments: City of BonesSDMovies Anywhere
Mr. Peabody & Sherman [2014]HDMovies Anywhere
MudHDVUDU
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor*SDiTunes
My Little Pony: The MovieHDVUDU or iTunes
NebraskaHDiTunes
Neighbors*HDiTunes
Neighbors 2*HDiTunes
Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb4KiTunes
Nightmare Alley (Split)HDGoogle Play
No EscapeHDVUDU
No Strings Attached (Split)HDiTunes
Noah (Split)HDVUDU
Noah (Split)HDiTunes
Nobody's Fool4KiTunes
Nonstop (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Now You See Me (Split)4KiTunes
Now You See Me (Split)HDVUDU
The Nutcracker & The Four RealmsHDGoogle Play
Oblivion (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Oblivion* (Split)4KiTunes
Olympus Has FallenHDMovies Anywhere
One Direction: This is UsSDMovies Anywhere
Ouija*HDiTunes
Overlord (Split)4KiTunes
Oz The Great And Powerful* (Split)HDiTunes
Oz The Great And Powerful (Split)HDGoogle Play
PaddingtonHDVUDU
Paper Towns*4KiTunes
Paranormal Activity (Split)HDVUDU
Paranormal Activity (Split)HDiTunes
ParaNormanHDiTunes
ParkerHDMovies Anywhere
ParkerSDMovies Anywhere
PassengersSDMovies Anywhere
Paul Blart Mall Cop 2SDMovies Anywhere
The Peanuts Movie*4KiTunes
Percy Jackson: Sea of MonstersHDMovies Anywhere
The Perks Of Being A WallflowerHDVUDU
Peter RabbitSDMovies Anywhere
PhilomenaHDVUDU
The Pirates! Band of MisfitsSDMovies Anywhere
Pitch Perfect*4KiTunes
Pitch Perfect 2HDMovies Anywhere
PixelsSDMovies Anywhere
Playing With Fire4KiTunes
The Possession (Split)HDiTunes
The Possession (Split)HDVUDU
The Princess & The Frog (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Split)HDGoogle Play
PrometheusHDMovies Anywhere
The ProtectorSDVUDU
Public EnemiesSDiTunes
Pulp FictionHDVUDU
The Purge (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Purge: Anarchy* (Split)4KiTunes
The Purge: Anarchy (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Purge: Election Year* (Split)4KiTunes
The Purge: Election Year (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Queen of Katwe (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
RamboSDiTunes
Rambo: First Blood4KVUDU
Rambo: First Blood Part II4KVUDU
Ratatouille* (Split)4KiTunes
Ratatouille (Split)HDGoogle Play
Red 2 (Split)HDVUDU
Red 2 (Split)4KiTunes
Red Dawn [2012]HDVUDU
ReprisalHDVUDU
Resident Evil: RetributionSDMovies Anywhere
The Revenant*4KiTunes
Ride Along (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Ride Along* (Split)HDiTunes
Rio 2HDMovies Anywhere
Rise of the Planet of the Apes*4KiTunes
RisenHDMovies Anywhere
Robin Hood [2010]*SDiTunes
Robin Hood [1973 Disney Animation]* (Split)HDiTunes
Robin Hood [1973 Disney Animation] (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Rocker*SDiTunes
Roman J. Israel, ESQ.SDMovies Anywhere
Ron's Gone Wrong (Split)HDGoogle Play
Run All NightHDMovies Anywhere
Russell MadnessHDMovies Anywhere
SafeHDVudu
Safe House (Spilt)HDMovies Anywhere
Safe House* (Spilt)HDiTunes
Safety Not GuaranteedHDMovies Anywhere
The Santa Claus (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Santa Claus 3 (Split)HDGoogle Play
Sausage PartySDMovies Anywhere
Saving Mr. Banks* (Split)HDGoogle Play
The Scorpion King 3: Battle For Redemption (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Search Party* (Split)HDiTunes
Secret in Their Eyes (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Secret in Their Eyes* (Split)HDiTunes
The Secret Life of Pets*4KiTunes
SelmaHDiTunes
Sex TapeSDMovies Anywhere
Shrek The ThirdHDMovies Anywhere
Silence HDiTunes
Silver Linings PlaybookHDVUDU
Sing (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
The Single Moms ClubHDVUDU
SinisterHDVUDU
Skin TradeHDVUDU
SkiptraceSDVUDU
SkyfallHDVUDU
Sleeping Beauty (Split)HDGoogle Play
Sleeping Beauty* (Split)HDiTunes
Snatched4KiTunes
SnitchHDVUDU
Snow White and The Huntsman "Extended Edition" (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Snow White and The Huntsman "Extended Edition"* (Split)4KiTunes
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs* (Split)HDiTunes
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (Split)HDGoogle Play
Son of GodHDMovies Anywhere
Spare Parts (2015)SDVUDU
SparkleSDMovies Anywhere
The Spectacular NowSDVUDU
SpectreHDVUDU
Spider-Man 3 (2007)HDMovies Anywhere
The SpiritSDiTunes
The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water (Split)HDVUDU
The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water (Split)HDiTunes
Spy (Unrated)HDMovies Anywhere
Stand Up GuysHDVUDU
Star Trek [2009] (Split)4KiTunes
Star Trek: Into Darkness (Split)4KiTunes
Star Wars: The Clone WarsSDiTunes
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Split)HDGoogle Play
Star Wars: The Force Awakens* (Split)4KiTunes
Star Wars: The Last Jedi* (Split)4KiTunes
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Split)HDGoogle Play
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker* (Split)4KiTunes
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Split)HDGoogle Play
Star Wars: Rogue One (Split)HDGoogle Play
Star Wars: Solo (Split)HDGoogle Play
Star Wars: Solo* (Split)4KiTunes
Still AliceSDMovies Anywhere
Storks (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Storks* (Split)HDiTunes
Strawberry Shortcake: Dance Berry DanceHDMovies Anywhere
Strawberry Shortcake: Berry Hi-Tech FashionHDMovies Anywhere
Super 84KiTunes
Super Buddies (Split)HDGoogle Play
Supernatural: Season 14HDVUDU
Super TroopersHDMovies Anywhere
Taken*SDiTunes
Taken 2HDMovies Anywhere
Taken & Taken 2 Double FeatureSDMovies Anywhere
Ted (Split)HDMovies Anywhere
Ted* (Split)HDiTunes
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)HDVUDU
"Tyler Perry's" TemptationHDVUDU
Terminator: Dark Fate (Split)4KiTunes
Terminator: Genisys (Split)HDVUDU
Terminator: Genisys (Split)4KiTunes
Terminator Salvation*SDiTunes
The Three Stooges Movie (2012)*SDiTunes
Thor*SDiTunes
Thor: Dark World (Split)HDGoogle Play
Thor: Love and Thunder (Split)HDGoogle Play
Thor: Ragnarok (Split)HDGoogle Play
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,MissouriHDMovies Anywhere
Tinker Bell & The Legend of The Neverbeast* (Split)HDiTunes
Tinker Bell & The Legend of The Neverbeast (Split)HDGoogle Play
Titanic (1997)HDiTunes
Tower HeistHDiTunes
Toy Story (Split)HDGoogle Play
Toy Story 4 (Split)HDGoogle Play
Toy Story 4* (Split)4KiTunes
Transformers (Split)4KiTunes
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (Split)4KiTunes
Transformers: Age Of Extinction (Split)HDVUDU
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (Split)4KiTunes
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon (Split)HDVUDU
Trolls [2016]HDMovies Anywhere
True Grit (2010)HDiTunes
TurboHDMovies Anywhere
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2HDVUDU
Under The Skin (A24)HDVUDU
Underworld: AwakeningHDMovies Anywhere
Underworld: AwakeningSDMovies Anywhere
VenomHDMovies Anywhere
The VowSDMovies Anywhere
Wakanda Forever (Split)HDGoogle Play
Walking With DinosaursHDMovies Anywhere
Warm Bodies (Split)HDVUDU
Warm Bodies (Split)4KiTunes
WarriorSDiTunes
Water For Elephants*SDiTunes
We Bought a ZooHDMovies Anywhere
We're The MillersHDMovies Anywhere
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My friend and I (34M) had been planning on a pool day, and today wound up happening to be that day. It's worth noting that both my friend (~30s F) and her daughter (5F) have Type 1 Diabetes. They manage their condition with a device called a PDA, (Personal Diabetic Assistant) and some patches that get applied to their skin that are evidently waterproof. This device happens to look exactly like a phone, but doesn't do much other than monitor blood sugar levels and alert the user if they need something more than the insulin in the patch. This takes the form of either something that looks like a candy, or a juice box.
Other thing to notice is, my friend works in the adult entertainment industry and is both very, very comfortable in her own skin and has been fresh out of fluffs to give since she was about 18 years old. Not to say she acts or dresses immodestly (especially around her daughter), just that she appreciates being appreciated and looks amazing in a bathing suit. As for the fresh out of fluffs? Well, you'll see.
My gym, for obvious reasons, has a rule about no recording devices of any kind being used in the locker rooms or pool areas. That's not to say there's a no cell phone rule, because there isn't. It'd be both unenforceable and impractical. You can have your phone, but you'll be escorted off the premises if you're caught taking pictures of people or recording video. There's also a rule about no outside food being brought in, as they've got a restaurant/cafe inside and frown upon people bringing their own lunches in. Happily enough, there's an exception for diabetics and other such medical conditions, because that's kind of federal law that such things must be allowed.
So, my friend and I arrive, and we post up on a pair of deck chairs. One of us keeps an eye on the tot, and today it's mostly me since she enjoys the sensation of being cooked by the sun slowly and I have trouble sitting still. After a little while, my friend flags us down, as the little one needs a juice box.
Me, being a mature and responsible adult, naturally stole said juice box and tried to do a runner. The little girl squeals and says something like, "HEY! That's MY juice box! You give it back!" and me doing my best greased up deaf guy voice from Family Guy reply, "You're never gonna catch me!" and there's a little bit of a spectacle as she chases me down.
Finally I let her catch me and return the juice box, and we both walk back over to where my friend has been keeping an eye on us. She moves her enormous sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and gives me an eye roll, and asks, "Did I bring one child in here? Or two?"
I plead the fifth, and have a sit and chat while the little one slurps down her juice box. My friend then whips out her daughter's PDA, which has a hot pink case on it with a label on it that says, "Little B." This is to differentiate it from my friends, which also has a hot pink case on it that says "Bad Bitch" on it. (It used to say Little Bitch, but that was frowned upon when she had to give it to the teacher for Kindergarten, so Little B. it was.)
We chill until the device has been appeased, and then I take the little one off for some more trips down the water slide while my friend flips over and undoes the back of her bathing suit so she's cooked evenly. Before we can make it very far, a middle aged woman complete with the Karen haircut comes over and starts to squawk, "You need to cover up! There are children here!"
My friend rolls over and keeps her bathing suit in place with an arm, and points at me with her free hand "I know. There's two right there. Don't let the size fool you, the big one's the less mature of the pair. What's your problem exactly?"
Karen puffs up a bit, "My son won't stop staring at you! You're... you're tempting him!"
Without missing a beat, my friend replies "Oh, really? Why don't you try telling someone who gives a fuck. You're in my light, this is a pool, I'm wearing a bathing suit. Have a fantastic day." and then rolls back over onto her front.
The Karen makes a gobbling sound, apparently at a loss for words, and stomps off with her fists clenched, presumably in search of a manager.
Me and the little one go off for the water slides, which I was secretly looking forward to. A man in his 30s going down a water slide by himself? Rather odd. Going down a slide with a four year old in front? Totally normal.
After about an hour of impersonating a fish, I look for my friend and see her standing up, looking around with a very concerned expression on her face. I pop the little one onto my shoulders and we go check in.
Apparently at some point my friend had managed to doze off despite the noise, and the big bag of stuff she brought in was missing, and she kind of needs it right now, her sugars feel off and she's dizzy.
I leave the little one with her mom and think for a moment, then I have a thought, and figure going over to the check in desk might be step one. An attendant looks up at me with a smile and asks how he can help. I explain the situation, that there's a big bag missing. Pretty standard beach fare bag, so he asks if I can identify anything inside.
"There should be two hot pink things that look like phones inside. One says Bad Bitch on it." The attendant covers his guffaw just barely, and then brings up my friend's bag. He explains that a woman brought the bag over, claiming the person whose bag it was kept on using the devices inside to take pictures of her and her offspring. The guy knows that we probably didn't do anything wrong, but he had no idea to whom the bag belonged and also didn't want to get into it with that woman. I couldn't blame him.
I take the bag back to my friend, and she starts digging through it. And then the digging becomes rifling, as things are rapidly ejected haphazardly from the bag. And then she looks up at me, "That BITCH." She says in a rather alarmingly cold tone.
I said something clever, sounded a lot like, "Huh?"
"ALL of the juice boxes and candy are gone and my sugars are hitting the floor. I'm going to kill her."
Today I Learned that irritability is an understatement as far as a low blood sugar symptom goes.
My friend stands up, scans the area, and sees something. She stalks over, and happens upon a rather smug and familiar looking woman laid up on a lounge chair, with a rather timid looking boy of about 12 in the next chair over. The Karen opens her mouth to say something, and manages to let out another squawking sound as my friend without any preamble or warning, grabs the woman's bag and dumps the whole thing on the ground.
The woman inelegantly falls off of her chair, frantically scrambling to collect all of her stuff while my friend bends over and picks up some candy wrappers and a single empty juice box. And then my friend says something in a tone that sends shivers down my spine when I think about it. "You stole my baby's medicine? And then ate it?"
There's always something alarming about something said in a tone that SOUNDS calm, but is not at all calm. Sensing imminent violence, I placed myself between myself and my friend and started shouting for help. A couple lifeguards ran over, one speaking into a walkie talkie urgently.
While all this is going on the Karen is frantically cramming her things back into her bag, oblivious to her surroundings. Finally she finishes, realizes what's going on, and immediately stands up and starts shooting her mouth off about indecency and rule breaking and if my friend didn't bring enough to share she shouldn't have brought any at all.
At this point, my friend shakes me off and thrusts the candy wrapper in her face. "Do you understand what this is FOR?! My child is DIABETIC. *I* am diabetic. Do you go around and steal shit from every girl here whose skinnier and prettier than you? Or just the ones who don't put up with your bullshit?"
At this point several other staff members have arrived and separated the parties. My friend is taken promptly over to the cafe for the first and to my knowledge only instance of free food being given out by the place. Once her sugars had leveled out she had to tell her side of the story to those who needed to know. I don't really know what happened to the Karen. I did ask, but the staff member I asked said they couldn't say.
We had to leave after that, as it's fairly important for diabetics to have sugar on hand, and neither of us really felt like paying 3.50$ for a glass of orange juice. Plus the mood was kind of ruined.
People these days. Ugh.

Between this Cato news and a quite nice provocation (not in the bad way) I found in the NBA Draft sub (no reason to tag the guy here, since he's not a Mavs fan and I do not know him at all to start with), I started to think (or rather cope) with the loss of the draft pick and trading for a veteran. If this isn't a smokescreen, I believe we will be diving head first into the "build to win now" scenario. Considering this, I decided to play a little bit in Spotrac and see how far could we go in the roster build.
Disclosure, I'm following exclusively the Spotrac simulator, so any mistake cap-wise, send the e-mail to them, eh?
Disclosure #2: we will be hard capped if we use the BAE, so, yeah, no.
Scenario 1
a) DAL sends 10, 2027 FRP, Bertans to the Magic for WCJ
Honestly, WCJ is a secret in the open. He fits well a defense that switches a lot, considering how his feet is light, while he can anchor a defense to an extent. He can shoot from the perimeter, he is a legit amazing screener and a lob threat. He is a do-it-all C, on an amazing deal, that is just 24. Some might wrinkle the nose for trading 2 FRPs for him, but I think it is even kinda cheap. I'm not sure the Magic would do it, but who knows, maybe they want to package 6, 10 and 11. Three lottery picks has a lot of power, enough to either trade up hard if they want Scoot or even trade for an actual star. The deal, honestly, makes sense for both parties if we are to part ways with the pick.
A fun stat. Here's the shooting attempts that Embiid had in the last 3 games he faced WCJ: 9-18, 12-23, 11-33. If you want to say "Well, maybe the Magic has a good defense against Embiid". First, it's Embiid in Orlando, it's pretty much Luka against the Celtics. Second, WCJ did not play one game in that stretch: 18-23 and a 50pt party in 27 minutes.
b) We re-sign Kyrie for the max deal
Really, is there anything to say? If we are going this route, we are going with Kyrie.
c) Renounce the bird rights of Christian Wood
Bye bye, Wood, hope you learn how to play defense and set a screen somewhere else.
d) Sign Jalen McDaniels for the MLE
Now this starts to get interesting. Apparently, if we make those moves, at least according to Spotrac (again, I'm not a cookie smart enough to know the CBA that well to calculate the exceptions), we will have access to the full MLE. This open up the portfolio of players that we can acquire and I believe many will wander towards Dillon Brooks. However, I believe we may have a shot at signing McDaniels for the full MLE. Morey is emotional in his deals and McDaniels was an afterthought in their playoff run. Sure, Nurse is in the house, there may be a renewed interest into him, but there is a shot for him to come to Dallas for the full MLE, specially if we offer him a guaranteed starting role, which he would have. Also, if Philly re-signs Harden, they will probably be touching the 2nd apron, with Maxey's deal looming. Things could get rough.
e) Sign Pinson, Ntilikina and Powell to veteran minimum deals
Yes. They're more than decent depth, bring some locker room chemistry and have spot minutes usage in the court, specially Ntilikina. The whole "People forget about Frank" meme is a think, but Ntilikina playing spot minutes as a defensive specialist is a decent role and he could get more than the veteran minimum deal here.
Tax situation: we would be in the tax here (duh), but 6.3M over the tax. This would trigger the 1st apron, but we would be 10M +- clear of the 2nd apron, where things start to get really ugly.
Possible rotation: Luka/Kyrie/Green/McDaniels/WCJ, with Hardy, Bullock, Maxi and McGee playing an eventual playoff rotation. We can get bigger by rolling with a McDaniels/Maxi/WCJ rotation and bringing Green off the bench. There's some nice flexibility to get bigger or smaller here and WCJ is extremely versatile, enough to fit multiple defensive looks in a similar game.
Scenario 2
a) DAL sends 10, 2027 FRP, Green, Hardy and Bertans to the Raptors for OG Anunoby and Achiuwa
This is Masai we're talking about. If he is to trade Anunoby and take in Bertans' deal, he will demand Hardy. I'm not making judgements here on the trade itself (everyone here knows I want to draft, even trade down in the draft itself), but if you folks wish OG Anunoby, this deal could entice Masai, specially for Green. Yes, I know what Cato said and I know Nico almost sank the Kyrie deal because the Nets wanted Green, but if we are to make a splash, this is the way. We're getting a DPOY-caliber wing and Achiuwa, that can play more than enough spot minutes here. Maybe we could keep Hardy if we took in Boucher instead? I don't know, but we would probably need to send Timmy as salary filler and Masai hates salary fillers that are not on an expiring deal so...a rough price, in general.
b) We re-sign Kyrie for the max deal
Same.
c) Renounce the bird rights of Christian Wood
Same.
d) Sign Brook Lopez for the MLE
We already went through this. The Mavs are very likely to roll with a switchable C instead of a classic one. However, if there is a C that is a perfect fit here, is Brook Lopez. Now, I believe he has a market for more than just the MLE. Since we are trying to take a, uh, positive approach here, let's presume he is lured by just the MLE and decides he had enough of Wisconsin and wants to roll in the Luka ride. I do not need to sell anyone on Lopez, I believe. For the MLE, it is a steal.
e) Sign Pinson, Ntilikina and Powell to veteran minimum deals
Same.
f) Sign Dragic for the veteran minimum
For once, we need another guard to come off the bench. Ljubljana Ultras, rejoice for the Dragon finally arrived in Dallas.
Tax situation: 11.8M deep in the tax, with a potential high OG deal in sight and the need to find a replacement for Timmy in 2 seasons...quite grim. If you guys want a win-or-bust scenario, here it is, because we are touching that 2nd apron soon.
Possible rotation: Luka/Kyrie/OG/Maxi/Brook, with Dragic, Timmy, Bullock and Achiuwa off the bench. A lot of firepower here, not gonna lie. We would need to see more Ntilikina than people are used to, considering the lack of backcourt defense with Green gone, but this would be peak firepower. Luka would actually feel the heat of the obligation to win instead of getting media support due to "lack of teammates". Do I think we have enough to win here? Honestly? No.
I tried to think about other scenarios, but it is way too difficult to evaluate 10 in a vacuum. Feels like too much to trade for Capela, too little to trade for Myles Turner. Guys like Claxton are way overrated and THJ and Bertans, although together combine for a max-level contract, does not warrant the player worthy of one (unless we are receiving Ben Simmons and 21 and 22 without giving up 10, but that's a different deal). Do not think Ayton will be for sale under Vogel, I believe Vogel will make Ayton a focal point of their offense. Too much for Bojan, too little for Keldon Johnson and a laughable joke for Jaylen Brown.
I'm curious to see folks rationale here, because as one (tired) person, I'm sure I missed more than a few scenarios here.

She wants to take my kids and move within state this Friday
NY state. No marriage. No custody order. 1 daughter (4) between us, one stepdaughter from her prior relationship, and my son (15). We all live together. Relationship has been on the rocks for a while but this came as a complete surprise.
Long conflict with my (now ex) fiance culminated in her renting an apartment about an hour and a half away from me, within NY. She stated that she is going to bring the two girls. I have no idea where, she just stated the distance and that she'd let me know when they get there. I have made it clear that I don't agree at all. She's currently on a waiting list for income based housing, estimated wait of about 6 months, but we got in a big fight last night and she did all this pretty fast.
I do not have the money for a lawyer with this short notice.
Obviously I can't control where she brings the stepdaughter or herself. But do i have any recourse for keeping my daughter a little closer? If I file for 50/50 or something similar, will that stop her from relocating my daughter? Is there anything I can do?
I don't want to be an every other weekend dad. I am very very close to my daughter. I'm fully employed, tenured at my school (teacher), primary breadwinner. She has worked 12-16 hours on the weekends and has no job where she is moving to, assuming she plans on getting one. There was no abuse for her to justify this rapid and unexpected departure. We had differences in how we parented and she would get really angry really fast.

Brothers and Friends!
We're happy to begin revealing who our speakers are for Spes Novum's Masonic Con Chicago 2023! When we put this together for the first time in 2019, we brought in an amazing array of speakers from all over the country. This year is almost no different :)
We've decided that we wanted to showcase some amazing local talent as well. So we have three speakers under the Grand Jurisdiction of Illinois who have topics that are sure to intrigue and delight. But we've also locked in four speakers from around the country who also are famous in Freemasonry.
This week, we're happy and proud to have our first announcement that Right Worshipful Brother Chad Kopenski, a past State Education Officer for the Grand Jurisdiction of Ohio, will be speaking at our event.
For some of you, this is no surprise. We made a sneak announcement of this at this year's Midwest Conference of Masonic Education, which was met with extreme energy.
Chad Kopenski is a Past Master of Paramuthia Lodge #25 in Athens, Ohio, a member of Amesville Lodge #278 in Amesville, Ohio, and a member of Oregon Lodge #151 in Oregon, Wisconsin. Chad is a Past District Deputy Grand Master, the Past Chairman of the Grand Lodge of Ohio Education Committee, Past President of the Midwest Conference on Masonic Education, and a Past Regent for the Royal Scofield Society. Chad is an educator by trade and a proud autism dad. He lives with his wife, daughter, and various critters in Appalachian, Ohio.
Masonic Con Chicago! Are you looking for an exciting and informative event that will enhance your knowledge of Masonic education? Look no further than Masonic Con Chicago, a premier event for Masonic education. This event is scheduled for September 16th, 2023, and will be an unforgettable experience for Masons of all levels of knowledge and experience--and best of all; it's open to the public.
Join us for a day filled with engaging presentations and insightful discussions. You will have the opportunity to discuss, learn and teach from some of the most knowledgeable and experienced Masons, as well as network with fellows from all over the country.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your knowledge and deepen your understanding of Masonic topics. Get your tickets now for Masonic Con Chicago, and come join us for a day of learning, growth, and camaraderie. We can't wait to see you there!
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At your service, R.H. Johnson, Chairman Masonic Con Chicago www.MasonicConChicago.com Spes Novum No. 1183, Secretary www.SpesNovum.com

My nightmare started when I woke up on a park bench in Omaha, Nebraska. My original travel plans were much more adventurous, but most of the vacation fund dried up after the company’s CFO found me in his car…with his wife. Turns out she wanted to get caught, to make him jealous or something.
That is how, for reasons not totally beyond my control, I ended up summering in Omaha instead of Oahu. But hey, at least they have great fried pickles. I spent most of my time their napping, and that was what brought me to the park bench.
I woke up to a bird on my shoe. He was pecking away at the residual crumbs of what may or may not have been fried pickles.
“Hey little guy,” I said, smiling down at my visitor. He wasn’t a bird of paradise, but at least he liked me. Then the crumbs ran out, and he didn’t like me so much anymore. “Fuck you, too!” I shouted as he flew away, off to go play with some other man’s heart no doubt. Just as I was about to settle back in to my midday nap, I felt my phone buzz.
Finally, I thought. Someone to talk to. I was getting sick of just swiping through my home screen pages every time I wanted to look busy, but when I pulled my iPhone out, I found something even more surprisingly than a text from a friend or loved one. It was an airdrop:
ANONYMOUS would like to share some photos.
Decline Accept
I looked around. There were people near me, but most of them weren’t young enough to know how to airdrop something, and no one was using their phone. I accepted.
“What the hellll?” I let out before a chuckle. The first picture was of me, slumped over on the park bench, sleeping with my mouth open. I was instantly filled with embarrassment and wonder. On the one hand, it’s pretty depressing to see yourself sleeping in an unflattering position and I had a triple chin thing going in the photo. On the other hand, I couldn’t deny that it was pretty funny.
I looked up, hoping to catch someone giggling or at least staring in my direction, but I couldn’t see anyone who gave the slightest indication that it was them. In fact, by the time I looked up, I was alone.
Weird.
The second picture wasn’t funny at all. It was all black, with a bunch of characters in what looked like Mandarin or some other Eastern language drawn on with the digital marker. A message from the sender. But I couldn’t read whatever language it was, and I didn’t know how I would go about translating it, seeing as I couldn’t just copy and paste the text, so I chose to just ignore the message, telling myself I would go to the trouble of translating it later. God, do I wish I wasn’t such a procrastinator.
The sun was setting so I stood up, took one last glance around for any hidden airdroppers, and walked back to my motel.
Later that night, I found myself hopelessly scrolling through Tinder. I realized long ago that dating apps can tell you a lot about the place you’re visiting, and I considered it part of my cultural experience to judge strangers behind a screen in my pajamas. Mostly I would just swipe my way through and laugh at the weird corn people without even considering a meet up, but every once in a while I would swipe right if I felt something. I never imagined that I would get anywhere.
Then I got another notification, and this time from someone I actually wanted to talk to. It was a girl (who looked waay out of my league) named Cristina.
“Hey, Greg. If you were on a lifeboat with me, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the Queen (who was already dead at this point), who would you eat first?” I stared at her message. It was kind of quirky, but I liked it so I texted back.
“Obviously you, because I need the Rock to do all the rowing, the Queen is dead, and you’re quite the snack…” I smiled, proud of my work. The CFO’s wife didn’t know what she walked out on. Luckily, Cristina liked my reply as much as I did, and we struck up a nice conversation that had me copying the address to a local karaoke bar into my phone an hour later. It was only then that I began to regret my choice in vacation attire, and noticed that the bird had shat on my loafers. I ironed the only Polo I brought, threw on my sneakers and sped out.
On the way I stopped to fill up at a Chevron and went in to grab some mints (I thought about buying some banana sleeves, but that seemed a little too boastful.) When I went to pay, I dropped some change out of my wallet. Shit. The cashier, some kind of wannabe cowboy like everyone else in that city, smirked. I took a penny from the little plastic dish out of spite before leaving the store. While I was in my car, my phone buzzed. I snatched it up with excitement, assuming it was Cristina, but saw a different yet familiar name.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a photo.
Decline Accept
What the fuck? I looked around at the cars in the lot. Two others were filling up, and about four more were parked in front of the convenience store. I wondered whether someone inside the store would still be close enough to airdrop. Cautiously, I accepted.
The photo was of me bending over to pick up the change I had spilt, taken from the parking lot. I stared at it for a little while. It was funny and embarrassing just like the first one, my butt crack was even showing a little, but for some reason this photo made me uneasy. Is someone following me? I wondered. Had some influencer punk started a one-man hidden camera show where he just waited for you to do something embarrassing? I stared at the other cars.. Some of the windows were too tinted to see in. After a minute or two, I rolled out of there and drove off.
At the bar, I was relieved and elated to find that Cristina looked as good, nay, better than she did in her photos. “Wow,” I stuttered. “You’re beautiful.” She also said the same about me, which I chalked up to having ironed the polo. Things were off to a good start.
Throughout the date, Cristina was bubbly and adorable. She told me all about her life in rural Nebraska and what brought her to the “big city”, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of it. I really wish I could have, but I just couldn’t get those damn airdropped photos out of my head.
Cristina left to go to the bathroom, and I took the opportunity to look around the bar, scanning the room for any familiar faces. Everyone looked engrossed in their own evenings and dates and cringy singing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
“Hey, your profile says you really like to sing,” Cristina began with a smile. That was a fast bathroom break. “But you never said what type of music!” I stared at her, still a bit lost in thought, and it took a couple seconds to register what she was saying.
“Oh, well I like simple boring things, really. Commercial jingles, recycling PSA’s, communist propaganda, that kind of stuff.” Cristina smiled.
“You’re…you’re not a communist, right?”
“Of course not!” I laughed. “Let’s go sing something,” I got up from our table and offered her my hand.
“Good, because my parents always said that if I moved to the big city I’d end up marrying a commie, and I hate to prove them right about anything.” She giggled.
“Hey, baby, I’m so capitalist I changed my birthplace to the Cayman islands.” Cristina giggled even more. Damn were we getting along well. I got up onto the little square stage they had for karaoke singers and looked out at the crowd. Then I got a notification. You can probably already guess how it read.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a photo.
Decline Accept
I looked out across the room, dumb founded that ANONYMOUS had followed me here. I thought about showing Cristina but decided it would just worry her, and, even worse, prove her parents were right about the “big city”. I accepted the photo and startled backwards. My phone nearly fell to the floor. It was a photo of me at the bar, but not up on stage where it would have been easy for anyone to sneak a photo. It was from before, at our table, when I had turned to check out the other people. The worst part was that I was looking right at the mutherfucking camera!
My hand trembled. I tried to calm down. For some reason I didn’t want whoever sent the photo to know I was nervous. And I did NOT want Cristina to think that I was scared to sing Ring of Fire in front of a couple dozen famer hicks. But it was obvious from this picture that the photos weren’t just to be funny. This time, I wasn’t making any faces and my ass wasn’t showing. My face in the photo was one of concern.
How did I look right at the camera without realizing it? It struck me that the person sending these photos was going to extra lengths to remain hidden, maybe even as far as to camouflage themselves. They could be anyone, anywhere, with any sort of goal in mind. I shuttered.
The music started up and Cristina began to sing. I whipped around and looked at her. She was smiling, oblivious to the whole thing. And she looked happy. I didn’t want to spoil this moment, which was probably the only truly fun one of my vacation and the first time in a while that I was feeling some self-confidence. I began interchanging lines with her.
“I went down, down, down and the flames went higher.” I baritoned into the mic. She winked at me. I made it through the song and asked her to get the hell out of there, to which she excitedly said yes.
On the way back to my place, I thought about telling her about the photos but didn’t want to kill the mood. Still, I couldn’t help but look through the windows of every car that we passed.
I checked the rear view mirror for the umpteenth time, and a blue pickup truck was tailing close behind us. I made a right turn, then another, and the truck stayed close behind. After a while I made two more right turns and the headlights disappeared from my rearview mirror. Phew.
“What are you doing?” Cristina asked.
“Huh?”
“You just made four right turns. You went in a circle.”
“Oh, yeah haha. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice, I wanted to be smooth. Just made a wrong turn back there.” Cristina nodded and reached out for my hand. I checked the rearview mirror. More headlights. Another pickup.
When we rolled into the parking lot of the motel, the truck behind us continued down the road, and I noticed it was red. I felt relieved until I pulled into my parking spot and hopped out of the car. Behind us to the right, the same blue truck from before was parked. Shit, he must have taken a quicker way over here.
How did he know where I was staying?
I put my arm over Cristina’s shoulder and rushed her into my room.
After the deed was done, Cristina promptly fell asleep (which I hoped was the sign of a job well done) and I decided to go for a walk in the parking lot. I wanted to figure out what the fuck was going on, but I didn’t want to call the police before there were any real threats or anything.
So, like every dumbass horror film victim, I went alone into the dark to investigate. I stepped out into the dark motel parking lot and eyed the truck sitting across the lot. Its headlights and grill formed an angry face that stared at me. I felt like it could read my thoughts. Leave, it said to me. Get out of here, you’ll only get into trouble. The headlight eyes bore into my brain. Don’t be dumb and you won’t get hurt-
A loud BANG came from behind me. I spun around to see a dark figure turn the corner and disappear around the back of the motel. My heart started to pound, urging me to move my legs in either a flight or fight direction.
I sprinted off towards the figure, and in moments I was turning the corner. Behind the motel, there were only tall thin trees and a formidable darkness that shielded whatever had run away from me. I paused, searching through the trees for my stalker. I squinted but couldn’t quite make anything out in the dark.
Then I heard something. Behind me. Something was...coughing.
Slowly, with my eyes first, I turned around and what I saw made my heart flutter. The sounds were coming from a dumpster, the kind usually left behind restaurants or apartment complexes that can only be moved by big semi garbage trucks. From within the dark dumpster, the head of a terrible beast with a black mask rose up. Its mouth, full of razor sharp, enamel covered fangs, clamped down onto a chicken bone with a hiss. It was a raccoon.
I laughed. There was so much pent up adrenaline in my body that I couldn’t help but convulse with the giggles. Soon tears were spilling out of my eyes and I had to lean on my knees to keep from passing out.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I told the raccoon, and it scampered off into the shadows. I remained there until my laughter subsided, and when it was gone I decided to stay a little while longer. It was a beautiful spot. Nebraska wasn’t that bad when you got to know it.
After a few more minutes spent collecting my thoughts and calming my nerves, I went back around the bend of my motel. I strode with new confidence towards my room, but still couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder at the blue truck in the parking lot. Is there someone in the driver’s seat? I didn’t want to be paranoid, but there was no way to deny that I felt like eyes were burning into my back. I walked more quickly until I reached my door, unlocked it and slipped inside.
Acting quickly, I shut the door behind me and put in the chain lock. I felt safer in my room. That is, until I lied back down onto the bed next to Cristina.
The instant my sweaty ass made contact with the crusty bed sheets, I got a notification. A lump formed in my throat and I grabbed my phone, but paused and said a silent prayer that it would just be a message of support from my mom, or a campaign donation request, or any other useless shit besides an airdrop before checking it. But I knew what it was, and looking at the screen only confirmed it.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a video.
Decline Accept
I gasped for oxygen. The humid air around me suddenly felt too thick to breath. I accepted the air drop and the video downloaded. It showed the door of my motel room. As I stared at the still frame, a new sense of anger rose up within me. Who the fuck was this Anonymous guy, anyway? Did he think he was scaring me? I mean, was he hoping that after seeing a few photos of myself I would send him my bank information? It was pathetic. I decided that I had done enough cowering and whimpering. I didn’t even play the video, but went to frantically jotting down a strongly worded letter in my Notes app threatening to call the police if he didn’t stop stalking me and at least tell me what he wanted. I signed off by writing;
Wishing you the best,
Pissed off Guy
I took a screenshot. “Pissed off guy” wasn’t my best work, creatively speaking, but I couldn’t think of any better names. I was too pissed off.
I opened the airdrop recipients in the vicinity. Despite my newfound courage, I trembled as the airdrop recipients in my area registered on my phone. For some reason, I was afraid that ANONYMOUS would pop up. Proving he was at the motel would make the situation feel more…real. Up until that point, all he had done was send me some pictures. If I sent something back to him, would he get more…aggressive?
I stared at the screen, my heart beating faster than a Browning automatic could shoot hollow-point bullets into a cheap motel room. One named appeared: ANONYMOUS’s iPhone. I swallowed a heavy breath. Was the air getting thicker? Slugs of sweat rolled down my face. I exhaled and sent my note to ANONYMOUS.
Shit, I thought to myself. What am I doing? I wanted to unsend it. For some reason this suddenly felt like the dumbest thing I’d ever done. I watched my screen intently. The tension was so high my heart almost sprung a leak, and I was afraid my bladder just might. Thankfully, it didn’t take very long to get a response.
ANONYMOUS would like to share some photos.
Decline Accept
I hit “accept” the instant I got his request.
It was a collection of photos. All the same photos he had sent me before. My blood boiled, and my face heated up. I work up the courage to talk to him and he just ignores me? I was starting to grow less concerned and more irritated by Anonymous’s antics, but then I noticed something.
The first picture of the most recent airdrop, the one where I’m asleep on a park bench and sporting a triple chin, had a red circle on it. The kind that you draw on a picture when you want to draw attention to something, except there didn’t seem to be anything particular inside the circle. I zoomed in, and my heart dropped into my stomach. Far off in the background, in the middle of the circle, was a man’s face hidden between the bushes.
He was wearing a dark hoodie that cast a shadow over his face, but zoomed in I could make out the details. He was bald, and most of his features were normal and indistinct, but his lips were curled up into an enormous hungry smile, with too many crooked yellow teeth crammed into his mouth for him to be a normal human.
His nostrils were flared, like he was breathing heavily. It gave the impression that he was almost lusting after me, like a beast stalking its prey. My blood pressure fell through the floor as I realized that he was looking straight at me. His ravenous chops wet with saliva, itching to sink his teeth into my plump, dormant flesh.
I nervously swiped to the next photo. Me in the gas station bending over to pick up my change. There was a red circle around someone standing a few yards behind me in line. It was the same man. He stared at me intently with eyes that were opened impossibly wide, and drool dripping from the corner of his mouth.
I nearly threw my phone in shock. He had been so close to me, and yet I didn’t remember seeing him. If you weren’t paying close attention, it would be easy to miss his inhuman features. I had probably been too distracted and embarrassment at having dropped my change on the floor to notice him. Damn my social anxiety.
The next photo was from the karaoke bar, the one where I was looking directly into the camera. Seeing me stare directly at the photographer without recognizing him or her made me queasy the first time I saw it, but now I was more worried about what was in the background. There was another red circle, in the dark hallway that led to the bathroom behind the bar to the left, but it was too dark to see anything in the shadows. I zoomed in and turned the brightness all the way up, and then I could just make out one thing.
A crooked, yellowed smile pointed in my direction.
Whoever or whatever he was, he had followed me for the whole day.
The last photo was all black except for something Anonymous had written, also in red. It said:
I AM NOT STALKER.
Goosebumps popped up behind my neck and down my shoulders. That’s when I remembered the video of me walking back to the motel room, the one I hadn’t watched.
With shaky fingers I opened the video. It was centered on the door of my motel room. For the first few seconds nothing happened. I thoroughly scanned the backgrounds and corners, making sure to search extra hard in the shadowy areas, but I couldn’t see the man anywhere.
Then he walked into center frame. This time he wasn’t hidden. He crept towards the door, his arms remaining eerily immobile as he walked, and when he got to the door, pulled a key card out and slipped inside. I gasped. When was this recorded?
That question was answered for me when a moment later I walked into frame, unlocked the door, and went in. It was from when I came back after finding the raccoon in the dumpster, less than two minutes ago.
I shivered. Suddenly, it was dawning on me that Cristina’s breathing sounded…different. It was just a little heavier and deeper than I remembered it being. Very slowly, I turned my head to look over at the other side of the bed and noticed that the lump under the covers seemed larger than it had before. I felt the air; it was thicker and wetter than I remembered it being and had a warm, almost metallic smell.
The body lying next to me wasn’t Cristina’s. I froze. What do I do? Dear God, what should I do now? Slowly, I sat up and pulled my legs over the side of the bed. I thought about turning the lights on, shouting for Cristina, trying to fight the stalker, but I had the gut feeling that she was beyond saving. Even if she was still alive, there was no way I could last more than a few seconds against this thing in bed with me. Whatever it was, it was built for hunting down humans and tearing them apart.
I casually mumbled “better take a shower” and crept over to the hall. Luckily the bathroom was right next to the front door.
Once I got in front of the bathroom door, I silently lunged for the front door, turned the lock as quietly as I could and tried to open it without making a sound. CLANG.
I stared in horror at the chain lock I had set when I came in. Idiot! I heard a rustle from the bed. The time for stealth was gone.
I yanked the chain out and swung the door open. In less than a second I was outside closing the door behind me and then bounding towards my car. I turned it on and peeled out without even checking to see whether my visitor had followed me.
I sped away from the motel towards the city and dialed 911.
At the police station, I waited for the cops to check out my room. When they came back, they asked to talk with me. I was led into the interrogation room, and they started to hit me with some accusatory questions. They said her body was ripped into pieces and strewn across the room, everywhere except the bed. Imagining myself in that room, totally oblivious to Cristina’s organs and tissue around me made me sick.
It soon became obvious that the police believed I killed her. I tried to convince them that there was someone else in my room, and told them there was video proof on my phone. I showed them the video that ANONYMOUS had sent me. They were intrigued, but still skeptical.
I was starting to get nervous that I wouldn’t return from my lame ass vacation for 10-30 years when something amazing happened.
Still in the officer’s hand, my phone got a notification.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a video.
Decline Accept
“That’s him, that’s the guy who’s been airdropping me stuff!” I said frantically. The officer raised an eyebrow. He hesitated, looked around, and after an agonizing pause accepted the video. They hid the screen from my face, but from his expression I could tell the video was something violent. All I could hear was an animal-like growl, heavy panting and a guttural human yell.
It wasn’t until after being cleared to leave and given my phone back that I watched the video. ANONYMOUS had filmed me leaving the parking lot of the motel, and then gone into the room and turned the lights on. The ‘thing’ was standing in the middle of the room, only a few feet from the camera. It stared at the camera and gave it a slow wave. Its slender fingers seemed to pulse with excitement, and the creature wiggled them elatedly. It smiled and its lips peeled back to reveal blood soaked teeth.
The room was covered in blood and body parts. There were intestines hanging off the lamp, what looked like a half-eaten liver soaking the office chair, teeth laid on the t.v. stand close enough to the camera to see that they were neat and white. I pictured him sucking them clean like cherry pits.
The most disturbing part of all was a big piece of skin that had been ripped off like a sheet and laid on the bed post by my side of the bed. In the middle of the skin was what looked like a belly button. I had been lying with my head right underneath Cristina’s drying stomach leather and never had a clue.
After the camera panned around the room, it focused back on the man. He stood there for a moment, his chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes wide and hungry. Then he took a lighting quick stride forward, and the camera turned toward the door. That is where the video ends. Watching it made me fear for ANONYMOUS’s safety, but I knew that he at least made it out healthy enough to make it to the police station.
Sometimes, when I’m alone and get the feeling I’m being watched, I open my airdrop options to see if ANONYMOUS is somewhere near me. I haven’t ever found him.
Earlier this morning while on the subway, I looked up and had a heart stopping shock. I was sitting at the end of one car and just happened to look through the window into the car behind us. There he was; the same creature that killed Cristina. The doors were still open and I almost took off running but… he wasn’t looking at me.
He was staring intently and smiling at a woman on the opposite row. Every few seconds he would lick his lips hungrily. I shuddered looking at his teeth because I couldn’t help but imagine them cutting into Cristina’s flesh, piercing through her skull and ripping her teeth out of their gums down to the root.
His prey had headphones in and was flipping through a magazine, totally oblivious to the terrible monster sitting just a few yards away from her. I took a picture through the foggy glass.
You can’t see the creature very well in the photo. But I can always circle him. Maybe she’ll have to zoom in, and she just might need to turn her brightness up all the way, but I’ll make sure she gets the message. I have no idea how to get the photo to her without drawing the attention of the creature, but I’ll figure it out. We’ll both figure it out. Wish us luck.

“Please…”
She was down on her knees in front of the altar, her lips quivering in their speech, her face as white as chalk. Her eyes focused on the figurine occupying the altar in front of her and tried to ignore the shadowy tentacles dancing and flopping in the background. It reminded her of giant octopi looking for prey.
“Please…”
Her eyes misted with tears as her mind flashed back to a few days before. She had gotten into a huge argument with her father. It had escalated into a shouting match; him furious that she had bore no child for him to love, her begging for time she did not have. In the end, she was thrown out of the house, her fortune eliminated, her life in ruins.
She remembered her father’s face still as he slammed the door on her. Red as a lobster, eyebrows furrowed deep into each other, hands clenched into fists and spit bubbling up at the corner of his lips. It was worse than her most terrifying nightmares.
“Please,” she whispered now, hands clasped together in her prayer. A small tear slid down her cheek and splashed to her feet like a little pearl. “I’ll do anything…”
The figurine shifted. “Anything?”
“Anything…”
She swore a small smile crept up the side of its face, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. “For thy devotion I will grant thee a son, but the cost is more than the sun.”
She screamed. “Thank you!”
“Look outside for thy prize, for it will come at sunrise.”
It was close to dawn when she finally stepped outside the cathedral. The sky shone bright like gold, and the early morning light washed over her like smooth buttermilk. She smiled, already imagining her newborn son cradled in her arms and bouncing on her father’s lap.
But she couldn’t take another step without her sides splitting open in pain.
She looked down to find her belly the size of a small fruit and still swelling rapidly. She could feel her baby thrashing against the uterus walls and groaning like it was being held down in balls and chains. It made the hair on her arms stand on end.
Then, her abdomen started to crack. Chunks of flesh fell out and disappeared into the nearby bushes.
Then a tentacle snaked out, thin and wispy like smoke. Then another tentacle. And another. Slowly and surely, tasting the air for the first time, and then the flesh, feeling the soft, bouncy skin underneath shadowy fingertips. She backed away until she bumped into the walls of the cathedral, and watched, paralysed, as it slithered down her chest and up her neck, its claws, expanding across her face and into her eyes.
The last thing she thought, as her nose, her eyes, her skull and brain and everything else melted into black goo and vanished into nothingness, was that this was the most peaceful she had felt for a long time.

1st John   Chapter Two  

The Anointed learns upon us right [זכות, ZeKhOoTh]
[verses 1-6]  

-1. My children [ילדי, YeLahDah-eeY], write I to you [את, ’ehTh (indicator of direct object; no English equivalent)] the words the these to sake you not sin,
and if sins a man, we have to us an advocate [מליץ, MayhLeeYTs] before the father – YayShOo`ah [“Savior”, Jesus] the anointed, the righteous.  

“…ethics in the N.T. [New Testament] is never finally a matter of a ‘works-righteousness’ or code. The Spirit interprets our duty to us in various situations.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 227)  

-2. And he is atonement [כפרה, KahPahRaH] for our sins,  

“`Ιλασμος [‘Ilasmos], the atoning sacrifice for our sins… כפור kippur … The word is used only here, and in chap. iv.10.” (Clarke, 1831, p. VI 862)  

and not upon our sins only,
rather [אלה, ’ehLah’] also upon sins of all the world.  

“The apostle does not say that he died for any select part of the inhabitants of the earth, or for some out of every nation, tribe, or kindred, but for ALL MANKIND: and the attempt to limit this is a violent outrage against God and his word.” (Clarke, 1831, p. VI 862)  

-3. And in this know [נדע, NayDah`] that we recognize [שהכרנו, ShehHeeKahRNOo] him: if we guard his commandments.  
-4. The sayer, “I recognize him”,
and has not guarded [את, ’ehTh] his commandments,
a worder of falsehood is he,
and the truth has not in him.  
-5. But [אך, ’ahKh] the guarder [את, ’ehTh] His word,
in same the man is completed [נשלמה, NeeShLeMaH], in truth, love of Gods;
in this know that in him are we.
-6. The sayer that he stands in YayShOo`ah,
as [the] way that walked YayShOo`ah, yes also is upon him to walk.  

……………………………………………………….  
The new commandment
[verses 7-17]  

-7. My beloved, not a commandment new write I to you,
rather [כי אם, KeeY ’eeM] a commandment old,
that was to you from [the] first.
The commandment, the old, she is the word that you heard.
-8. And in all that, a commandment new write I to you,
a word that is established [שנכון, ShehNahKhON] also in him and also in you,
that see, the darkness passes and the light the true already shines [זורח, ZORay-ahH].  
-9. The sayer that [כי, KeeY] in light he is and with that hates [את, ’ehTh] his brethren,
still is he [עודנו, `ODehNOo] in darkness.
-10. The lover [את, ’ehTh] his brethren stands in light,
and scandal [ומכשול, OoMeeKhShOL] has not in him.  
-11. But [אבל, ’ahBahL] the hater [את, ’ehTh] his brethren, in darkness is he;
in darkness he walks [מתהלך, MeeThHahLayKh], and he does not [ואינו, Ve’aYNO] know to where he walks,
for the darkness blinds [עור, `eeVayR] [את, ’ehTh] his eyes.  
-12. Write I to you, my children,
So [מפני, MeePNaY] that will be pardoned to you your sins on behalf of his name.
-13. Write I to you, fathers,
so that you recognize him [אותו, ’OThO], that he was from [the] first.
Write I to you, first-born,
so that you conquer [שנצחתם, SheNeeTsahHThehM] [את, ’ehTh] the evil.  
-14. I wrote to you, children,
so that you recognize [את, ’ehTh] the Father.
I wrote to you, fathers,
so that you recognize [את, ’ehTh] him, that he [was] from [the] first.
I wrote to you, first-born,
so that you strengthen,
and word [of] Gods is realized in your midst,
and you conquer [את, ’ehTh] the evil.  
-15. Do not love [את, ’ehTh] the world, nor [אף, ’ahPh] [את, ’ehTh] what that is in [the] world;
man, if he loves [את, ’ehTh] the world, has not within him love of the father.  

“… a love of the creature and the creation is disparaged over against the primal and everlasting ground of existence, the Father and his purpose….  
Such an emphasis is indeed exposed to the modern reproach of a false otherworldliness, and this passage has often been used to fortify such a piety.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB pp. XII 238-239)  

-16. For all that is in the world - lust of [תאות, Thah’ahVahTh] fleshes, lust of the eyes, and pride of [וגאות, VeGah’ahVahTh] the possessions [הנכסים, HahNeKhahÇeeYM] - not from the father is it, rather from the world.  

“For the lust of the eyes a passage in the Testament of Reuben¹⁰ (ch. [chapter] 2) is illuminating. It speaks of the ‘seven spirits of deceit’ which are ‘appointed against man’ of which one is the ‘sense of sight from which ariseth desire’ (cf. [compare with] also Ezek. [Ezekiel] 20:7-8). Jesus strictly warns against the eye as the occasion of temptation in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. [Matthew] 5:27-29)” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 240)  

¹⁰ “The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a constituent of the apocryphal scriptures connected with the Torah. It is a pseudepigraphical work comprising the dying commands of the twelve sons of Jacob. It is part of the Oscan Armenian Orthodox Bible of 1666. Fragments of similar writings were found at Qumran, but opinions are divided if these are the same texts. It is considered Apocalyptic literature.  
The Testaments were written in Greek, and reached their final form in the second century CE. In the 13th century that they were introduced into the West through the agency of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, whose Latin translation of the work gained immediately became popular. He believed that it was a genuine work of the twelve sons of Jacob, and that the Christian interpolations were a genuine product of Jewish prophecy; he accused Jews of concealing the Testaments ‘on account of the prophecies of the Saviour contained in them.’  
With the critical methods of the 16th century, Grosseteste’s view of the Testaments was rejected and the book was unjustly disparaged as a mere Christian forgery for nearly four centuries. Presently, scholarly opinions are still divided as to whether the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are an originally Jewish document that has been retouched by Christians or are a Christian document written originally in Greek but based on some earlier Semitic material. The feasibility of the Jewish author hypothesis is increasingly difficult to defend, while the Christian nature of the book is a given. Scholarship, therefore, focuses on this book as a Christian work, whether or not it has Jewish original (Vorlage).  
A copy of the testaments is published in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden.  
The work is divided into twelve books, each purporting to be the last exhortations of one of the twelve titular patriarchs. In each, the patriarch first narrates his own life, focusing on his strengths, virtues, or his sins, using biographical material from both the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Next he exhorts his listeners to emulate the one and to avoid the other. Most of the books conclude with prophetic visions.  
The Testament of Reuben is predominantly concerned with admonishing lust, and the sinfulness of Reuben in his having had sex with Bilhah, a concubine of his father. It is likely that the author wished to cover the topic of fornication anyway, and assigned it for Reuben to discuss due to Reuben's relationship with Bilhah being recounted in the canonical bible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaments_of_the_Twelve_Patriarchs  

…  

……………………………………………………….  
Distressor [צורר, TsORehR] [of] the Anointed
[verses 18-28]  

-18. My children, that is the hour, the last, and, like that you heard that [כי, KeeY] would come the distressor [of] the Anointed [αντιχρισος – antichrisos ~ antichrist], also now have risen distressors of Anointed multitudinous. From here know we that that is the hour, the last.  

“The actual term antichrist appears only in I and II John in the N.T. but the same figure is in view in the ‘man of lawlessness’ of II Thess. [Thessalonians] 2:3-4, in the great agent of sacrilege in Mark 13:14 and its parallels, and elsewhere. In our epistle he is identified with the ‘spirit’ of heresy (4:3) or error (4:6) as already come. He has in mind disturbers of the life of the churches generally and pretenders to messiahship or divinity in various parts of the empire. Words assigned to Jesus in the Gospels bearing on these events were thought of by the evangelists as fulfilled in their day. … The church fathers, rightly or wrongly, supply the names of Dositheus^11, Simon Magus^12, Judas Gallaeus, and later, Montanus^13, as having made messianic claims.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB pp. XII 243-244)  

¹¹ “The legendary background of the Pseudo-Clementine polemic informs us that the precursor of ‘Simon Magus’ was a certain Dositheus. He is mentioned in the lists of the earliest hæresiologists, in a Samaritan Chronicle, and in the Chronicle of Aboulfatah (fourteenth century); the notices, however, are all legendary, and nothing of a really reliable character can be asserted of the man. That however he was not an unimportant personage is evidenced by the persistence of the sect of the Dositheans to the sixth century; Aboulfatah says even to the fourteenth. Both Dositheus and ‘Simon Magus’ were, according to tradition, followers of John the Baptist; they were, however, said to be inimical to Jesus. Dositheus is said to have claimed to be the promised prophet, ‘like unto Moses,’ and ‘Simon’ to have made a still higher claim. In fact, like so many others in those days, both were claimants to the Messiaship. The Dositheans followed a mode of life closely resembling that of the Essenes; they had also their own secret volumes, and apparently a not inconsiderable literature.  
Dositheus (Dousis, Dusis, or Dosthai) was apparently an Arab, and in Arabia, we have every reason to believe, there were many mystic communities allied to those of the Essenes and Therapeuts.” http://sacred-texts.com/gno/fff/fff20.htm  
¹² “Simon Magus (Greek Σίμων ὁ μάγος), also known as Simon the Sorcerer and Simon of Gitta, was a Samaritan proto-Gnostic and traditional founder of the Simonians in the first century A.D. He appeared prominently in several apocryphal and heresiological accounts of early Christian writers, who regarded him as the source of all heresies.  
Simon Magus has been portrayed as both student and teacher of Dositheus, with followers who revered him as the Great Power of God. There were accusations by Christians that he was a demon in human form, and he was specifically said to possess the ability to levitate and fly at will. The fantastic stories of Simon the Sorcerer persisted into the Middle Ages, becoming a possible inspiration for Goethe's Faust.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus  
¹³ “Montanism was an early Christian movement of the early 2nd century A.D., named after its founder Montanus. It originated at Hierapolis where Papias was bishop and flourished throughout the region of Phrygia, leading to the movement being referred to as Cataphrygian (meaning it was ‘from Phrygia’). It spread rapidly to other regions in the Roman Empire at a time before Christianity was generally tolerated or legal. Although orthodox Nicene Christianity prevailed against Montanism within a few generations, labeling it a heresy, the sect persisted in some isolated places into the 8th century. Some people have drawn parallels between Montanism and modern Pentecostalism (which some call Neo-Montanism). The most widely known Montanist was undoubtedly Tertullian, who was the foremost Latin church writer before he converted to Montanism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montanism

 
-20. And you have to you the anointing [המשיחה, HahMeSheeYHaH] [from [מאת, May’ayTh] the Holy [one], and all of you know.  

“The word [anointing] is not used in the N.T. outside the present chapter.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 245)  
““The χρισμα, chrism, or ointment, here mentioned, is also an allusion to the holy anointing ointment prescribed by God himself, Exod. [Exodus] xxx. 23-25. which was composed of fine myrrh^14, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus¹⁵ , cassia lignea^16, and olive oil.”  

¹⁴ “Myrrh is a reddish-brown resinous material, the dried sap of a number of trees, but primarily from Commiphora myrrha, native to Yemen, Somalia, the eastern parts of Ethiopia and Commiphora gileadensis, native to Jordan…. Myrrh was used as an embalming ointment and was used, up until about the 15th century, as a penitential incense in funerals and cremations. The "holy oil" traditionally used by the Eastern Orthodox Church for performing the sacraments of chrismation and unction is traditionally scented with myrrh…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrrh  
¹⁵ “Sweet Flag, also known as calamus and various rushes and sedges, (Acorus calamus) is a plant from the Acoraceae family, in the genus Acorus. It is a tall perennial wetland monocot with scented leaves and more strongly scented rhizomes, which have been used medicinally, for its odor, and as a psychotropic drug.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Flag  
¹⁶ “The spice now known in pharmaceutical literature under the name of Cassia lignea has, from time immemorial, been an article of trade from South China. Flückiger and Hanbury are indeed of opinion that it was the cinnamon of the ancients, what now bears the name being peculiar to Ceylon and unnoticed as a product of the island till the thirteenth century. (‘Pharmacographia,’ pp. 520, 521.) Cinnamon and cassia are, however, enumerated amongst the products of the East from the earliest periods; and the former was known to the Arabians and Persians as Darchini (dar, wood or bark, and chini, Chinese). It seems in ancient times to have been carried by Chinese traders to the Malabar coast, where it passed into the commerce of the Red Sea. In this way the statements of Dioscorides, Ptolemy, and others, are accounted for, who speak of cinnamon as a product of Arabia and Eastern Africa, countries in which there is no reason to suppose it ever grew.” http://www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectic/journals/ajp1883/03-cassia-lign.html  

…
-22. Who is he, worder false, if not with [בלתי, BeeLTheeY] the denier [הכופר, HahKOPhayR] in thus, that YayShOo`ah, he is the anointed?
This is him, distressor [of] the anointed: the denier in father and in son.  

“… not the Jewish refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah; this denial would hardly be made by members of the church… it is the denial that ‘Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’. … The Doscetists made a separation between the earthly Jesus and the heavenly Christ. These verses sound very harsh and dogmatic to us (and cf. 5:10, 12). As a matter of fact, the impulse of the writer was not that of an inflexible orthodoxy: it was an appeal to the abiding dynamic witness of the Spirit, which quickens and leads into all truth. This Spirit was indeed related inseparably to the old oral confessions of the church (cf. Acts 8:37, RSV mg [margin]), but these evidently were already taking various forms, and the meaning of the term Christ, for example, had changed markedly.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB pp. XII 246-247)  
“Some have supposed that an Ebionite denial of Jesus’ messiahship is all that is intended here (so Maurice Goguel). But the second part of the verse makes it likely that Docetic-Gnostic issues are involved.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 271)  
“There were certain persons who, while they acknowledged Jesus to be a Divine Teacher, denied him to be the Christ, i.e. [in other words], the Messiah.  
“He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.] He is antichrist who denies the supernatural and miraculous birth of Jesus Christ; who denies Jesus to be the Son of God; and who denies God to be the Father of the Lord Jesus: - thus he denies the Father and the Son. The Jews in general, and the Gnostics in particular, denied the miraculous conception of Jesus: with both he was accounted no more than a common man, the son of Joseph and Mary. But the Gnostics held that a divine person, ᴁon or angelical being, dwelt in him; but all things else relative to his miraculous generation and divinity they rejected. These were antichrist, who denied Jesus to be the Christ.” (Clarke, 1831, p. VI 866)  

...  

……………………………………………………….  
Children of Gods
[verses 28 to end of chapter]   An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) announces new driver license and identification (ID) cards with updated security features. The new cards debut June 5 with new design elements built within the cards to make them more resistant to fraud.
“Wisconsin DMV continues to stay on the leading edge of technology by incorporating the next generation of updated security features into our driver licenses and ID cards,” WisDOT Secretary Craig Thompson said. “Our residents can be proud of the modernized new cards and also the efforts DMV takes to secure their credentials.”
The new cards feature:

• Beautiful, artistic, hard-to-replicate designs: Hand crafted artwork of key Wisconsin features – like the awe-inspiring Wisconsin State Capitol and state flag – are woven throughout, creating a more secure, customized card.
  
• Transparent windows visible on the card’s right edge and back bottom edge: The advanced manufacturing process allows the clear ribbon to flow right off the edge of the card and is integrated with cardholder data. Wisconsin is the first to have this unique security feature.
  
• A distinct ‘flipping effect:’ Looking at the embossed feature just above the ribbon, when angling the card one way, you see the secondary photo. While at another angle you see the month and year of birth. This unique feature is hard to duplicate and/or counterfeit.
  
• The familiar orange DONOR dot: For those who participate in the life-giving organ donation registry, the orange dot is now nestled in the larger sugar maple leaf which you can feel.
  
• The noticeable vertical format on cards for those under age 21 continues and will incorporate blue/red color themes for rapid visual recognition. Cards for those over age 21 are horizontal and have a blue/gold theme.
  

The upgraded security features will be available on regular and REAL ID cards. The fee remains the same.
“The first thing you notice is Wisconsin’s cards are even more attractive and the images celebrate the state. But built within the beautiful images and manufacturing process are layers of security features designed to protect card users and businesses who rely on their validity,” DMV Administrator Kristina Boardman said.
The laser-engraved version currently in circulation debuted in September 2015. These will remain valid until their expiration date. Cards with the new features will be issued upon renewal, replacement or first issuance. There is no requirement to get a new card but customers may replace their card with the latest features by ordering a replacement (wisconsindmv.gov/Dreplace​).
https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/about-wisdot/newsroom/news-rel/060523newdlid.aspx

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) announces new driver license and identification (ID) cards with updated security features. The new cards debut June 5 with new design elements built within the cards to make them more resistant to fraud.
“Wisconsin DMV continues to stay on the leading edge of technology by incorporating the next generation of updated security features into our driver licenses and ID cards,” WisDOT Secretary Craig Thompson said. “Our residents can be proud of the modernized new cards and also the efforts DMV takes to secure their credentials.”
The new cards feature:

• Beautiful, artistic, hard-to-replicate designs: Hand crafted artwork of key Wisconsin features – like the awe-inspiring Wisconsin State Capitol and state flag – are woven throughout, creating a more secure, customized card.
  
• Transparent windows visible on the card’s right edge and back bottom edge: The advanced manufacturing process allows the clear ribbon to flow right off the edge of the card and is integrated with cardholder data. Wisconsin is the first to have this unique security feature.
  
• A distinct ‘flipping effect:’ Looking at the embossed feature just above the ribbon, when angling the card one way, you see the secondary photo. While at another angle you see the month and year of birth. This unique feature is hard to duplicate and/or counterfeit.
  
• The familiar orange DONOR dot: For those who participate in the life-giving organ donation registry, the orange dot is now nestled in the larger sugar maple leaf which you can feel.
  
• The noticeable vertical format on cards for those under age 21 continues and will incorporate blue/red color themes for rapid visual recognition. Cards for those over age 21 are horizontal and have a blue/gold theme.
  

The upgraded security features will be available on regular and REAL ID cards. The fee remains the same.
“The first thing you notice is Wisconsin’s cards are even more attractive and the images celebrate the state. But built within the beautiful images and manufacturing process are layers of security features designed to protect card users and businesses who rely on their validity,” DMV Administrator Kristina Boardman said.
The laser-engraved version currently in circulation debuted in September 2015. These will remain valid until their expiration date. Cards with the new features will be issued upon renewal, replacement or first issuance. There is no requirement to get a new card but customers may replace their card with the latest features by ordering a replacement (wisconsindmv.gov/Dreplace​).
https://wisconsindot.gov/Pages/about-wisdot/newsroom/news-rel/060523newdlid.aspx