Adventures in Mormonism

[Note: this is a follow-up to the discussion in the comments to this post some months back.]

We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church . . . .
– 6th Article of Faith

Yea, behold, I write unto all the ends of the earth; yea, unto you, twelve tribes of Israel, who shall be judged according to your works by the twelve whom Jesus chose to be his disciples in the land of Jerusalem. And I write also unto the remnant of this people, who shall also be judged by the twelve whom Jesus chose in this land; and they shall be judged by the other twelve whom Jesus chose in the land of Jerusalem.
– Mormon 3:18-19

“[The Book of Mormon] tells us that our Savior made His appearance upon this continent after His resurrection; that He planted the Gospel here in all its fulness, and richness, and power, and blessing; that they had Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers, and Evangelists, the same order, the same priesthood, the same ordinances, gifts, powers, and blessings, as were enjoyed on the eastern continent . . . ”
– Joseph Smith (from the Wentworth Letter, 1842; cf. History of the Church 4:538).

Back during the ‘Primitive Church’ era, it appears that there were 24 apostles on the earth, organized into two separate quorums: the Twelve in the Old World (led by Peter) and the Twelve in the New World (led by Nephi₃). While it is true that the New World Twelve were never specifically called apostles within the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith referred to them as such, and Joseph Fielding Smith cautiously agreed.

Mormon’s comments, cited above, indicate that the New World Twelve were subordinate to the Old World Twelve. In modern-day LDS parlance, we could refer to the Old World Apostles as the First Quorum of the Twelve, and to the New World Apostles as the Second Quorum of the Twelve.

Nowadays, however, we only have the (one) Quorum of the Twelve. Given the 6th Article of Faith, the question comes up: what are the chances of the Church setting up a Second Quorum of the Twelve, as existed in the Primitive Church? And if the Church did so, how would it work, particularly given the tradition of succession in the modern Church?

First, let’s see why the Church might organize the Second Quorum of the Twelve.

When I joined the Church in 1967, Church membership was around 2.6 million, with about 450 stakes and 4,200 wards and branches. The large majority of that membership was in the Western United States, Western Canada, and northeastern Mexico. Apostles and even First Presidency members would visit stake conferences on a regular basis; I got to shake hands with Pres. Hugh B. Brown and Elder LeGrand Richards as a teenager that way. Back then, each bishop was set apart by an Apostle.

Today, Church membership is approaching 14 million, with 2,800 stakes and nearly 25,000 wards and branches (roughly a 5x growth in all three categories). Over half of the Church membership lives outside of the United States. And we still have just twelve Apostles.

The gap has been filled by the Presidents and Quorums of the Seventy (not to mention stake presidents). They really are the eyes and ears and legs and hands of the Apostles throughout the world. But the collective Seventy still have to feed into just twelve Apostles. I suspect that the members of the Quorum of the Twelve carry tremendous administrative, spiritual, and ministering burdens — and yet in all that, it is the core of their calling to be special witnesses of Christ.

Imagine, then, how that burden would be lifted if there were a Second Quorum of the Twelve, another set of 12 Apostles among whom to share the load at that level of Church administration.

How might this work?

Let’s follow the model in the meridian of time and assume that the Second Quorum of the Twelve is subordinate to the First Quorum of the Twelve. Seniority in the Second Quorum would work just like, but be independent of, the seniority in the First Quorum. There would be no automatic succession from the Second Quorum to the First; instead Apostles in the Second Quorum would be put on emeritus status when they reached 70 years of age. However, the Second Quorum would provide a fertile ground for candidates to fill vacancies in the First Quorum upon the death of an Apostle.

In other words, it would work pretty much just like the Presidency of the Seventy works right now. In fact, I could argue that the Presidency of the Seventy fills the function of the Second Quorum of the Twelve, except that there’s only seven of them and they don’t have Apostolic authority.

Now, what if that were to change? What if the Church dissolved the Presidency of the Seventy, organized the Second Quorum of the Twelve, and then organized the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th Quorums of the Seventy, with an Apostle over each Quorum? Church government and organization is flexible as the times require; I was once a Seventy myself, and was even a President of Seventy (it was a stake position some 25 years ago — there were seven Presidents of Seventy in each stake). So it wouldn’t bother me in the least if the Church were to do this kind of reorganization. (I will admit being startled for a second when the Church organized the Eighth Quorum of the Seventy, though I believe a close reading of D&C 107:95-96 allows that interpretation.)

As an alternative approach, what if the Church left the Presidency and Quorums of the Seventy just as they are now, but called an entirely new Second Quorum of the Twelve? This second Quorum could truly act as a “traveling presiding high council” throughout the Church, going as a quorum, in pairs, or individually to various parts of the world to help strengthen the church. In fact much like Elders Oaks and Holland, members of the Second Quorum could live outside of the United States on a permanent or near-permanent basis, providing resident Apostolic authority throughout the world, while traveling back to Salt Lake on a regular basis to meet with the First Presidency and the First Quorum of the Twelve (though I suspect the Church would use two-way, satellite-based videoconferencing to reduce actual travel).

Given this second approach, I suspect that the Second Quorum would largely comprise Apostles whose native language is something other than English and/or whose native country is outside of the United States and Canada.

This approach would allow Church members throughout the world to hear in person from Apostles speaking their native tongues on a regular basis. At the same time, these worldwide Apostles could work more actively and directly with the governments of the countries over which they preside to help see to the Church’s interests in those countries.

This approach would, I believe, tremendously strengthen the Church worldwide, especially in those areas (Latin America, Africa, the Philippines) where Church growth frequently outstrips the leadership pool. And for those keeping an eye on the Last Days, it would also ensure Apostolic authority distributed throughout the world in the event of major war and/or natural catastrophes.

Any thoughts?  ..bruce..

FedEx showed up about a few hours ago with my pre-ordered copy of Royal Skousen’s magnum opus, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale University Press, 2009, 848 pages). This volume represents over 20 years of work on Skousen’s part to produce a critical text edition of the Book of Mormon.  I’ve been buried in the volume — starting at the front and working my way through — since it appeared. Having made it as far as 1 Nephi 10 (First Book of Nephi, chapter III, in the 1830 edition), I thought I’d come up for air long enough to log a few comments.

First, the physical production of the volume is outstanding (as one would expect from Yale University Press). High quality paper and binding, outstanding layout and typography. The book is large and heavy (as per Amazon, 9.3 x 7.6 x 2.3 inches and 3.6 lbs) but manages to stay open even near the front and back. The heft of the book makes it a bit hard (though not impossible) to read while stretched out on the couch.

Grant Hardy’s introduction lays out the case for accepting the Book of Mormon as a serious work worthy of study in the context of world religions — all the more so because we have so much definite historical and even forensic information regarding its creation and transmission (cf. Terryl Givens’ By the Hand of Mormon).

Skousen’s editorial preface in turn provides a brief overview of his methodology in producing the critical text, laying out his overall approach as well as some of his criteria in making critical text decisions. However, he rightly points readers to his multi-volume series on the Book of Mormon Critical Text project for detailed explanations as to item-by-item decisions regarding recovery or conjecture of the critical text.

Skousen also explains his presentation of the critical text: sense lines, (mostly) modern spelling, de novo punctuation, blank lines to indicate paragraph breaks, and a typographic insertion to mark Joseph Smith’s original chapter indications. Modern (LDS 1981 edition) chapter and verse indications are given in the left margin.

Note that the punctuation, sense line breaks, and paragraph breaks are Skousen’s; the original manuscript had none, and the printer’s manuscript didn’t have much more. Skousen describes his process thus:

As I prepared each section of The Earliest Text, I started with one long string of unpunctuated words. I first broke the text into sense-lines (described below); I then added the accidentals (punctuation and capitalization) as needed in order to make the syntax clear. (p. xlii)

Skousen then spends several paragraphs outlining his approach to sense-lines and paragraphs. While most paragraphs comprise some number of modern verses, Skousen is willing to break across modern verse or even chapter divisions, though he only does so occasionally. I suspect that what criticism Skousen receives on this volume will come here, since he is in effect inserting himself to the text. On the other hand, I frankly think he’s done a better job than Orson Pratt did back in 1879, and as I got into the text itself, I found myself wishing for an edition that left out the modern chapter and verse numbers (though I could simply use a bookmark to cover up the left margin). And since even the printer’s manuscript was (in the words of the 1830 typesetter, John Gilbert) “one solid paragraph, without a punctuation mark, from beginning to end” (cited on p. xlii), I much prefer Skousen’s approach to wading through a single mass of undifferentiated and unpunctuated text.

And the text is wonderful. Layout and typography make it very easy to read, and the presentation brings a fresh look to a very familiar text. I’ve worked my way through most of the five “Textual Variants” volumes published by Skousen to date, so I’m not reading this to pick up on those modifications per se (though Skousen lists in an appendix what he considers to be significant textual changes). Instead, I am imagining myself in a small room as Joseph dictates and someone transcribes. It is a powerful experience, one which I’m about to go back to.

Highly recommended.  ..bruce..

Enos is the third author in the Book of Mormon (after Nephi₁ and Jacob). He is best known for his lengthy prayer while hunting in the wilderness, wherein he first asks for personal forgiveness, then for God’s blessings upon the Nephites, then His blessings upon the Lamanites, then that a record of the Nephites will be preserved and brought into the Lamantes “at some future day” should the Nephites be destroyed.  So far, so good.

But at the very end of the book of Enos, we find the following:

Enos 1:25: And it came to pass that I began to be old, and an hundred and seventy and nine years had passed away from the time that our father Lehi left Jerusalem.

Enos is apparently identified in Jacob 7:27 as the son of Jacob:

And I, Jacob, saw that I must soon go down to my grave; wherefore, I said unto my son Enos: Take these plates. And I told him the things which my brother Nephi had commanded me, and he promised obedience unto the commands. And I make an end of my writing upon these plates, which writing has been small; and to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that many of my brethren may read my words. Brethren, adieu.

Now, Jacob was Lehi’s “first born in the wilderness” (2 Nephi 2:2), and Jacob was already born when Lehi & company set sail from Bountiful to the New World (cf. 1 Nephi 18:7), and furthermore was born before Joseph, who was also born before embarking. This means that Jacob was born, at the latest, about seven years after Lehi left Jerusalem, and probably a few years before that. Let’s split the difference and say that Jacob was born 4 years after Lehi left Jerusalem.

This means that the lives of Jacob and Enos spanned 175 years. This is not impossible, but it is highly unusual. So let’s look at some possible explanations.

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Language Log is one of my favorite daily blog reads, and today it had among other things a post about an online “term mining” tool (Termine) that analyzes text to attempt to identify multi-word terms (e.g., technical terms) within the text. The intended target for this tools is biomedical documents (the default setting for the online tool presumes that you’re submitting such a document), but I thought it might be fun to run the Book of Mormon (1830 text) through it. I tracked down an online version of the 1830 text (with no modern versification, etc.), saved it as a text file on my hard drive, then uploaded it to the online tool (changing the POS Tagger setting to “Tree Tagger 3.1″, described as “more suited to generic text”).

The results are after the jump. The “Score” (value to the right) is not just a straight frequency count but also indicates how often the term (or portions thereof) appears in other terms, which is why you end up with fractional values for some terms. It’s explained in more detail at the website for the tool (where it’s referred as the “C-Value”).

The results are interesting, if a bit mixed. Termine obviously assumes that it is parsing modern technical English and so trips up a bit when trying to parse archaic English in the Book of Mormon. So, for example, the single most frequent ‘term’ is “thou hast” (with “thou art” coming in at #6).  Likewise, sequences such as “thy <noun>”, “o <noun>”, “<verb> ye/thou” and “art <word>” are mistakenly identified as terms and show up in the list.

(Also, for reasons that totally baffle me, in Termine’s results all the terms based on kings’ names ["King Benjamin"] have the word “king” replaced with “kingbolt” [e.g., "kingbolt benjamin"]. I have no idea why — it’s certainly not in the text — and I may contact the tool’s authors to find out what’s happening. I’ve change those back in the table below.)

There are no great surprises in the results, though there are some interesting terms high on the list.  After the top ones that you would expect — “Lord God”, “Holy Ghost” and “Jesus Christ” — comes “beloved brethren”. And the socio-political nature of the Book of Mormon is reflected in the next two top terms: “judgment seat” and “chief judge”. Interestingly, from what I can tell, “judgment seat” is used strictly as a religious term (“judgment seat of God/Christ”) by in the personal writings, sermons, and editorial comments of Nephi₁, Jacob, Mormon₂ and Moroni, and strictly as a political term in the sections in-between (Alma 1 through 3 Nephi 7).

A bit further down the list is “foolish traditions”, which only appears within a subsection of the book of Alma (chapters 8, 21, 30 and 31) but is used by four different groups/individuals — the people of Ammonihah, an Amalekite [probably "Amlicite"; cf. this article] living among the Lamanites, the antichrist Korihor, and the Zoramites — in describing the Christ-centered Nephite religious beliefs. Apparently, it was a popular, if short-lived, derogatory phrase among those not of or opposed to the Nephite “Church of God“. I also have to wonder if the phrase wasn’t originally used or popularized by Alma₂ and the sons of King Mosiah during their rebellious phase, since all four recorded incidents of its use are aimed at Alma₂ or one of the sons of Mosiah. (To be strictly accurate, Korihor uses “foolish traditions” with some other leaders, then talks about “silly traditions” to Alma₂). On the other hand, the Nephites tend to refer to the traditions of the Lamanites as “incorrect” or sometimes “wicked”, so there may be a bit of tit-for-tat going on here.

Anyway, have fun! The complete table is after the jump. ..bruce..

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Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

– “Silver Blaze“, Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)

One of the standard secular explanations for Joseph Smith’s production of the Book of Mormon is that he cribbed from the Bible, in particular from the Old Testament — not just in taking direct quotes from Isaiah and Malachi, but in themes, events, situations, and the like. In my opinion, there are profound flaws with such an explanation, which could (and do) fill several books, but there you go.

Along those lines, there are two themes commonly found through the historical sections of the Old Testament that are curious by their absence (or near-absence) in the Book of Mormon — at least, curious if you consider the Book of Mormon to have been “inspired by” the Old Testament. Those themes are burial locations and romance/marriage.

The Old Testament history is full of details about the burial of various major and minor characters, including the names of the places of where they were buried (check out these references). Yet the Book of Mormon is quite silent on that matter, with only one real exception: Ishmael being buried at Nahom. Make no mistake — the Book of Mormon talks a lot about burial per se, usually mass burials of soldiers or victims of wars and other disasters; it also talks about the deaths of key individuals quite frequently. What it rarely does, unlike the Old Testament, is talk about the burial of a given dead individual. Lehi is the only other person whose burial is explicitly mentioned, though no location is named; on the other hand, the disappearance of Alma₂ leads to speculation that he was either “taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord.” (Alma 45:19).

The second curious absence involves marriage and romance. The Old Testament history is full of marriages and not a little romance as well (notwithstanding the meme that “romance” is a relatively modern invention). Time and again, the Old Testament record names wives and in some cases records details about how the marriage came to be and about the marriage itself. Indeed, these are some of the best known stories out of the Old Testament: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and so on.

The Book of Mormon, by contrast, is profoundly silent on wives, marriage, and romance. Of Lehi’s initial party, we know Sariah’s name, but not that of any of the other women, includng Ishamel’s and Nephi’s own wives. And after Sariah, not another wife is named in the Book of Mormon. There are references to marriage (usually as groups, much as with burials) and to wives (ditto), but there are only a few references to one individual marrying another — and the wife is never named.

============================

Having just written the above, and while doing a bit of online searching, I ran across this essay by Orson Scott Card, which I’m sure I have read at one time or another. In the section titled “American Culture and the Book of Mormon” and in the subsection titled “Women”, he makes the same point, but more broadly, more eloquently and in more detail. He even points out that there are only three named women in the entire Book of Mormon [i.e., within its historical record, as compared to mentions of Eve, Sarah, and Mary]: Sariah, the harlot Isabel, and the servant woman Abish. Again, this stands in stark contrast to the many women named — and often playing an important role — in the Old Testament.

Along those lines, here are a few more links:

• “Ten Women in the Book of Mormon“, a blog post calling out ten key women in the Book of Mormon
• “Women in the Book of Mormon” by Camille Williams (JMBS 11:1), a scholarly paper discussing the relative lack of women discussed and named in the Book of Mormon

Just my thought for the day.  ..bruce..

Before I post more on the Jaredites, I want to finish my review of LDS scholarship on them. This largely means Nibley and Sorenson, since few other scholars have tackled them at length.

Re-reading The World of the Jaredites and There Were Jaredites, both of which were published over 50 years ago, I’m struck as usual about how far ahead of the curve Nibley was, particulalry in emphasizing how complex the Book of Mormon narrative is, how the Book of Mormon does not describe the ancestors of all native Americans, how different the culture and history in Ether is from the Lehite narrative, and how Ether contains element after element found in the ancient world. And Nibley even then is clearly trying to pry us away from classic, conservative Christian interpretation of such things as the great tower, warning us not to confuse cause and effect (e.g., languages may have diverged due to forced migrations, not the other way around) or over-interpret phrases such as “the whole earth” (kol ha-aretz, which can also mean “the whole land”).

Likewise, anyone inclined to mock the Jaredite ships needs to spend some time with the chapter “The Babylonian Background” in There Were Jaredites and explain just why there are so many correlations between the description of the Jaredite ships in Ether and the description of boats from various Babylonian flood stories (including, yes, shining stones and crescent-shaped, tightly-sealed boats that have waves covering them).

And, of course, by emphasizing the Asiatic origins and likely route (across Asia to the Pacific and thence to the Americas), Nibley preempted arguments citing Asiatic blood types (and later Asiatic DNA haplogroups) among native Americans.

Anyway, I hope to have a few more posts on the Jaredites later this week. Back to my reading.  ..bruce..

[Here is an introduction to the REPO postings. Also I've made a few updates below.]

It’s hard to mine any detailed information about the Jaredites out of the book of Ether itself. What we have is Joseph Smith’s translation of Moroni’s highly selective and condensed abridgment of his (or Mosiah[2]‘s) translation of Ether’s very condensed (“twenty-four gold plates“) and late summary of somewhere from 2000 to over 3000 years of Jaredite history. Outside of the brother of Jared’s theophany of the premortal Messiah, and the occasional speculation on just how those barges were built, most of our quotes from the book of Ether tend to come from Moroni’s commentary rather than anything the Jaredites did or said.

Ether becomes a bit more interesting, however, when we ask ourselves just how the Jaredite civilization(s) splintered, interacted (usually by fighting), and re-merged, and what kind of religious behavior and institutions existed. It’s particularly interesting to note how different the Jaredite narrative reads from the Lehite narrative in both political and religious aspects.

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“The first rule of historical criticism in dealing with the Book of Mormon or any other ancient text is, never oversimplify. For all its simple and straightforward narrative style, this history is packed as few others are with a staggering wealth of detail that completely escapes the casual reader. The whole Book of Mormon is a condensation, and a masterly one; it will take years simply to unravel the thousands of cunning inferences and implications that are wound around its most matter-of-fact statements. Only laziness and vanity lead the student to the early conviction that he has the final answers on what the Book of Mormon contains.”

– Hugh Nibley, 1952 (The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 5: Lehi in the Desert / The World of the Jaredites / There Were Jaredites [Deseret Book/FARMS, 1988] p. 237.)

Some months back, I had a lengthy back-and-forth discussion in the comments to a posting I made over at Mormon Mentality. The starting point was Dan (of The Good Democrat) taking issue with a comment I made about the Book of Mormon’s applicability to current world situations. Dan’s contention (see comment #8) was that the Book of Mormon dealt strictly with a bipolar situation (Nephites v. Lamanite), which had little bearing on today’s multi-polar world. I strongly disagreed with Dan’s bipolar characterization of the religious-political situation described in the Book of Mormon and expressed my opinion that a careful reading showed a very complex, multipolar situation instead.  The argument went back and forth for several postings, with neither of us convincing the other.

However, it did trigger my desire to do a series of postings discussing the religious-political (REPO) “atlas” (if you will) of the Book of Mormon. I’m not breaking any new ground with this; real Book of Mormon scholars (starting, as always, with Nibley) have been doing this for years.

But I think it’s worth taking the time to see what the Book of Mormon has to say about the very complex religious and political elements of the peoples it discusses. As Nibley and others have noted, the Book of Mormon record is far from simple or simplistic. We tend to read it that way because Nephi and Mormon — who account for the vast majority of the Book of Mormon text — both followed the theme of the ultimately doomed Nephites vs. the ultimately redeemed Lamanites.  (See this article by Steven L. Olsen for an interesting discussion on whether Mormon consciously patterned his abridgment of Nephite records after Nephi’s small-plates writing.) But in spite of that, the Book of Mormon text itself reveals and suggests a far more complex religious, political, and social milieu. The goal of these postings will be to point out some of that.

Some of my observations may be original, but I tend to doubt it. I own and have read over three dozen volumes dealing with the Book of Mormon; I also have read just about every issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. Most of my insights are likely ones that I have gained elsewhere. Where I can and am willing to dig back in, I will offer specific cites (such as the Olsen article above), but my intent at this point is not a scholarly work; it is merely to suggest complexities that may be easily overlooked in a normal reading of the Book of Mormon.

I’m going to start with the Jaredites for three reasons. First, they predate the Lehite arrival and set up a context for it. It’s pretty clear that there were Jaredite/Lehite interactions well before Coriantumr staggered into Zarahemla, given some 400 years of geographical coexistence and the occasional Jaradite name showing up in Lehite circumstances. Second, the Jaredites represent something unique in the scriptural canon: God’s dealings over a few thousand years with a post-deluvian, pre-Abrahamic (and pre-Melchizedek) people.  Third, we (as members and even as LDS scholars) really tend to ignore the Jaredites, so it’s good for them to get a little more attention.

Now to go write that Jaredite posting.  ..bruce..

I have written previously here about the practice of baptism among the Lehites (see here and here). To briefly summarize:

– About 50 years after leaving Jerusalem, both Jacob and Nephi₁ teach about the universal need for baptism, though the record doesn’t talk about them actually baptizing anyone.

– For the next 400 years, there is no further mention of baptism at all in the Book of Mormon record as we have it (recognizing that we’re missing the Book of Lehi) — either as a doctrinal subject or as actually being practiced.

– After that 400 years, Alma₁ reintroduces baptism among the Nephites, at the same time establishing a “church of anticipation” (called by the Lehites “the church of God”) that appears to be quite distinct from the kingly reign implementing the law of Moses that appears to have dominated among the Nephites during those 400 years. Note that it is never clear where Alma gets his authority to baptize; he is one of the unrighteous priests appointed to their positions by King Noah, so it’s unclear where his priesthood authority to administer baptism comes from[1].

– Baptism is then actively practiced among both Nephites and Lamanites for over 180 years right up until the destruction that occurs at the time of the Savior’s crucifixion, with Nephi₃ leading the way up to the end and ordaining others to baptize as well.

Now comes the curious part. The great destruction occurs, the survivors gather at the temple at Bountiful (including Nephi₃ and other disciples), the Savior appears — and He reintroduces baptism. The Savior explicitly states that he is giving Nephi₃ and others “power that ye shall baptized this people when I am again ascended into heaven” (3 Nephi 11:18-22). The Savior goes on to explain the exact procedure by which baptism should occur and even gives the words of the baptismal prayer (3 Nephi 11:23-28), twice stating that “there shall be no disputations among you” regarding baptism (see verses 22, 28).

This immediately raises a few questions:

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The “debate” cited in this New York Times article is triggered by a stone tablet — apparently predating Christianity — that talks of a Messiah rising from the dead after three days:

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Of course, that’s not going to faze Latter-day Saints much, since we believe that Jewish prophets were fortelling the Messiah’s death and resurrection (after three days) several centuries before Christ’s birth. Worth reading the whole article.  ..bruce..

P. S. Sorry for the lack of posting; it should be picking up a bit more this week.