Wednesday, February 09, 2005


This crew of five took off for some immediate shopping upon arrival in London :) Posted by Hello


Heading back to the LCHS campus after a long day in London! Posted by Hello

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Music, Mayhem, Murder by Tommy Udo

Manson's belief system, incoherent at best, was constantly changing, depending on whom he was talking to or what frame of mind he was in. The guts of his philosophy - that we are living in the 'end times' and part of the 'chosen' - is actually rather commonplace for apocalyptic sects that even pre-date Christianity. Groups like the Essenes, dissident Jews who lived out in the desert in Qumrann, believed that the world was about to end and that we lived in the 'last days' and that they alone would be spared. Even the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark - the earliest of the four Gospels and the one that retains most of the 'source book' known as Q - portrays a Jesus proclaiming that the kingdom (or reign) of God was at hand; he expected the world to change drastically in his own lifetime. Early Christian sects belived that the return of Christ was imminent, not an event that would take place in a distant, unknowable future.
This thread runs through some of the most destructive and revolutionary sects and cults, such as Anabaptists in 16th-century Germany and the Free Spirit Movement, or Ranters, in revolutionary England. The flowering of fundamentalist Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries produced a bewildering variety of 'end times' groups, from the comparatively harmless Jehovah's Witnesses (whose prophecies for the end have come and gone several times over) to much more dangerous and murderous groups like Manson's.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Hello from Germany

Hey guys- Hello from snowy Germany! I guess it's been snowing here since Monday. We hit the snow on our way up. In fact, the Brenner pass was closed and we had to make a detour. It's absolutely gorgeous here, with inches and inches of new snow.
I am the "dean of women" for the FEA conference, which is just a nice way of saying that I'm in charge of discipline. That basically means that I need to make sure everyone stays in bed after curfew. I did a lot of reading in the hallway last night. See you soon.