If you’ve ever seen the Wizard of Oz, you might remember when the Great and Powerful Oz tells Dorothy and her companions to ignore the man behind the curtain.

Note  that the video will ask you to go directly to YouTube for viewing.

This scene is curious to me, because the man behind the curtain, as you know, is the man running the special effects machine that creates the Great and Powerful Oz.  In reality, the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz is merely a man standing behind a curtain.  Luckily for Dorothy and her friends, the Wizard of Oz really isn’t a bad man, just a “very bad wizard.”

In our world, there are some really good wizards, or more specifically, people very good at playing the “man behind the curtain.”

Today, while pondering my next writing adventure, I came to think about my experiences with religion.  I don’t write about those experiences all too often, frankly because I don’t think about them all the time.  Today was different.

Earlier, while in deep thought thinking about characters and stories, I played out a scene in my head where a man was approached by a member of a predominate religion in his geographic location, asked if he’d ever considered joining that dominant religion.  Like in my own life, the character in my thought HAD been a member of the religion, but had left it on his own search for truth.  The scene made me think about how things happened in my own life.

When some people discover I left the LDS religion, one of the first questions they ask is, “what caused you to leave?”

That question is difficult for me to answer.  There are so many reasons why I left the Mormon church.  Some of them are closely related to why I joined in the first place.  Other reasons are based on logical reasoning.  And a few reasons, quite honestly, are because I actually read what I was being asked to read and ponder on.

I was a gospel doctrine teacher for the LDS church in my ward, or congregation.  Basically, I was a Sunday school teacher.  I taught the young adults from 12 up until they turned 18, and I did so for close to two years.  But in the LDS church, you teach the Old Testament one year, the New Testament the next, and the Book of Mormon and related works the third, starting over again after that.  The lessons are prepared by the church itself and laid out in a manual, created some time in advance for that year.

The LDS church expressly tells its teachers to stick to quoting church leadership from the past 30 years - no earlier.  They also tell you to follow the lesson material closely - no deviation.

My first year of teaching, I taught the Book of Mormon year.  I’d been put into that teaching position (or calling, within the church), in the middle of the year.  I missed the Book of Mormon itself, and was teaching the Doctrines and Covenants, a collection of religious cannon chronicling the days of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith - in many ways, intended to be the modern-day word of God on Earth.  Therefore, it is not only written in a religious tone, it is considered some of the most revealing and reverent works within the LDS church.

I taught the material through the end of the year, and moved on to the Old Testament.  I taught it from an LDS-viewpoint, which meant a lot of scripture from the Bible was overlooked in favor of the lesson material and each week’s specific lecture topic.

But I started reading between specific scripture quotes.  I read from the recommended passage to the next, skipping nothing.  And gaining everything.

Somewhere, between each lesson’s bullet points, I started piecing together a different view of the Old Testament than what the LDS church provides to it’s members.  Sometimes, the points made in a lesson actually had little to do with the quoted scripture.  If a passage mentioned something like the “Rod from the stem of Jesse,” the church automatically placed Joseph Smith at the end of that Rod, with Jesus somewhere in between.  To most other religions, the “Rod from the stem of Jesse” refers specifically to Jesus only.  Naturally, when a church tells you that its founder descends from Jesus, you want to believe it.  The problem is, the church tell you what is right.  There is no other interpretation.  Anyone who disagrees is wrong.  The man behind the curtain told you to ignore the man behind the curtain, and you want to listen.

I could spend a long time giving you examples of scriptures quoted with different meanings than intended, lessons which omitted HUGE topics (look up Nephilim from WITHIN the LDS church, and you’ll find that Joseph Smith talked about them, but since he lived more than 30 years ago, cannot be quoted or taught within the very church he founded), discourses given by old LDS prophets that differ from more modern LDS prophets, and so much more.  A believer in the man behind the curtain will tell you that times have changed, or that we know more now.  That same person could stand up in church a week later and tell you that God is firm and wise (and doesn’t change his mind - he just changes the rules).

Living within this system, there no way you can be wrong.

And I came to feel the church was wrong.  It’s a good organization.  They help a lot of people, and bring so many people hope when there might not be any otherwise.  But the price of bringing the best parts of the LDS church into your life come at the cost of being told what to believe, even when your eyes see otherwise.  You see the man behind the curtain, but you have to look the other way when he uses his booming voice and special effects to tell you to pay him no mind.

Unfortunately, I stuck it out.  I stayed a member of the church.  I looked the other way.  I rationalized away what I’d seen with what I’d been told.  It took me years and other circumstances to finally free myself and pull open that curtain to find the “very good at what he does” wizard behind it.

The character in my mind has the insight to know better, and lives within a society where is he is the outsider.  But he is an outsider with intimate knowledge of the inside.  Those around him do not know this - they merely see someone who does not believe.  They don’t see the man as someone who actually knows.  And the only reason they can’t see the true man is because they’re told that they have the answers when my character does not.  They have been deceived by their own man, behind his own curtain, running his own special effects machine.

In work of writing, such a character has unknown power over those around him.  In some way, he also becomes a wizard of sorts.  Unlike those around him, though, he is a man running his machine with the curtain OPEN.

Eliquatuero dip eros numsan vent lam, conum tet lor adit, commod tatummy niam dolorti onullaore dolor in estrud dunt iure te feugiam modit dolorer iure do con ulla dolor et mconse ming ex ent am, quat velenit exuti erciut tate duipsusci et landrem zzriusc inim nul laorem dipit nosenu nonautpat. Ut landiat ute te dolobor tis et nulput luptate tat vendreet lortiset dunt feugiam modit dolorer etuin lutatum mconse.

Duis nonsequ et ismodol oreetuer iril dolore facidunt, vulluptat volore consecte dolesed utou dolor se velitdip numsan vent, conum tetut lor adit, commod tatummy niam dolorti onullaore dolor in et estrud dunt iure te feugiam modit dolorer iure do conulla et mconse ming exentam pounei, quat velenit exerciut tate duipsusci et landrem zzriusc inim nul laorem velenisit iure.

Lorem ipsum

For more than two months, I’ve been getting around the house, store, doctor’s offices, and the car using crutches.

At first, I started out with borrowed crutches from my mother-in-law.  There were way too short for me.  Using them, I looked like a rag doll strung out between two sticks.

Then, my doctor gave me a prescription for crutches made for my size.  They were much better than the borrowed ones, but it took me some time to find a height that was comfortable.  Only a couple weeks after getting them, I was walking crutching in the back yard and forgot that when we moved into this house that there was a large bird house on a pole in front of the shed.  I subsequently found the end of my left crutch in the hole, and my body weight breaking it like a toothpick as I fell to the ground.

I was back on borrowed crutches for a couple days, until the next doctor visit and a second set of new crutches.

The other day, in the middle of a three-day thunderstorm, I was crutching through the garage after an errand run, and the crutch slipped on water, bringing me down between a shelf and our car.  I was close to fitting the concrete step.  After that incident, I noticed that the rubber feet on my crutches are almost entirely worn down.  Luckily, I had the older pair of crutches with better feet to replace the worn out ones.

A couple weeks back, Jill and I were near Park City, Utah, and decided to squeeze in some shopping at a Tanger Outlet Mall.  It immediately dawned on me that using crutches wasn’t a viable option, so we found the mall management office and borrowed a wheelchair.  It made navigating the stores much easier.  However, we forgot that the outdoor mall was on a slight hill.  That slight hill suddenly became a mountain, with Jill pushing my heavy carcass in that well-worn in wheelchair.  We didn’t do much shopping that day.

While being confined to home or places with motorized scooters for shopping, it’s become increasingly obvious that we needed to get a wheelchair.  There are places I just can’t go to unless it’s a quick stop.  Even a cozy drug store is a big ordeal for me.  And with the need to get out, back to school shopping on the horizon, and picking up family at the airport in the next couple weeks, I needed to get a wheelchair.

At first, I was going to rent one.  The price was less than convenient.  Buying one is even worse, and I don’t think my injury would warrant one through insurance.

However, it turns out that Jill’s grandfather, who is no longer with us, had a wheelchair, and it’s been sitting in storage for about eight years.  After reminding my in-laws a couple times about it, they finally picked it up and brought it to me.  My mother-in-law and her family were more than happy to lend it to us.

I never had the chance to meet Jill’s grandfather.  I’ve seen his picture on the wall.  More so, I’ve experienced his legacy.  Their annual family reunion is something he started and fostered over the years.  The reunion as it is today is in memory of the man, not just a continuation of the tradition he started.  And naturally, his influence is found in my the whole family, from my in-laws, to extended family, to my wife and her siblings.

In some way, using his wheelchair is a small chance to know the man.  I get to walk - or roll, as it were - in his shoes.

I think he and I would have gotten along well.  From what I understand of talking to family about him, he was an inventive and creative man.  He had that tinkerer mentality, and enjoyed trying to find a way to make something work.  When he saw an opportunity, he took it.  He exemplified some of the same characteristics I have, or wish to foster.

In some small way, I also feel like I have a chance to be closer to my new extended family.

It’s amazing how borrowing a simple wheelchair makes one contemplative of the people who walked before you.

There is discussion on CQ Magazine’s Facebook page concerning the incorporation of other electronic fields into the world of amateur radio.  The conversation can be found here.  Some people feel that amateur radio is a hobby that should almost solely be focused on radio.  Others feel there is plenty of room for other interests, and if nothing else, new enthusiasts might be drawn into the radio hobby through those interests.

I’ve touched on this topic a bit in some of the posts on my regular blog.

Here’s how I see things.

First, ham radios numbers have changed.  Most people will tell you that the number of licensed amateur radio operators had decreased over the years.  I am having trouble finding those statistics.  Sometimes I wonder if people notice the number of active operators has decreased, while the actual number of operators hasn’t changed to match perception.  As operators pass on, licenses forfeited from disuse, and new operators come into the hobby, the number of hams in the US will always change.  Right now, there are 58,800 more hams in 2010 then there were about the same time in 2004.

The biggest change seems to be in age.  It’s hard to find actual age numbers, but the average age of amateur radio operators appear to be in their 40s.  CQ Magazine recently did a survey of their “fans” on Facebook and found the average age was 45.  Granted, this is Facebook we’re talking about, but still, amateur radio operators are not the major demographic of Facebook, and yet of 3500 hams connected to CQ Magazine on Facebook, the average age is about 20-30 years older than the average Facebook user’s age.  As the older generations shrink in population, the hams who joined the hobby within the last 20 years are now between their 30s and 50s.  This makes for a younger mix of people.

Technology has changed.  I can’t give you actual “figures” on how things have changed, but 20 years ago some of the radio technologies we use today were cutting edge.  Digital modes are commonplace now.  Computer integration is still in it’s early stages, but worlds apart from how lightly computers were used in the radio hobby in the 1990s.

With everything changing, and a lot of change with similar technologies outside of amateur radio, you would imagine radio on the cutting edge of discovery more now than ever.

But it’s not.

Amateur radio has it’s cutting edge, for sure.  But compared to the rest of the electronic world, cutting edge in amateur radio often seems like child’s play.

The things that the commercial wireless telecommunications world are wolds apart from amateur radio, even though both utilize some of the same basic practices of radio technology.  Amateur radio doesn’t influence commercial cell phones - cell phones influence and change radio, instead.

For instance, who really needs a radio phone patch these days, given the dominance of the cell phone industry?  I recall using radios that seem archaic to today’s standards, which often feel more like phone components than radio rigs.  A new radio today is much more user-friendly, consumer-friendly, and feature-rich - all due to changes in electronics, which are primarily led by the cell phone industry.

With all this in mind, one might wonder what robotics, computers, and other electronics have to do with amateur radio.  Some will even tell you they have no part in the world of radio.  I feel otherwise.

I believe that radio communications will always be the primary function of the radio hobby.  But excluding other technologies because they are not inherently radio-related is a very short-sighted mistake.

Where would modern digital radio communications be without the computer?  It would barely exist.

Who’s to say there’s no room in radio for robotics, especially when they’re using radio technologies to communicate?  Who’s to say that you can’t use the Internet to make a radio connection, when it does such a wonderful job of supplementing the radio hobby in so many ways?  Why can’t radio be supplemented by various technologies, instead of dwindling in disuse from exclusion from the rest of the technological hobbies?

It seems to me that amateur radio could use some new “methods” of communication.  And they could certainly use the people brought in by inclusion of other hobbies.  I, myself, was brought in by an extensive computing and BBSing hobby.  At some point, amateur radio was a logical addition to what I was already interested in.

Here’s the biggest reason, as I see it, to include other technologies: innovation.

I was inactive in amateur radio for about ten years.  And in those ten years, I’ve seen a lot of change.  But I’ve also seen how the hobby has lagged behind the technological edge.  This week I’ve been playing with APRS - a cutting-edge technology now as it was ten years ago.  However, you would imagine that dozens of new APRS and generic mapping software would have become available.  You would expect to see a pretty modern system being used as the technology has progressed.  In reality, the software used is archaic.  The hardware used is even more ancient.  How many computers still have serial connections on them since the advent of USB ten years ago?  Despite this, most ham radio hardware, if it even has a computer connection, use really old RS-232 serial cable technology rather than the now old standard of USB connectivity.

Perhaps a little infusion of new technology will bring us more capable radios, more integration with computers, and new formats to try our hands at.  I’m shocked that we’re many, many years behind the world of cell phones when all that’s inside the cell phone is a more sophisticated radio device and a miniature computing system.  Like ham radio, a cell phone has telephony, digital services, and station-to-station relay.  And yet, your average amateur radio isn’t much more advanced than they were a decade ago.

So, in my opinion, the more we can bring to the hobby, the better off it will be.  Don’t be so worried about losing sight of radio communications, and be more cognizant of the possibilities with an infusion of new tech.

If you want to regain that cutting edge technology, and if you’d like to see new operators on the air, give other technologies a chance to show how they can fit in with amateur radio.

Remember, we are a hobby of inclusion, nor exclusion.

I don’t often get upset about something.  In the past, I’ve been upset about the State of Utah’s liquor laws, and all the new laws they decided to enact these past few years to keep people kids from drinking (which hasn’t actually done anything).  I recently got upset when I learned that Utah Highway Patrol was sending officers to watch for Utahns buying fireworks and liquor over the border in Wyoming, then radioing the plates and car description to officers sitting back on the Utah side of the border.  This one goes back home to North Carolina, and really bothers me.

Years ago, when I bought a house in Knightdale, I did everything I could to avoid the restrictive covenants 0f homeowner’s associations.  You don’t see HOAs in Utah all too much, probably because houses are just plopped down on streets instead of having subdivisions built.  A lot of it might also be due to different notions of what a “neighborhood” means in Utah.  But in North Carolina, Homeowner’s Associations, with Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs) are commonplace and difficult to avoid.

Basically, in an ideal homeowner’s association group, the organization is intended to maintain stability within the neighborhood.  This stability is a consistent appearance to protect every neighbor’s property investment.  Ideally, the HOA keeps someone from neglecting their yard, filling it with junk, or keeping run down cars from accumulating.   The down side is someone living in the neighborhood may not have a choice in the color of their mailbox, the trees in their yard, or the paint on the house.  These are minor issues in most cases.  For me, avoiding CC&Rs was so I could maintain a ham radio antenna.  In the end, I was lucky to buy a house without an association.  My close friend Richard, however, was not as fortunate as I was.

Richard lives in Mingo Creek subdivision in Knightdale, North Carolina, which was a nice neighborhood that I might have purchased a home in, if not for the restrictive covenants.  Richard and Colleen have been living there for about four years.  I always liked that neighborhood.  But now, I feel sorry for them.

Their HOA is a joke.  The management company, Fred Smith Homes, has the majority representation on the HOA board.  There are five seats, two of which are residents of the neighborhood, three of which are appointed employees of the business that manages the HOA dues which are intended to help maintain the neighborhood and the HOA organization.  Normally, the management company holds one seat, not the majority.  Usually, the neighbors are the ones in charge.  It’s funny to think of all the people who complain about their neighbors dictating how their property looks.  Trust me it could be worse.  It could be what the neighbors of Mingo Creek are dealing with.

Because the management company holds the majority of the seats in the neighborhood, and not the residents, the company calls all the shots.  In fact, a majority gets to call an HOA meeting.  Or in the case of Mingo Creek, the management company gets to reject and cancel any meeting between them and the residents paying them money.

It gets worse.

On top of improper representation, the residents are being strong armed in the same way a mob “protects” the members of a community by charging them money not to break their legs.  In this case, however, the employees of the management company are citing residents for infractions to their Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions to a severe degree.  One neighbor was cited for having her trash cans within visual site of her own driveway and not concealed in the back yard.  The woman is handicapped and struggles to move her trashcans to the curb each week, and now she’s being harassed for having them within site of her garage - not the street, mind you, but at the end of the driveway nearest the house.

Another resident was fined for not powerwashing their house to “their” standards.

Neighbors are cited if grass touches the tires of their cars - even an inch is a violation, in their eyes.

And if you want to challenge a citation, you have to visit their office at a specific time and date - 30 miles away.

The two residents actually on the association board are shut out of any “meetings” about their own neighborhood.

In my opinion, this is the HOA gone wrong.  This is my worst nightmare come true.  While I completely disagree with the “god complex” most HOAs foster, I’ve never heard of the management and maintenance company taking over the way theirs has.

And on top of all this, if you live in the neighborhood, you pay $33 a month for this kind of treatment.  $48 if you’re late on your payment.  And they can take your house through liens if you refuse.

Seriously, these people are just a short step away from the mob.

I feel so bad for the residents of Mingo Creek.

I hope they organize and fight this to the end.  They don’t deserve this kind of treatment.  For my part, Mingo Creek residents, you have my complete support.  I wish you the best!

 

I passed the exam!

When I started my interest in amateur radio, there were six different classes of licenses, and I started out at one of the lowest.  Over the years, my license became the lowest of three.  Now I’m in the second class, with only one more left to master.

I’m very happy with myself.  The test was easier than I thought.  I actually scored better on this test than I had in a month of practicing: 91.4%, or 32 correct out of 35 questions.  It was very rewarding.

After accomplishing what I’d set out to do, they asked if I wanted to test for the next level.  It wouldn’t cost any more, so I did.  If I had correctly answered another 19 questions I would have passed (the next level has 50 questions).  But it was nice to leave with what I’d gone in for.

The best part is, I accomplished a task, I completed a goal.  If I can do one thing, I can do others.  And I really needed to prove that to myself.

And a month from now, I hope to be sitting in the same room passing the last exam.

Back to the practice tests…