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Author: Gregory Hatton
Publisher: Universal Wisdom Publications
Genre: Spirituality
ISBN: 978-0-9880275-2-7
Pages: 256
Price: $34.95

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The last prophet lived over 2000 years ago, but what if God decided to send a messenger to his people on earth right now? With all the technological advances we’ve made since then, would He share information about the science behind creation? The Master of Evolution explores this question through a fictional account of a new prophet God is sending to humanity.

John Cavendish is on a special mission to the moon to investigate the Peak of Eternal Light. While there, he suddenly comes face to face with the angel, Gabriel. Through conversations with Gabriel and scientists such as Einstein and Darwin, the history of earth is revealed. God is light, as the Bible suggests, and author Gregory Hatton proceeds to prove this through a series of mathematical calculations. He also shows how this light is involved in all of creation, and man’s purpose and future are explored.

An abundance of interesting theory is presented in this unique fictional work. As with all religious speculation, I err on the side of caution, yet nothing feels dangerous or in conflict with scripture or mainstream teaching. This story is an enjoyable read that will give you a lot to think about.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

Author: C. David Lundberg
Publisher: Heavenlight Press
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 978-0-9796308-2-8
Pages: 448
Price: $18.95

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Religion has long been a divisive force between people and nations, often leading to violence and death. Looking closely at their practices leads to the thought that there is no harmony in the major religions of the world. But author C. David Lundberg shows us his vision of the underlying beliefs they all hold dear.

Broken into sections, Unifying Truths of the World’s Religions covers topics such as the meaning and purpose of life, who we really are, who and what God is, and the various love relationships we share with God, ourselves, and others. Within each subsection, a description of the topic is presented, along with several texts from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism in support of this topic.

When provided with such overwhelming evidence of these overlapping beliefs, it’s impossible not to see how alike we are. At its best, religion brings us closer to God and each other, and reinforces morality as a standard of living. It is the author’s hope that he has shown us how much we have in common, so we can begin to break down the walls that separate us. He has done a marvelous job.

AWARDS RECEIVED:

• Winner, National Indie Excellence Book Award
• Winner, USA Book News National Best Book Award
• Winner, Nautilus Silver Award
• Winner, New England Book Festival
• Finalist, ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year

Reviewer: Alice Berger

By Elijah Siegler

Last night at the Oscars, the Academy awarded a golden statuette to a film about a flawed hero who we the audience empathize with, who departs their normal life, enters a strange world, but returns triumphantly. Did I just describe Best Picture Winner Argo?

Yes, but also best animated short winner, Paperman, best animated feature winner, Brave, and best live action short winner, Curfew.

So whether the hero is a CIA operative, an besotted office worker, an Scottish princess or a suicidal man, and whether the journey is to revolutionary Iran, to a world of sentient paper airplanes, to a dark forest, or to a magical bowling alley, these films, and it’s safe to say, most of their fellow nominees, have spiritually uplifting themes, and generally follow a pattern of a mythic journey to redemption. (Indeed as my colleague’s S. Brent Plate pointed out, religion permeates all nine best picture nominees and the ceremonies themselves.)

Academy members, and audiences in general, like and expect movies to be heroic journeys of redemption. One 2012 film, Cosmopolis, is about a journey that’s anything but heroic and redemptive. Indeed, the film, based on a short novel by Don DeLillo, charts a billionaire’s limo ride across Manhattan to get a haircut as ironic, pointless and even destructive. Unsurprisingly, Cosmopolis received precisely zero Oscar nominations. Now, I’m not here to argue that this film was better than any of the nine nominated films.

One reason that the film’s director and screenwriter, David Cronenberg, despite being widely regarded as one of the world’s best living filmmakers, has never been nominated for, let alone won, an Academy Award, is because all his films explicitly reject themes of “redemption” and “spiritual uplift.”

Cronenberg is known not only an originator of the body horror subgenre (Shivers, Rabid, The Brood), and for adapting difficult works of literature (Naked Lunch, Crash, Cosmopolis), but for being one of the few filmmakers who explicitly identifies as atheist, and whose work ignores all religious themes. Cronenberg’s public atheism is all the more notable considering his association with horror, a genre often analyzed as fundamentally religious. Think about all the horror films that include one of more of the following: the dead displaced, satanic cults, covens, possession, exorcism, ghosts, and curses. Or think how often religious symbols a church or a crucifix, become sites of terror. So it is significant that none of Cronenberg’s films have any religious or supernatural elements. And this is not coincidence, but his conscious choice. More succinctly, he told me when I interviewed him at his home in Toronto, he does not “want to promote supernatural thinking.”

More significantly, both his earlier horror films and his later more literary films eschew the thematic underpinning virtually every Hollywood film ever: the battle between good and evil. Cronenberg’s films do not provide the visual and aural clues that conventional Hollywood cinema uses to denote good and evil. His heroes are not particularly altruistic or, indeed, heroic. The protagonists of several of his films [SPOILER ALERT], including Videodrome, The Fly and Dead Ringers die—but their deaths are neither redemptive nor sacrificial, nor do they result in any kind of triumphant return, symbolic or otherwise.

Many of his films do not have traditional villains. Even his seemingly conventional antagonists, from the sex parasites in Shivers to the multinational corporation Spectacular Optical in Videodrome to Naked Lunch’s Dr. Benway, are sinister and scary, but function as necessary agents of change.

When Cronenberg does use religious imagery to suggest evil, it is neither supernatural nor transcendent. Rather, his religious imagery evokes authoritarian institutions. Dead Ringers, based on a true story of twin gynecologists’ descent into madness and addiction, includes examination scenes set in the Mantle Clinic, their medical practice. The clinic functions as a kind of quasi-religious institution and the scenes are terrifying (even though this is not at all a traditional horror film), inasmuch as they show the power that doctors have over patients, and that men have over women (see Image).

In both his personal philosophy and his films, David Cronenberg sees no need for transcendence, or for the fulfillment of the hero’s quest, or for cosmic reward and punishment. And yet his films wrestle with the same questions of meaning that our favorite “religious” films do (questions of sex and death, power and desire, family and society, identity and transformation) but that do so in a uniquely nonreligious way. The Oscars may never give Cronenberg his due, but anyone interested in religion, film and their relationship, needs to.

Elijah Siegler is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston. His article “David Cronenberg: The secular auteur as critic of religion” was recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

The Journal of the American Academy of Religion is generally considered to be the top academic journal in the field of religious studies. This international quarterly journal publishes top scholarly articles that cover the full range of world religious traditions together with provocative studies of the methodologies by which these traditions are explored.

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Author: Cynthia Bové
Publisher: O Books
Genre: Spirituality
ISBN: 978-1-84694-420-8
Pages: 199
Price: $19.95

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A Course in Miracles offers spiritual direction for many in their quest to better themselves and their lives. But is it possible that someone else suggested these ideas at a much earlier date? In The Fifth Disciple, author Cynthia Bové proposes that the Gospel of Thomas presents some of these very same teachings from Jesus, himself.

In the first sections of this book, the two source documents are introduced. Insights from A Course in Miracles are presented and analyzed. Then we are provided with the text of Pursah’s Gospel of Thomas. The last half of the book compares this gospel to the writings in the course, looking for similarities in meaning.

Familiarity with A Course in Miracles is of great benefit in reading this book. Many of the ideas presented are abstract, and can easily elude the casual reader who has no knowledge of these teachings. Those who follow mainstream religions may not relate to this New Age message, despite the possibility that it could have come directly from Jesus. But whatever your belief system may be, The Fifth Disciple is an interesting read.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

The idea of One started small and grew into a year's worth of amazing, thought-provoking, inspirational stories. The resulting anthology was combined into a beautiful paperback book (not unlike Chicken Soup for the Soul, and definitely nice enough for any Doctor's office).

By Roger S. Gottlieb

Ahhh… the joys of the holiday season in America! A frightening degree of crass commercialism, public rages about the ‘war on Christmas,’ emotionally draining family events, or a soul-graying loneliness when you have no place to go. Food in abundance, but often consumed with a sense that it’s way off of one’s (more healthy) diet; or perhaps a nagging guilt that we in the middle/upper classes have so much more than the approximately 1 billion people who lack access to clean water, adequate food, and health services. We might notice that it is, again, “warmer than usual” — even though ‘warmer than usual’ is the new usual. Overall, there’s the unrelenting message that, of all things, we are supposed to be happy — a more effective recipe for discontent bordering on depression might not be easy to find.

Even though as a Jew some of this doesn’t touch me, a good deal does: from the spectacle to the parties to the social pressure about my mood.

Is there an answer to this? A way out? Well, the major claim of spirituality — defined simply as the attempt to be mindful, accepting, grateful, compassionate, and loving — is that the more one lives by these virtues the better one feels. Spirituality offers a sure path to long-lasting, non-addictive, non-destructive peace of mind, and makes you a lot more fun to be around as well. How would it work this season?

To begin, there are certain quite effective spiritual responses: gratitude for what we do have even if it’s not ideal, compassion on our troublesome family members, tolerance for the consumerist foibles of others and ourselves.

But there’s something else to try as well. What if we read the actual stories that are the basis of both Christmas and Hanukkah from a spiritual perspective? What if we put aside the hoopla, big sales, and parties graced by altogether too much alcohol and asked ourselves if these narratives contain a deep, significant, and quite personal meaning?

One way to read the great religious myths spiritually is to internalize them, understanding the different actors and narratives as aspects of our own selves and our own experience of the world.

Understood this way, what do the birth of Jesus and the Israelite victory over the Syrian Greek occupiers and their own assimilationists have to teach us?

On the most immediate level, there is the simple joy of birth and of rebirth. Taken as a reflection of our own lives, this indicates the permanent possibility that something new and wondrous is always possible. No matter how “poor” (in whatever sense) we are, even if we have to sleep in the stable or our traditions are being erased in favor of new gods, tomorrow a fundamental change for the better may come. In a kind of miracle, reality fundamentally shifts. This may come from the powers of nature as a birth. It may come from a seemingly impossible victory of a marginalized group over an unquestionably more powerful force. But if we stay tuned into the reality of our lives, if we do not turn our back on the permanent chance of transformation, we can trust that what we face now may not last.

As participants in the change, whose courage helps bring it about, and as witnesses to processes such as birth, which draw on mysteries beyond our comprehension, we surely live in a more blessed universe if we are able recognize that such events, even the darkest of times, remain possible. It is not an irrational faith, but realism more powerful than despair, which tells us that we do not know what the future will bring.

In the spiritual appropriation of sacred texts there is always a deeper — and often a darker and more difficult — level. Let us remember that we read the familiar stories of Jesus’ birth and the triumph of the Maccabees against a knowledge of what happens later. Jesus is crucified; the Temple, re-sanctified by Jewish rebels, is a few centuries later destroyed by the Romans. There is a birth, yes, but the birth gives way to a brutal execution; a rebirth to a 2000 year exile.

In this sequence we find the ultimate truth that all mortal realities — each child born, each ethnic tradition preserved or reconstituted — is at best limited and temporary. As persons we are born to die. As humans we are part of cultural groups which are just as mortal.

Each new beginning presages another ending; each joy, a loss. Yet paradoxically, only in the finitude of what we have is the reality of human life truly experienced. And only in that experience is an authentic spiritual joy possible without energy sapping denial, suppression of the truth of mortality, or a necessarily self-destructive clinging to that which inevitably fades.

Have a happy holiday? For sure! But happiness not based in the ego’s attachment to toys, sensual pleasures, or cultural identity. It is, rather, happiness rooted in the simple but spectacular truth that to be here, even for our brief time, is a miracle. As much a miracle as the birth of a Someone who would forgive us our sins, or the triumph of the oppressed over their rulers.

We too can be born, we too can rise up against the parts of ourselves that are oppressive, or the irrational social powers that surround us. We can do it knowing that eventually we will die, and that in all probability oppression will follow any liberation we experience or create, only to make room, hopefully, for more liberation in a cycle that is the analogue of any ecosystem.

If this is a purely earthly spirituality, if heaven and immortal life and the resurrection of the body don’t figure here, well, that is the only kind I personally understand.

Take it for what it’s worth. And have blessed holiday season.

Roger S. Gottlieb is professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, author of editor of seventeen books on religion, environmentalism, ethics, and political theory, and internet presence on Huffington, Patheos, and Tikkun Daily. His new book, Spirituality: What it Is and Why it Matters, has just been published by Oxford University Press.

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Image credit: Christmas shopping xwoman stress. Photo by Maridav, iStockphoto.

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Author: David Frenette
Publisher: Sounds True
Genre: Spirituality
ISBN: 978-1-60407-673-8
Pages: 255
Price $24.95

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While many people associate prayer with speaking to God in words, a different kind of prayer also exists. In comtemplative prayer, we commune with God in silence, using either a sacred word or symbol. And if we want to go even deeper, we can use only the silence to bring us closer to God.

The Path of Centering Prayer focuses on those who have been practicing contemplative prayer for a while. In it, David Frenette offers insights into his own practice, as well as using examples of others who have followed this path, as a guide for the serious practitioner. For those who have never tried this type of prayer, he explains the process and encourages them to begin.

Contemplative prayer is much like meditation, but with a focus on God instead of simply the quieting of thought. However, the practitioner may experience many of the same frustrations with this form of prayer. Frenette reminds us that this is normal, and the best thing to do is to continue the practice anyway, noticing the root issue behind the frustration. If you’ve been practicing contemplative prayer for a while and need some freshness in your routine, or if you are interested in beginning a new practice, this book will help you on your journey.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

Author: Deanna Nowadnick
Publisher: Rhododendron Books
Genre: Spirituality
ISBN: 978-0-9835897-2-3
Pages: 114
Price: $12.95

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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23

Modeling her actions after Paul’s words has not been an easy task for Deanna Nowadnick. As she reviewed
her life, intending to provide her sons with a short story, she realized she wanted to share her insights with a larger audience. Fruit of My Spirit was born.

Each chapter focuses on one of the fruits of the Spirit. In it, Nowadnick tells of an incident in her own life relating to that particular characteristic. Her strong faith in God and humility shine through, helping the reader see her struggles and giving hope that we too can overcome. With God’s help, we are all able to be better people.

Nowadnick is warm, open and vulnerable in sharing her life stories with us. The reader will come away with the sense that they already know her and share a common bond. A woman who tries to embody the fruits of the Spirit is a true role model for the rest of us. I highly recommend this inspirational book.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

Author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD
Publisher: Sounds True
Genre: Spirituality
ISBN: 978-1-60407-635-6
Pages: 400
Price: $27.95

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The Virgin Mary has long been seen as a serene paragon of the Christian faith. Usually portrayed with the Christ child on her lap, she smiles sweetly from behind her veil. But what if she had another side to her – a wild side?

In Untie the Strong Woman, Clarissa Pinkola Estés shows us that the Blessed Mother does, in fact, have a wild side. This strong and vibrant woman challenges the author to do things she wouldn’t ordinarily do. Estés spent time working with incarcerated girls at her leading, and hired an alcoholic for mason work outside her home when she felt Mary was guiding her. The wild woman also includes the Black Madonna, and Estés shares her story, as well as many others.

For those who only see the Virgin Mary as a peaceful mother of Jesus, these images may come as a surprise. Getting to know her and following her leading may cause us to wind up in places we might not have chosen to go. But we can be sure we’ll be in for a wild ride.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

Author: Jack Kornfield
Publisher: Sounds True
Genre: Meditation / Spirituality / Buddhism
ISBN: 978-1-60407-642-4
Pages: 103
Price: $19.95

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Trouble is an inevitable part of being human. Although it’s tempting to simply bemoan our fate when something bad happens, it’s far more effective to accept these upsetting issues and integrate them into our whole life experience. In A Lamp in the Darkness, Jack Kornfield shares his thoughts on dealing with difficult times, in an effort to help us get through them.

Suffering can be caused by many things, and Kornfield reminds us that we already have an inner light – “The One Who Knows” – who will guide us. We may be in so much pain that we don’t feel we’re capable of compassion, forgiveness, healing, and wisdom, but these are some of the topics discussed, followed by meditations to explore these characteristics more deeply. An accompanying CD provides audio recordings of these meditations.

Difficulty doesn’t need to destroy us. We can rise above what happens, with our sense of self and peace of mind intact. A Lamp in the Darkness shows us how.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

Designing Fairy mouths off…

I’ve been pondering a lot of messages floating about on the internet and social groups lately. Even my old church promoted just loving everyone and seeing their higher selves. I think that is an excellent idea, but there needs to be disclaimers with these types of messages.

Do you love the person who is abusive to you? Just smile and see their higher self? What about the jerk pushing over your boundaries and walking right through them? Some of this line of love thinking feels very hippy-I’m-high-on-something kind of crap when I am encountering these kind of individuals, so I am guessing, that’s where my anger comes in.

Here’s my advice: yes, love them. See their higher selves and RUN! I mean frickin’ run for that damn exit. Let them bother someone else then, and run past their boundaries and treat them like crap. Honey, I am not going to sit there and see the good they could possibly be, or that they are souls just like me underneath. Yes, so true, but right now they are toxic to me and I’m going to RUN!

I think the bottom line under all of that teaching about love is, do you love yourself? Do you love yourself enough to want to be surrounded by people who really care about your feelings and needs, and truly care about your boundaries? Do they hear you when you speak about your concerns, or, do they act like they hear you, but then trample over you anyway? Do you love yourself enough to not be abused by someone else’s bad behavior, that you might understand underneath why they are acting the way they are, but right now you will keep yourself safe and out of the line of fire?

So, yes, it is all about LOVE. Just love you, and love them enough to let them learn their own lessons, but far over there.

Author: Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Publisher: Sounds True
Genre: Spirituality / Buddhism
ISBN: 978-1-60407-095-8
Pages: 120
Price: $14.95

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The Bön Buddhist tradition of Tibet has been practiced for a very long time, through the efforts of a few dedicated lamas. In Tibetan Sound Healing, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche teaches us the Five Warrior Syllables from the Bön practice, and shows us how to use them in our own lives.

First Rinpoche introduces us to the syllables. These are A, OM, HUNG, RAM, and DZA, each of which has its own energy as we sing these sounds. Then we’re instructed to read the chapter about each syllable, turning to the CD to listen to it being sung by Rinpoche. A final track on the CD is three chanted prayers.

This book and CD set complement each other nicely. Rinpoche explains the syllables with clear images, describing our feelings as if we were in the desert, and adding more elements as we move to the next syllable. As the sounds reverberate, we can easily place ourselves in the images he’s created, and work with these Five Warrior Syllables to activate our own healing potential.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

Author: Stephen J. Iacoboni, MD
Publisher: SJI Publishing
Genre: Health / Spirituality
ISBN: 978-0-983-05380-4
Pages: 166
Price: $24.95

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Treating those who are diagnosed with cancer is a difficult path. An oncologist knows there is a strong possibility his treatment won’t work, or that the cancer will show up again at some point in the future. Facing death is a regular occurrence and a feeling of helplessness can easily become overwhelming. But when Dr. Iacoboni discovers the undying soul in his patients, his whole outlook changes.

After struggling with treatment protocols that felt more like guesswork than a real cure, Iacoboni needed to find a purpose. Meaningful soul connections began to occur, and he noticed that some people could find peace in their passing, while others struggled to the bitter end. With this new revelation, he could now help them in ways he hadn’t been able to in his early days. No longer just cancer patients, they were now undying souls.

The Undying Soul is Iacoboni’s story of how he reconciled his beliefs in modern medical science with his almost-forgotten faith. Sharing the experiences he had with the angel-saints he believes were sent to help him, he reassures us that cancer doesn’t need to scare us. We too can have the peace of knowing we have an undying soul, and there is a better place awaiting us.

Reviewer: Alice Berger

tatiana de la tierra

In Chile, Luzclara lives in a round wooden temple that overlooks the Maipo River and faces the Andes mountains. Buddhist flags, statues of goddesses, and an organic garden planted in the shape of a spiral lead the way to Luz del Maipo, the temple that she calls home. This is where she meditates, does yoga, prepares for ceremony, and rides on horseback into the mountains to a special retreat. But shamanic leader Luzclara Camus is a globetrotter who hasn’t been home much lately. She’s been in Poland, Spain, Portugal, and France recently, facilitating ceremonies of the sacred feminine. Her next stop is California, with weekend workshops planned in the Los Angeles area (June 17-19) and in Mount Shasta (June 24-26).

A Priestess of the Goddess, Luzclara is on a mission to bring women together in old-fashioned ways. Imagine a circle of women chanting and drumming around a fire under the full moon. “It’s time for women to come together again,” she says. “This is a moment of a great awakening to the feminine, and we are responding en masse. We’ve been living in a patriarchal system for thousands of years, where we had to develop our masculine side in order to survive. We had to learn to compete, for instance, and we had to forget our feminine essence.”

I met Luzclara in a medicine journey in Chile a few years ago. That same night, after I’d met her, she came to me in a dream as a condor. Over the next few days, I participated in fire circles, sweat lodge, sound healing, and a labyrinth ceremony that she led. I learned of her ways of viewing sexuality, menstruation, manifestation, healing, Pachamama, plant medicine, menopause, and magic. I also found out that the grand Condor is her totem, and that, before going to sleep, she gives her light body permission to travel. Luzclara has unforgettable presence and I’m looking forward to her landing at Los Angeles International Airport in a few days.

Responding to an email interview while taking a break in Saint-Tropez in the French Riviera, Luzclara explains that ancient ones said that the way energy enters the planet changes every two thousand years. Masculine energy entered Earth from the Himalayas, and now feminine energy is entering from the Andes mountain range. “Feminine energy is not just for women,” she says. “It’s for everyone, and it’s time for the feminine qualities to develop once again.”

A native of Chile, Luzclara was mentored by an indigenous Mapuche Machi (shaman), Antonia Lincolaf, after the Machi came to her in a dream in 1981. Machi Antonia taught her how to hold ceremonies and how

Health and Wellness week continues with my review of Soul Proof by Dr. Mark Pitstick.

Who are we?  Why are we here?  What's next after this life, anything?

~  After Death Contacts

I’ve always had a hard time classifying BRINDLE. Is it a ghost story? A paranormal satirical religious fantasy? An old-fashioned mystical fable with a twist? I’m seriously open to your suggestions.

For now we’ll just call it a short story of mine, and for the next few days it’s FREE! You can download it here, and use the coupon code: VR22W. But hurry! Coupon expires March 20.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: child, children, fable, fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, fantasy short story, Free fiction, Free short stories, free short story, Free stories, ghost story, ghosts, orphan, orphans, Paranormal, paranormal abilities, Paranormal Fiction, paranormal short stories, paranormal short story, paranormal spiritual ghost story, paranormal story, religion, religious, religious extremism, religious fanaticism, religious fantasy, r

This has truly been an odd day. Today’s theme: solving mysteries!

Emma Lou, those of you who read my blog know she’s my basset hound, ate a box of gum yesterday. I still don’t know how she got it out of my purse, which was mostly closed and hanging on my chair hidden under a bunch of coats. I only know there was evidence of the box out in the yard. And, yes, oddly enough, her body must thrive on gum because she’s perfectly fine. That mystery hasn’t been solved yet. I think it has something to do with her very long stomach that made it doable. But grateful, a scary thing was taken care of on its own. (I did give her homeopathy and flower essences for making sure things kept moving.)

This morning, a reader led me to an article on personality disorders that helped me with a clue dealing with a person I knew in the past offering big-time validation. I’m so grateful that guidance came in such a round-about way but solved another mystery why she acted like she did.

I was so exhausted today that when I went to buy t.p. at the grocery store, I used my wrong debit card and thought I overdrawn my other account. If I had just bought the t.p. I’d been fine, but I got cash back without thinking.  Knowing I had a automatic payment coming through for my car insurance, I panicked. I rushed home to check my bank account and thought I just screwed up when I saw a zero balance and would probably have a fee! So I rushed back into town exhausted to the bank and found out all my upset was for naught. The car insurance payment didn’t post yet, and I had checks to deposit to cover what I needed when it did. I didn’t have to solve this one either, it was taken care of by itself.

Back at home, the neighbor mystery was finally solved. What mystery, you ask? My neighbors have been slowly disassembling their mobile home. Out when the porch. Then the shed. Then the bricks under the house. A few trees were moved. The renters were there one day and then gone the next. Then only one came back. It was fascinating to watch and wonder and quite weird. I finally got to talk to the landlords and found out that they sold the old mobile and were putting a new, fancier one in its place, which the landlords would now live in. Sounded like the renters were a bit interesting and there were quite a few stories there.

Overall thought for the day is I love solving mysteries but I especially like when they solve themselves.