The Berenstein Bears

Woman vanishes on live TV. The internet is baffled.
We know what really happened, don't we? It was either a Messenger translocating herself or someone being translocated by a Messenger. ;)

That kind of goes along with this week's topic. When I was a kid, there was a series of books called the Berenstein Bears. There were some cartoons of it, too. I didn't watch those much. That's been a long time ago, but I remember thinking at the time that with the stein ending it must be Jewish. I thought it was an alternative to Christmas or something.

This past week I came across something utterly mind blowing. Someone was claiming Berenstein is actually spelled Berenstain and always has been. Ridiculous, of course. They were popular back in the day, and I saw them often. It was always Berenstein. I assumed that in modern times there was a bad printing batch with the Berenstain spelling, or maybe the publisher changed it for some reason, perhaps to avoid growing anti-Semetism. So, I looked it up on Amazon to try to find an old 80s copy with the correct name. Amazon doesn't carry them. They only have Berenstain Bears.

How you spell "The Berenstain Bears" could be proof of parallel universes

WHAT? It's like something I've seen a million times has suddenly changed. It's like reality itself has been altered. It turns out this is a subset of a phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect. The definition is on the right. It's named after something that happened during the 80s. Masses of people remember Nelson Mandela dying in prison, when he didn't.

I could almost think that perhaps I'd misread the name many, many times, but there are masses of other people who also remember it as Berenstein. Hmm.

I don't believe in parallel universes, but finding reality altered was still disturbing. It's very close to what liberals are doing to American history. For example, according to the founding fathers, the third most important founding father was Benjamin Rush. Most Americans have never heard of him. He's not in university textbooks, because he was a minister. He's listed at the bottom of this page as an academic, doctor and writer, but his biography is purely secular and focuses on subjects liberals find comfortable. With the exception of one secular book, his writing isn't even mentioned, especially his theological work. A lot of American history is like this. It's being erased because it makes American liberals uncomfortable and undermines their worldview.

It's not that they're changing old books or anything. They're simply leaving out what they don't like. As books have fallen out of print, newer sanitized versions have replaced them. This has been going on for decades. Generations of Americans don't know the true history of the country. The best place to find actual history has become the original documents the founders wrote. An underground movement has risen up to champion real history, but they're a very small group and are fighting tremendous inertia.

Book Stuff
I've begun going through the YA book. I'm a little over 1/3 of the way through. This is a read through with some minor corrections such as Project Lemmings. For some reason I had it spelled Project Lemming the first two times in the book. It's the name of a mission the main character takes in the virtual reality game she's playing.
Once I'm done with the read through, I'll need to go through it again and evaluate more substantial changes. Those would be polishing paragraphs and word choices that I missed before. If I have the same word in a paragraph, I'd want to change that. If a paragraph felt choppy, I'd alter sentence length and structure to make it read smoothly. Nitty gritty stuff.

Studio
I'm trying to get the side of the room I haven't shown in pictures cleaned up. :) It's not that bad. I've thrown three cheap shelves out during the cleanup. Yesterday, I was finally able to get a metal shelf to replace them. Now I can finish tidying up. It's almost done. You can bet that Berenstein thing is going to be a video.