My latest progress has me going in several different directions. For one, it’s been some time since I update my “history aids” file. In order to more seriously investigate religion, or government, or anything else, I have an itch to begin with the history of the subject, so after making a list of major categories of Christian denominations, the next thing to do was to connect them to history. I’ve started to do the same with government.

I still like the idea of beginning at the beginning with prehistory. A significant difficulty is that this has a lot to do with the modern Western academic establishment, which I haven’t yet studied very well.

For another, the topic of sociology has gotten too big to work all the way through it at one go. I’ve done some revising of the prehistory of sociology, but sociology also needs connections to religion and government.

For another, I’m doing something similar with history of peoples of the world, reviewing prehistory and connecting to major religions. I would like to do more with the history of communities, but I don’t really have enough much detail in prehistoric times. It makes more sense to start reviewing social mechanics.

I’ve also been working with Western Civilization, which also needs connections to religion and government, but I may want to pause and do a little more with modern history. I’m still connecting Asiatic peoples to elements of social mechanics. This is going well with attention to prehistory.

My continuing review of classical history is leading me through a review of the Roman empire, where I am taking notes on the various empires and imperial dynasties from the 2nd century CE ( I use the term CE for Christian or Common era) onward. I have been vaguely familiar with Roman imperial history, but haven’t really paid much attention to it. At the same time, I am working backward through the history of Italy in the 19th century. I had become aware that Italy was unified as a country in the latter part of the century, and before that was a patchwork of kingdoms, states, and duchies, but hadn’t considered them in much detail. I still don’t have much, but incorporating some notes will fill in more gaps in my understanding of European history.

Investigation of Sociology has prompted me to a survey of Neo-Pagan religion, which originated mostly in the 19th century with revivals and reconstructions of pagan beliefs. Neo-Druidism, witchcraft, New Age religion, and revived ethnic religions seem to be the main branches. I don’t have a great deal of interest in these, but include them for completeness.

I took a week to go to Nebraska to recover the stuff I left in my brother’s garage…. about 17 years ago, now. Yes, it took that long for me to finish getting it to where I am living. This eliminates one mental barrier to a project of discarding and downsizing my excess of stuff.

On the way, I stopped to visit an old High School friend. It seems that he is a Senior Research Engineer at the EVR facility associated with the University of Utah, and is working on a project which involves embedding charging facilities for electric vehicles in the roadway. Although I haven’t been a great fan of electric vehicles, this has some possibilities to make transportation more efficient.

I’m still pursing the three-pronged approach to history, and have done reviews of the 5th decamillennium BP and the 2nd century BC. This notably included expansion of the Roman republic.

The examination of sociology recently prompted more investigation of the the various branches of Christianity. This will be useful, going forward.

I also did a review of history in general, and noted that it is about time to focus more heavily on education, particularly higher education, and on conceptual culture, in particular literature, in order to make progress. In order to get to these, I need to continue working in classical history.