As a young child I knew I had several male relatives, but outside the immediate family, my paternal grandfather and my Uncle Louis, I really didn’t have much to do with them. My mother’s brothers were basically all out of the picture for one reason or another, while my father’s family was whittled down by death to my Uncle Louis and my aunt who shall remain incognito.
[Read more...]
Uncle Louis
June 13, 2011 By
Uncertain Raptures
May 21, 2011 By
My mind and heart are full today on this latest instance of Adventist disappointment. Most of my friends have enjoyed reasonably good-natured if sometimes hostile humor at the expense of the current iteration of muddled arithmetical exegesis, this time by a Protestant entrepreneur named Harold Camping. I’m sympathetic to their responses–the way Protestant millenarianism often presents itself is both arrogant and xenophobic. But one of my closest friends lost his mother this week, and today we bid her farewell in the LDS chapel that sheltered me for a crucial decade of my life. My heart is not in the Rapture parties staged by my friends and coworkers because my heart is with my friend and his family. As I reflected on the juxtaposition of C*’s funeral and the mostly good-natured mockery of Camping and his followers, I felt to attend more closely to the meanings that lurk behind Rapture rhetoric. In our shared grief, I want to draw out some of the important meanings hiding behind the half-silly, half-spiteful rhetoric that circulates around Rapture predictions. [Read more...]
Feed my baby sheeps
May 10, 2011 By
One of my favorite bible translations is Da Jesus Book. This is a translation from Greek to Hawaiian Pidgin. This pidgin (properly a Creole if you are a stickler for linguistic accuracy), like many of the world’s pidgins, arose in the context of diverse people needing to speak together. [Read more...]
The “New” Articles of Faith
March 21, 2011 By
In 1907, in an effort to put in place a picture of Mormonism for a 20th century audience, the Church, by common consent, approved a list of beliefs as well as explanation and confirmation of a transitioning Mormonism.[1] That effort may have had some impact within the Church, but its lasting effect as a new public direction in doctrine was minor in terms of its traction outside the Church and especially in the collective memory of the media, such as it was. [Read more...]
127 minutes
March 17, 2011 By
Disclaimer: Ok. This is over long. Nothing as exciting as the title intimates happens. It’s just rumination on aging. I wouldn’t bother with it.
Every year an old friend and I undertake an adventure. H. and I are middle aged now. Past our prime and youth when our adventures were bolder and more carefree. I can remember when we then, full of laughter, took his new pickup and rubbed its shiny sides against aspens for luck while searching out some secreted beaver dam in which to toss a fly. Now we fuss and fret. We worry endlessly about our kids and their kids and temper our exuberance with caution having faced too many sorrows and misfortunes since. We are stressed and plagued with the press of the day to day, and we both in demeanor have that worn edge that cheese graters achieve when used on granite. [Read more...]
The Memoir of Elizabeth Lee
March 15, 2011 By
My daughter has been on a major family history jag recently, and she’s turning into quite a little genealogist (better than her old man, anyway). She just sent me a wonderful treasure: a 21-page single-space typescript manuscript containing the first person memoir of Elizabeth Lee, which she wrote in January 1931 in Columbia. She was the older sister of my great grandmother Alice Lee. (This Lee family is related in some fashion to Harold B. Lee, but I haven’t tried to figure out exactly how.) I thought it was a wonderful window into what it was like to grow up as a girl in Utah in the 19th century, so I’m going to share a few excerpts with you here. (If she were alive today I suspect she’d be a perma at FMH.) Enjoy! [Read more...]
Your Sunday Brunch Special (#2). Utah Artist James T. Harwood, 1: The Reluctant Pioneer.
March 6, 2011 By
If you have spent much time with Latter-day Saint illustrated literature you have probably seen images of this painting:
The artist was James Taylor Harwood (1860-1940). Harwood’s story is interesting and Mormon-related if for no other reason than his LDS commissions to produce religious works like the one above (Come Follow Me – commissioned by the Deseret Sunday School Union) but it’s more interesting than that. To understand Harwood’s story, it is necessary to understand his parent’s and so we begin with James Harwood, James Taylor’s father.
[Read more...]
Could you qualify as a “Conscientious Objector”?
March 1, 2011 By
The following is a submission from Ron Madson, written on February 23, 2011, the fourth anniversary of his father’s passing as a tribute to his legacy.
My father was a WWII veteran that served in Patton’s infantry in the European theatre. It wasn’t until he was 91 years old before he told me the details of his war experiences—and I am not aware if he told anyone else. My father was the most Christ-like person I have ever known. In the fall of 2002 I sat with my father listening to the war rhetoric seeking to justify our nation’s invasion of Iraq. This man, who rarely showed emotion and spoke seldom, emotionally told me that he did not believe that there was any scripture or Christian principle that would allow us to attack another country as we did in Afghanistan and were about to do in Iraq. He was certain that in our anger, fear and pride we, like the Nephites of old, were abandoning our covenant with the Lord by being the aggressor. He was hopeful that as a people we would surely denounce these wars. Knowing his character I am certain that if he were magically young again, he would have applied for conscientious objector status as to our current wars— as he would have in Viet Nam. [Read more...]
What think ye of Christ?
December 13, 2010 By
I’m impressed by the “Jesus is _____” campaign. It’s catchy, it has viral appeal, and what’s more it arrives at the desired result — driving a large discussion about Christ — without imposing a predetermined path to discussion or a forced conclusion. It’s sponsored by some large Protestant churches (the largest being here in Seattle), but despite the relatively narrow view of Christ offered by the sponsored religions the campaign invites large and open discussion and debate about who Jesus is and what he means to us. As the site explains, “So maybe the reality of who Jesus is remains too big for the blank.” [Read more...]
Neal A. Maxwell on Christ and the Cosmos
November 28, 2010 By
Kristine’s post got me thinking about something I’ve had laying around for a while. With Christmas coming up, I wanted to do a couple of posts with Christmas related themes. Here is the first.
Sunday Brunch Special: Home Teaching and Adrenaline
October 23, 2010 By
One of my older brothers who is dead now and can’t punish me for telling this story, was the family rebel (hereafter referred to as TR). By the time he turned 13 he smoked, had been in jail overnight for drunk driving (yes, that’s right, not juvy) and had experienced the charms of several older neighbor girls.[1] We lived just on the edge of suburbia and beyond our house to the west were empty fields, formerly farmland, now lying fallow and destined for new subdivisions. If you went far enough the land became boggy, with salt pools forming the boundary of strips of muddy ground populated by weird weeds. As my brother matured, his misadventures multiplied but gradually he toned things down, entered the Army, got married and had several children.[2] One passion we shared, one of the few, was cars.
[Read more...]
Announcement: 16th Annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture
September 19, 2010 By
If any of you fans of Mormon Studies happen to be in or around Logan this Thursday, be sure to check out the 16th Annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture, held in the Logan Tabernacle. Details below the fold.
Going Back
September 8, 2010 By
This is the first in a multi-part series of posts on this topic. Sorry for the length.
Like most American elders in my mission, I promised countless investigators and churchmembers that one day I would return to Argentina to visit them. Unlike most American elders in my mission, I actually made good on that promise. Roughly 16 months after I returned home, I travelled back to Argentina with a friend who’d also served there — once-a-year BCC commenter John W — and together we embarked on a whirlwind tour of La Mision Bahia Blanca. Our trip was intended as part mission visit, part tourism, but once we arrived, we quickly jettisoned all touristic ambitions, and spent every day retracing our old stomping grounds, looking up every memorable person we’d ever had any meaningful interaction with. (We’d eventually hit 5 of my 7 areas, and 3 or 4 of John’s). It was quite the adventure…. in more ways than we ever anticipated.
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Motorcycles!
August 14, 2010 By
In the fevered dreams of my pre-hormonal, prepubescent youth, my deeply felt lust focused on two material desires: I wanted a tent and a mini-bike. It was such a disappointment to dream about these things and then awake to the realization that no, I didn’t really own them. I eventually would actually obtain a tent, but I never did get the mini-bike. Which is just as well. Because eventually I got something even better–an actual motorcycle. [Read more...]
Barfing for Jesus
August 3, 2010 By
WARNING: This post is gross.
The Mormon Mission experience is a significant rite of passage for many LDS young men and women. But there is another important rite of passage within this rite of passage — at least for a signficant subset of LDS missionaries — that is less widely recognized. I refer, of course, to the various intestinal adventures experienced by elders and sisters who serve in the Third World. Many of us have stories about our adventures; not all of them warrant a retelling, to be sure. But some do. And I flatter myself in believing mine does, so here goes:
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The Ball is Round
July 11, 2010 By
From Gomez.
It is estimated that today nearly one billion people will watch the FIFA World Cup final. One billion. When have one billion people spread across the globe ever done anything simultaneously? On this, football’s most holy day, I thought I would attempt the beginnings of an explanation for football’s near universal appeal. [Read more...]
Fond Thoughts of (Fill in Your Mission Here)…and Recipes
May 4, 2010 By
I’ve often wondered how much of an effect foreign missions have had on the culture of the church and its members. I know that for individuals, two years or eighteen months living in a different culture is life changing. Often missionaries return to change their majors, career plans etc. I also know many returned missionaries who have chosen to live overseas, recognizing from their mission experiences that they enjoy the adventure of it. [Read more...]
“A Peculiar Case”: litigating the semantics of believe vs. know?
March 8, 2010 By
Byron W. Brown
One of my family’s favorite family history personalities is Byron W. Brown. He spent his early childhood in Kirtland, OH, then emigrated to Utah, then helped shepherd subsequent wagon trains. There are wild stories of his buffalo wrangling adventures and suspense-filled stories of his participation in Utah’s Black Hawk War. One reason we have such copious information about him, compared to others in our family of that time, is that he had ample free time to write while he served out a federal sentence for perjury.
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Provo, 1991
March 2, 2010 By
WARNING: This is a story that admits that some men, even Mormon men, are interested in having sex with women, and that some BYU students don’t keep the Honor Code. If these facts bother you, then don’t read this story; you will not enjoy it.
I wrote this for a writing class in 1995. At that time I was inactive but recognized that my Mormon background would be interesting to my classmates.
I saw Ellen at a party in November of 1991, and she glowed with a dark and dignified sexuality. Jameson , a former roommate of mine, was throwing a 1960s-themed costume party at his house. Most of the guests wore thrift-store Woodstock cliché to match the Grateful Dead oozing out of the speakers in another room. Ellen stood tall over the kafkans and macramé in an A-lined gogo-styled minidress with a geometric black and white pattern. A matching scarf neatly pulled her strait brown hair back, except her bangs, which hung low over dark, small eyes made darker with makeup. She wore the white knee-high boots like she had born in them. She looked, well, cool. In a room full of undergraduates hyper with the illusion of social release and the faint but palpable hope that the faded bell-bottoms and the pretense of being stoned might reveal something interesting in them that J. Crew and earnest discussions abut the Gulf War did not, Ellen radiated honesty. Her costume seemed to reveal something true about her rather than masking her identity. There was no trace of self-consciousness about her at all.
Of course, it is now impossible to look at that moment with real objectivity; the filter of the years between now and then and our common experience undoubtedly warp and color my memory. The truth is that I cannot remember Ellen ever being self-conscious about anything. We were once caught sunbathing nude by a National Park ranger, and she showed no sign of shame, defensiveness, indignation, or even titillation. The ranger’s over-polite request that we put clothes on seemed to strike her with the same moral force as a reminder to not feed the bears. Standing across the room at the party in her Nancy Sinatra boots, she may have exuded more complex and highly manipulated emotions, but if so, they are lost as I place that event in the context of our lives together. [Read more...]
Twelve Days of Christmas Music VII
January 1, 2010 By
Not strictly Christmas, and even with one text for New Year’s Day.
Mendelssohn Sechs Sprueche (somebody smart please tell me how to do umlauts in WordPress!). Another performance here.
The texts, with English translation, are here. (It’s a bit of a pain, as you have to look up each individually. The Advent/Christmas texts are #1, #2, and #5)
Twelve Days of Christmas Music VI
January 1, 2010 By
A collection of small works from a favorite composer, Healey Willan:
Don’t click away before the end of the piece–the final “Come in, come in, and kiss the feet of God” is what the whole thing is for! [Read more...]
Police Beat Roundtable #19
December 4, 2009 By
The nineteenth installation of our ongoing look at that most charming column of the Daily Universe. Previous installments can be read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
This week: an Advent treasure for you all, as we are joined (at various moments) by GST, Matt Page, “Brunhilde”, Ken Jennings, and Aaron Brown. Ronan also joined us, but his profane comments were all left on the cutting room floor (foreshadowing, perhaps, the fate of England in Group C).
From a window in Chipman Hall, a male student exposed his buttock to two University police officers who were in the area on foot patrol Nov. 30 at 11:22 p.m. A female student who witnessed the incident identified the suspect and a $300 citation was given.
Brunhilde: Which buttock? [Read more...]
Happy Thanksgiving, Bros
November 26, 2009 By
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res]
(Note: this is going to be another one of those boring family posts. So best read it now, rather than after dinner, so as to avoid any indigestion.)
Heirloom
November 25, 2009 By
Thanksgiving approaches. The defrosted turkey waits in the fridge next to the fresh cranberries; cans of pumpkin puree and evaporated milk are stacked on the counter for today’s baking frenzy. Time to drag a stepstool over to the high cabinet and unload the silverplate from its non-holiday resting place. [Read more...]
Longshots – Lance Allred’s polygamous roots and my family’s narratives
November 2, 2009 By
I don’t much care for basketball. I’m horrible at it myself and I’ve never really lost myself in the game watching others play it. I can respect what Michael Jordan accomplished, but it doesn’t interest me all that much. That said, I was moved by Lance Allred’s description of the early morning practices he would have with his coach in high school in his memoir, Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf, Fundamentalist Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA.
Those mornings were the purest form of basketball I ever knew. Just me, [coach Kerry] Rupp, and a ball. No money, no boosters, no politics. It was the pure love and innocence of the game, when it was still a game for me. We both worked and sweated, our shoes squeaking and echoing out the gym and down the empty hallways. I’d pay to have those moments again, those moments of hard work and sacrifice when I knew not what to expect as far as what my future held, with no sense of entitlement, no reward or motive in sight other than just the pure love of the game. I had no idea if I was ever going to be good enough to play college ball. We were challengers of the unknown.
I wasn’t playing for the future on those mornings with Rupp; I was playing for the moment, for the present. I wanted to be good at something; I wanted to excel at something.
While I have never been a particularly dedicated athlete, Allred’s drive to excel, to find the limits of his physical ability and push himself beyond them, is inspiring, in spite of the likelihood that it is, at least partially motivated by his obsessive-compulsive disorder. The drive to be good can be, I think, found in all people: the polygamists amongst whom Allred was raised, the athletes with whom he competes in amateur, semi-pro, and professional basketball, and his own family, struggling to define themselves within and without the Apostolic United Brethren, the fundamentalist Mormon sect of Allred’s youth. [Read more...]
Interview with Elna Baker
October 20, 2009 By
If you aren’t already familiar with the writing and performing of Elna Baker, prepare yourself for awesomeness. Baker is a comedian and storyteller living in New York. She is the author of a new memoir, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, describing her life as a single adult (a review will be coming later this week). She has written for The Onion and many other publications, and has been featured on This American Life and Upright Citizens Brigade. It is very possible that Baker is the best working comedienne and author in all Mormondom. We asked her some questions in connection with her new book. [Read more...]
Fall Dialogue 2009
September 8, 2009 By
After a nice (but also very rainy and chilled) adventure downtown for Labor Day, I came home to a hot bath and the most recent issue of Dialogue. My observations:
The Social Science of Mormonism Q&A, Part II
September 3, 2009 By
This is the second of a two-part Q&A series with four social scientists of Mormonism. See the first post here. BCC sincerely thanks Mike McBride, as well as the panelists below, for contributing this valuable discussion.
Our four panelists are, in alphabetical order: Ryan Cragun (RC), Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Tampa; Armand Mauss (AM), Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Washington State University; Michael Nielson (MN), Professor, Department of Psychology, Georgia Southern University; and Rick Phillips (RP), Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of North Florida.
Complete transcripts, which include answers for all respondents for all questions:
The_Social_Science_of_Mormonism_Q_A_Complete_.
Counting my blessings
July 23, 2009 By
My mother died of breast cancer twelve years ago, and I was due for my baseline mammogram about three years ago, but circumstances and laziness conspired against me, and it wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that I finally dusted off the old referral card and made the appointment. Based on the results of that mammogram, I had to go in for a follow-up ultrasound on Tuesday, which happened to be my mother’s birthday, which I would call ironic if I didn’t have such a firm grasp on the actual definition of irony, so instead I’ll just call it a coincidence ripe with literary possibility. [Read more...]
Book Review: The Mother in Me
May 5, 2009 By
Margaret mentioned the Segullah staff’s excellent essay collection, The Mother in Me in her post on Mother’s Day talks. I also liked the book a great deal–here’s my review. [Read more...]
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