To help us compensate for the shortage of lawyers at T&S, Raymond Takashi Swenson has agreed to guest blog for a week or two.
Author: Ardis E. Parshall
Ardis loved her time here with Times and Seasons, and invites you to visit her at Keepapitchinin.
Martin Luther King in Deseret
On this 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and in the pre-Conference blogging lull, perhaps there is room in your day to remember Dr. King’s visit to Salt Lake City.
And Yet Another Joseph Smith Photograph
The April 1st posting of this article may tempt you to think this is an April Fool’s prank. I wish it were. It is not.
The CSI Effect and Mormon History
Television police dramas are so popular that they have come to influence the American legal system — or so say believers in the “CSI Effect.”
Rumor-Mongering: Joseph Smith Daguerreotype
The Church History Library/Archives staff have been hit with a wave of telephone calls today from Church members looking for confirmation of the latest rumor to hit the LDS fan rumor mill.
Substituting One Speculation for Another
Our Sunday School class opened this morning with a discussion of the “generals in the war in heaven” nonsense that the Church is trying so hard to quash.
The Missionary at Mass
My father used to point to the ceiling in our living room and claim he could still see a dent made by my head as I jumped up in excitement over discovering that my call was to the Switzerland Geneva Mission.
Forging a Life
Although she had immigrated to Boston, the story of Misha Defonseca didn’t get nearly as much press last week in the U.S. as it did in Europe, when she joined a long line of self-confessed fakes
Living with Another’s Agency
How often do you want to “fix things” for someone you love because you (think you) see so much more clearly than he does?
The Childless Ones
We are reminded again of the importance of families to God’s eternal plan. We are reminded again that the Church teaches to the ideal, to the pattern, to the eternal. Those of us (men as well as women) whose lives do not — will not, cannot, in mortality — reflect the divine pattern are reminded again to turn to God for answers in our personal circumstances. Sometimes it helps to know that the saints, as well as a Heavenly Father, understand what is missing, and that we would mirror the divine pattern if only we could.
The Old Written Order of Things
The Presiding Bishopric’s Office used to publish a monthly magazine called Progress of the Church, filled with news and statistics and directives to Church leaders at the local level.
Mistrust and Verify
A reader asks me to expand on a recent comment regarding historians and histories of Mormonism. I do so realizing that it may wrongly be interpreted as personal; my purpose is to illustrate the causes for my earlier evaluation and to demonstrate the value of questioning claims that don’t quite “feel” right.
Joseph Smith, Again for the First Time
Sometimes I have suffered from convert envy.
Utah Historical Quarterly: Utah War Issue
“One hundred and fifty years ago a federal army of nearly two thousand soldiers under the command of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston huddled in their makeshift quarters at Camp Scott near the ruins of Fort Bridger in southwestern Wyoming to wait out the bitter winter and prepare to march into the Salt Lake Valley later in the spring of 1858.”
Primary Was Intended for Boys
(and always has been).
In Which Jules Verne Meets Clarissa
Clarissa, the daughter of commenter East Coast, is a seventh-grader, the only Latter-day Saint in a student body of more than 600.
La Ville des Mormons
Tracing Emily (updated)
This story begins at the bitter end, with suicide in a Butte brothel.
Going Long: Of Clubs and Conduct
John Varah Long was cited to appear before church officials in 1866 for, among other reasons, “belonging to the young men’s social club, and other conduct unbecoming a saint.†Is it possible that the social club, one cause of Long’s excommunication, was also a model for the church’s Mutual Improvement Associations?
When Words Fail
In the summer of 1879, a meteor streaked across the sky above Utah, and people throughout the state tried to describe what they had seen and heard.
Going Long: Of Speculation and Dark Mormon Doings
November is TV sweeps month, where networks and stations vie for audiences to set their advertising rates for the coming months.
Mutual Questions
Before there were Young Men and Young Women, there were the Young Men’s and Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Associations. Before there were correlated lesson manuals and basketball and scouting and Young Womanhood awards and dancing-a-Book-of-Mormon’s-width-apart there were homemade programs.
Torn Between Two Lovers
English manufacturers were not the only ones to make Mormons the butt of a joke to advertise their products.
Anaïse Guyot: The Girl They Left Behind
Early missionaries carried the gospel to many corners of the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, baptizing converts in neighborhoods where there was no established branch to sustain them.
Relief in the Order
The town of Kingston, Utah, was settled as a United Order community, whose inhabitants pooled their economic, spiritual, and social resources and attempted to live the law of consecration
Brigham ‘n’ Ethel 4Ever
A woman — or, perhaps, a group of men and/or women — bent on a practical joke and signing her letter as “Ethel,” once wrote to Brigham Young from St. Louis to propose marriage.
“The most difficult of all the many subjects”
That is what B.H. Roberts called it when he reached the point in his monumental Comprehensive History of the Church where he had to confront the Mountain Meadows massacre, which occurred 150 years ago today.
A French View of Mormonism, 1941
I’ve referred a time or two to one of my heroes, Leon Fargier, the only Melchisedek Priesthood holder in France during World War II.
Of Perfect Organizations
“No other organization is so perfect as the Mormon Church, except the German army.â€
Last Blast of Summer Reading
Hard to believe it’s the end of summer, especially with temps around here expected to top 100 again.