Author: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis loved her time here with Times and Seasons, and invites you to visit her at Keepapitchinin.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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?

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.