Author: Margaret Young

My neighborhood erupted a little while ago. The issue was immigration. I found out about the eruption when I was doing my visiting teaching. I won’t go into the details of the neighborhood fight, just a few lines I heard as I prepared to do a typical visit. “Maria is illegal, you know. She has…

This will not be a commentary but a question. And I really do want some answers. I’m posting it on T&S, but I hope bloggers from all over will add insights. I want a deeper understanding and recognize that people like Jim Faulconer, Kevin Barney, Julie Smith, and others who have studied the scriptures better…

I remember sitting on my dad’s lap after I burned my bottom on our ancient heating pipes at Hoosier Courts, Bloomington, Indiana. I was four years old, so it was 1959.

We’ve all heard something like this before: “I can’t really claim credit for what I’m about to read, because it came to me as inspiration. God is the author.” The follow up is usually a poem which compares faith (or some other virtue) to a gate/ not a fate/ Spirits’ bait/ please don’t wait—or something…

Last week I read _The End of the Spear_, a book by Steve Saint about evangelical missionaries who had gone to the deep Ecuadorian jungles in the 1950’s. The first five missionaries were killed by the natives, but the son a slain missionary (the author himself) returned to the place where his father died.

Over the past several days, I’ve attended some magnificent presentations at Utah Valley State College in commemoration on Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. Besides asking myself the obvious (“Why aren’t we doing this kind of thing at BYU?”), I have been taking notes and thinking about how my life can change because of the things…

Years ago, I responded to one of those philanthropic commercials inviting viewers to request some “no obligation” information about their charitable organization. I requested it and soon received the photograph of a little girl in the Philippines, along with the invitation to sponsor her. How could I say no? There she was, looking right at…

Are you bothered that Old Man Potter doesn’t get his just desserts in _It’s A Wonderful Life_?

Last Saturday, I had lunch with my oldest daughter and her best friend, Adrea, who happens to be my best friend’s oldest daughter. My friend, Buffy, and I went through our first pregnancies laughing at ourselves and at each other, but also struggling in our new marriages.

How about lyrics which folks (especially children) often mis-hear? My mother was terribly ashamed of her parents when she saw that cherries were included for Sunday lunch, since they had just sung, “Cherries hurt you, cherries hurt you…” (Cherish virtue…)

I teach all of the youth in my ward. I suspect this is because nobody else will do it. Also, most of the youth (whether or not I’ve given birth to them) pretty much live at my house. So I am very able to tell them to behave and get a quick response.

My sister-in-law, Lynda, is dying of cancer. It was in remission for eight years, but has now returned and is in her bones.

I’ve been thinking about President Packer’s Sunday talk–mostly centered on the idea that we have nothing to apologize for in LDS history and should proudly defend our heroic, pioneering past.

My husband is writing a book. Of course, this is nothing new. He is a professor. He is supposed to write books. Actually, he is required to write books if he wants a promotion.

I had a beautiful experience last week. I went through the temple with one of my Sunday School students/neighbors, a young man headed to the MTC on Wednesday Sept. 13. Last week, another of my SS students/neighbors left for his mission. There is one other member of the neighborhood of age to serve a mission,…

Alas, my other lives (teacher, wife, mother, producer [for the moment] and writer) are calling me, so I will contribute less frequently to T&S and other blogs–though this has been really fun. I promised to publish a post about writing the trilogy with Darius. I’ve written elsewhere about some of that experience–the miraculous parts–and thought…

I have been teaching English at BYU for over twenty years, focusing on creative writing for more than half of that time. As I contemplate fall semester in my new identity as a BLOGGER, I have been thinking about the conversations we teachers have with our students. Some might label the conversations lectures or lesson…

My daughter said recently that she had been raised to view extremely wealthy people as wicked. I was appalled, since I am one of the primary people who raised her. What messages had I communicated which elicited those words? I admit that my father, on first view of a cousin’s enormous mansion, said simply, “Well,…