Grandpa’s Coffee
April 14, 2018It is a morning flight. We have gained altitude and are somewhere over the Colorado Rockies. Below, through breaks in the clouds, a thin film of early snowfall covers the mountaintops like a veil. High…
DiaBLOGue
On a Denver Bus
April 14, 2018Out of the cold Christmas streets
we climb to an old woman
raising her scarfed face to us,
scarred and hollow-nosed,
…of the Book…
April 14, 2018My friend’s two-year-old loves the stories in books. He loves them so much that sometimes he takes a book from his mother’s hands, places it on the floor, and tries to step into the story.…
Christmas Morning—1906
April 14, 2018By now the Christmases of my life—all but one—have escaped re strictions of time and place and have arranged themselves, undated, in an intricate mosaic of memories, which can be instantly evoked by such small…
The Study of Mormon Folklore: An Uncertain Mirror for Truth
April 14, 2018It is an honor for me to speak here, partly because of the standard of excellence set by those who have preceded me at this podium, but primarily because of my respect for the man…
Mormon Gravestones: A Folk Expression of Identity and Belief
April 14, 2018For years cultural geographers, folklorists, and other researchers have identified and delineated the Mormon region of the American West by charting characteristic elements of its cultural landscape. In his 1952 work The Mormon Village, Lowry…
Of Truth and Passion: Mormonism and Existential Thought
April 14, 2018In the first century A.D., Pontius Pilate, confounded by Jesus Christ’s forceful witness to his mission to “bear witness unto the truth,” asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) This was neither the first nor the…
Materialism and the Mormon Faith
April 14, 2018In his landmark study of early Mormon economic life, Great Basin Kingdom, Leonard J. Arrington observed: Joseph Smith and other early Mormon leaders seem to have seen every part of life, and every problem put…
Honoring Leonard Arrington
April 14, 2018How does one capture Leonard Arrington? It is a pleasure to attempt, but certainly no easy task. I see Leonard as scientists see nature: in four dimensions. But just as scientists are now discovering and…
Chokecherries
April 14, 2018Dark berries abound
like full moons;
the sight of ripeness
in sunstruck orbs