Tying Flowers into Knots
April 2, 2018Mirrors tell only the truth, or so they say. And tonight as I stare at my image in the glass, I think I look the same as always: for the past five years I’ve worn…
DiaBLOGue
The Home Dance: Hugh Nibley among the Hopi
April 2, 2018Hugh Nibley lives in a world of serendipity. As his son-in-law and intended biographer, I have discovered that, time and time again, he has miraculously avoided some catastrophe or dropped in on some fortunate eventuality.…
Drinking Blue Milk
April 2, 2018I have often heard of the lesson with the milk and the ink drop: Sister Smith drips, almost tenderly, the midnight blue ink into the whiteness. I have never seen it done, but I think…
Creations: Mississippi
April 2, 2018Adam, I know,
came from this red clay.
I am ever created
of dust.
The Glory of God? Education and Orthodoxy in Mormonism
April 2, 2018I begin with a paradox. Sociologists of religion have found that religious orthodoxy tends to decline with educational attainment. However, among Mormons religiosity actually tends to increase with education. This is paradoxical because Mormonism apparently…
Quilts as Women’s History | Mary Bywater Cross, Quilts and Women of the Mormon Migrations: Treasures of Transition, and Kate Covington, ed., Gathered in Time: Utah Quilts and Their Makers, Settlement to 1950
April 2, 2018Women’s history got short shrift when the telling of the past focused entirely on wars and laws, but increasingly, as attention is being paid to the domestic history of day-to-day lives, historians are recovering women’s…
More Than Just a Battle for the Ballot | Carol Cornwall Madsen, ed., Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870-1896
April 2, 2018Among the great political battles in American history is the heroic struggle of women to gain a voice in government and to overthrow the state and federal barriers which prevented the exercise of women’s rights.…
Multiply and Replenish
April 2, 2018Adam’s sperm number
one hundred million per cubic centimeter,
hope he can comply with God’s command.
The Spirit of ’76
April 2, 2018We are nothing but matter, configured into a mass of atoms, configured into molecules, and locked irrefutably into a predetermined arrangement of cells by their genetic codes that link us billions of years to the…
Sesquicentennial Pioneer Commemoration Speech
April 2, 2018My grandpa Walker Reynolds was a pioneer, too, with a Brigham beard.
Mom says he loved pickles, and dancing music.
Last time we saw him, Grandma said, “It’s time to hug goodbye,”
and all I could think is how Grandpa’s