Contained in this informative volume are ten essays originally delivered as annual lectures from 1995 through 2004 honoring Leonard J. Arrington, renowned scholar of Utah-Mormon history, former LDS Church Historian, and one-time Utah State University…
More than thirty years ago, I made a decision that seemed simple enough at the time but that would have a far-reaching impact on my professional career. I became an archivist at the LDS Church…
Every bride asks herself, What if
he doesn’t show up? What then?
I trace my past life through hairdos: ringlets,
pigtails, finger waves, straightened-on-juice-cans,
bouffant, French braids, and—worst—sausage rolls
flying back from my face like ditsy, exuberant wings.
In a plowed field at the rim
of the southern Utah desert
one of those Schnebbley brothers
Our children were conceived
in a carved maple bed sent
from Milwaukee on the train
by my husband’s grandmother in 1937.
She never speaks to him anymore. Her tongue
is as bone-dry as an irrigation ditch in winter,
her ankles grimy as a crooked ewe’s. Dribbled
wine and spots of sour milk stain her blouse,
and now his lead sheep has given up the bell.
I once sat on a plateau’s edge
It began on my back, with updrafts.
They rose along the white escarpment
So this is how you’ll preserve
me, Lord? in a slosh of brine?
Go ahead, though I’ve borne no fruit, torn
loose from my roots and gone my own way.
Whether you were driving in from the east or the west you got to our mother’s from Canal Street here in southern Ohio. There at the big Mc Donald’s in Nelsonville you took the crossroad…