Returning from spring break in 2005, Dr. Donna Freitas, assistant professor of religion at St. Michael’s College, a small Roman Catholic school near Burlington, Vermont, witnessed an epiphany in her “Dating and Friendship” course. One by one, her students admitted to themselves and to each other their profound disappointment in the sexual culture of their school—the “hook-up culture.”
The Widower Eric W Jepson Four years had passed since Mary had died; Torrance still wasn’t comfortable dating and yet here he was, getting married. Five years with Mary may have been too short, but…
I Nora bears the tray of hors d’oeuvres she spent three hours this afternoon preparing. Mushroom caps stuffed with chopped and sauteed artichoke hearts, onion, garlic, bread crumbs, and three cheeses. She approaches the door;…
For more than a week, I thought
cutting off my toe was penance.
I delved a hole for this toe,
a quick, tiny sepulcher at the crook
The alfalfa fields had their own luster
and, besides, no one came
for any harvest. Instead, as children, we drifted
in a golden sea with monarchs, my brother waving
First, it was water:
a marriage festival,
a mother
asking a favor
from her son
And it came:
wine.
The frost grows fierce upon the pane,
crystals cluster in tight geometry. Inside my
glove my fingers freeze. I gasp the cold until I
am dumb: until my eyes are arctic marbles
rolling blue and plumb in their sockets: until
my leaden tongue sinks in my mouth.
By myself, I’m driving east on 1-70, just out of Denver. I’m looking for silos. I’m also listening to jazzmeister Herbie Hancock on his new tribute-to-Joni-Mitchell CD, River. You gotta love that Herbie, I’m thinking. Tina Turner’s singing “Edith and the Kingpin,” something about victims of typewriters and how the band sounds like typewriters. I laugh. I’m one of those victims who’s emerging out of my cave where I write every day to volunteer at the Aurora Cannery, a division of LDS Welfare Services.
I first heard the tales of Hugh Nibley, the brilliant and eccentric LDS scholar whose fertile and fecund brain defended and expanded the faith of thoughtful Church members, virtually at my mother’s knee. I remember as a child listening rapt with wonder at the accounts of his marvelous ability with languages, his wartime service with Allied Army intelligence, and his vast knowledge of things ancient and arcane.
Historically, modesty of dress has had important symbolic mean-ing for leaders and members of the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brigham Young, second president of the Church, often warned women against following the “indecent”…