Contents

Articles/Essays

A Strenuous Business: The Achievement of Helen Candland Stark



Helen Candland Stark, born of hardy pioneer Utah stock, was a thriving transplant in Delaware for most of her adult life with her husband, Henry Stark, a research chemist. Adoptive parents of three, they nurtured the Delaware Branch from its ecclesiastical preexistence until it became the Delaware Stake in 1974, only five years after they moved back to Utah. Many-roled, Helen has been teacher, actress, wife, mother, writer, environmentalist, and feminist, all interpreted in her own distinctive style. Now, almost eighty-nine and widowed by Henry’s death in 1988, she is a survivor of resilient spirit. In 1989, a DIALOGUE team of interviewers, Shirley Paxman and Belle Cluff, using questions composed by Ann Fletcher, conducted an oral history session which Helen herself edited and supplemented with the assistance of Wanda Scott, who transcribed tapes and typed many earlier drafts. 



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The Good Woman Syndrome; Or, When Is Enough, Enough?



When a third big kettle of beets boiled over, I stared at the bloody mess and asked myself if this were mere happenstance. Perhaps here was a Freudian slip trying to tell me something. Perhaps I had better sort out a few feelings, the one uppermost being: When is enough, enough? I also wondered if I am a solitary case, or whether other women find themselves in a similar bind. 



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Woman as Healer in the Modern Church



Dialogue 23.3 (Fall 1990): 65–82
Evidence from Mormon women’s journals, diaries, and meeting
minutes tells us that from the 1840s until as recently as the 1930s,
LDS women served their families, each other, and the broader com￾munity, expanding their own spiritual gifts in the process.



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Theological Foundations of Patriarchy



Dialogue 23.3 (Fall 1990): 79–95
MOST RESEARCH BY MORMON FEMINISTS has been historical in nature. Proponents of greater power and privilege for women cite as prece￾dents the lives of Huldah and Deborah of the Old Testament, the treatment of women by Jesus Christ, or the activities of pioneer women in the early restored Church.



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Speaking Out on Domestic Violence



I was a true innocent when I was married for time and all eternity in 1975. One month later, pregnant and exhausted, I spent the evening enduring my Eagle Scout, returned-missionary, medical-student husband bouncing up…



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The Mormon Woman as Writer



Once while I was wandering through my life, I had a need to say something. I’m not sure where this something came from, but opinions and observations grew on the interior walls of my mind…



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Fiction

Songs



Marta Pillahuel was very old. She lived in the country with her pigs on one side and her chickens on the other. Her wooden house leaned to the east and let in the weather—a warm…



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The Chastity Gum



It wasn’t like Sister Farley to chew gum. She took her stewardship over her little swarm of Beehive girls seriously, and normally she was the very soul of decorum, showing us by her dress and…



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The Six-Buck Fortune



I remember that day perfectly—every violet plum with its orange smudges, the rim of the huge blue canning kettle smeared with thick yellow slime and little tatters of purple peel. It was the day I…



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Personal Voices

The Playhouse



I sit scrunched in a fetal position, my eyes tightly closed, savoring the womblike comfort of the playhouse. A spider is weaving its filmy home in one corner of the ceiling, and a fly has…



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Carrying On



Firm as the mountains around us, Stalwart and brave we stand On the rock our fathers planted For us in this goodly land.— Ruth May Fox (no. 255, Hymns, 1985)  One of my earliest memories is of my mother…



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Empathy



Several times a year, I give one of the Relief Society’s supplemental lessons. Jokingly, I call this my token Church job; in truth it means a great deal to me. I deeply value the opportunity…



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Poetry

I Can Wait For



I purposely forget what you look like 
so each time I see you I am surprised 
again by your beauty. Your name is the 
charm I offer nervous cats instead of 



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If I Had Children



If I had children, I might name 
them astrometeorological names: 
Meridian, a girl. Zenith, a boy. 
Eclipse, a pretty name for either one. 



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The Blood in My Veins



Tonight while combing my long dark hair, 
                        Sprinkled with strands of white, 
                                    I am grateful for my legacy 
            And wish others would not look down 



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Daddy Hung Me Out



He hung me next to the load of dripping clothes. 
I was just a child! Couldn’t walk! Couldn’t talk! 
Too frozen stiff to cry! But strong enough 
to clench my monkey fists around the line. 
I still can see the pomegranate bush. 



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Deity



Who is he from the Sunday pulpit 
acquiring the air of sins 
with his lecture, 
hell’s woes never hidden 



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