A Ten-Year Kaleidoscope
Mary Lythgoe BradfordThe young son of one of my friends was recently heard to say, “Mormon women all look alike. They have pretty faces and good teeth and most of them are overweight.” Just a sea of…
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Winter 1981
The young son of one of my friends was recently heard to say, “Mormon women all look alike. They have pretty faces and good teeth and most of them are overweight.” Just a sea of…
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 28–39
Some time in June 1970,I invited a few friends to my house to chat about the then emerging women’s movement. If I had known we were about to make history, I would have taken minutes or at least passed a roll around, but of course I didn’t.
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 40–47
I am sensitive to that steadying hand as I attempt to identify and define what for an earlier generation of women identified and defined them as women—their relationship to the Church.
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 48–59
I smiled wryly at the cartoon on the stationery. The picture showed a woman standing before an all-male ecclesiastical board and asking, “Are you trying to tell me that God is not an equal opportunity employer?” I thought to myself, “Yes, that is precisely what women have been told for centuries.”
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 60–69
THE QUESTION of whether worthy women could be or ought to be ordained to the LDS priesthood has not, until recently, been considered seriously in the LDS community.
My earliest memory of my Bluebird class in Primary is cross-stitching a sampler: “I will light up my home.” Our teacher admonished us to embroider carefully because we would want our samplers to hang in…
I should preface these remarks by establishing two things. First, I am no blood relation to Mary Fielding Smith, although, like all of you, I proudly claim her for a spiritual sister; second, my subject…
Living in our nation’s capital during the recent ERA controversies has been a learning experience for me. After the turmoil of the 1975 IWY Conference in Utah, I spent a good deal of time trying…
“You are ‘pro-choice’ aren’t you?” mumbled the young legislator at his desk as he pored over my application. Anticipating my response, he wrote the label boldly across the front page. I asked why the label…
Dialogue 14.4 (Fall 1981): 117–124
So this was birthing, this crazy-quilt of contrasts, of senses and feelingsin chaos, coming occasionally to rest, as now, with a sleeping son in the crookof my arm. Had I won the grand prize?
In our many years together Bert and I faced many trials, but working together, we managed to bring to successful conclusion all the projects that come with a good marriage. We raised seven children while…
Laurie had wanted for a long time to visit Jen. When Mama took David, the baby, to visit their favorite aunt she and Carol complained. “I know you want to see her,” Mama explained, “but…
Beth knew as soon as Wendy answered the phone that it was a boy on the other end. Wendy’s eager young “hello” was followed by silence and then a furtive, whispered, “Just a minute.” Wendy…
The vast majority of the books considered in the accompanying compilation are of a biographical, fictional, doctrinal or inspirational nature. While the biographies and works on local history are generally intended for a rather limited…
I did not just sit down and say, “This is going to be a dance in eight parts.” It evolved. When I was finishing the choreography, I visited Josephine Withers (no relation), an historian of…
In the midst of life we are in the midst of death, so the old church fathers tell us, and so we realize every day as a baby dies in childbirth or a friend succumbs…
Is it the product of a single mind or a conspiracy? I wonder as I slide into the waxed church pew. I have been force-fed a breakfast of eggs scrambled with Cool Whip (they thought…
If only there were daisies here in tin cans.
These flowers are too nice: ivory-tongued anthurium,
gladiola mouths holding their long, red O’s
while Sister Smith whispers, “Aren’t the roses
She lives on a street of white haired men
with time for hosing the cracks.
She goes to funerals amid people
whose names she cannot remember,
In his History of American Socialisms (1870) John Humphrey Noyes emphasized the equal importance of revivalism and socialism to the communitarian movement. “The Revivalists,” he wrote, had for their great idea the regeneration of the…
This study seeks to look analytically at the reorganization of sex roles and sexual expression in three of the most controversial religious movements of nineteenth-century America—the Shakers, who practiced celibacy; the Mormons, who introduced a…
In the summer of 1979, the Modern Language Association, with financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, sponsored a five-week institute on “non-traditional writings of women.” The institute was held at the University…
When I saw that Joyce Ellen Davis’ newly published novel, Chrysalis, dealt with a young mother’s experience with cancer, I was disappointed—but only temporarily. The theme seemed to be perhaps too obvious in its dramatic…
As every author knows, the blurb on the dust cover of a book is of vital importance, because many reviewers read nothing else. I found the blurb of Thy Kingdom Come invaluable after reading every…
One of the strongest virtues of this volume is the modesty of its project. It does not claim to be the story of Mormon pioneering in Mexico, but simply a story of the same. It…