Despite long stretches when Keepa went practically AWOL, it’s been a worthwhile year. Without Keepa as an outlet, without Keepa’ninnies who make the effort worthwhile, I wouldn’t have had the incentive to write the stories, or even to notice that there were stories in the documents I read this year. Some of my favorite posts from the 2017 were these:

“Merciful to the Repentant Sinner”: James E. Talmage Reassures a Young Husband and Father

The love of a young husband for his new wife and son, and the Christlike ministry of an apostle reminded me what life could be like, despite our personal failings, if we could just treat each other this way.

The Sailor and the Apostle: “The Thinking Has Been Done”

“When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done.” We’ve heard that unfortunate phrase repeated as a mantra by those wanting to shut down discussion, or used by those who are not our friends to claim that we are sheep blindly following orders, never thinking for ourselves. Orson Goddard and John A. Widtsoe discussed that idea when it was first published.

Vincenzo di Francesca: Cultural Impediments in the Way of His Baptism

Most of us already knew some of Vincenzo’s story: He was the man converted by an incomplete copy of the Book of Mormon found in an ashcan, and who had to wait for decades before baptism. Part of that was due to war and distance and the impossibility of connecting with anyone who could baptize him. But there were cultural factors as well as geopolitical ones.

Detective Work: Looking for Mama Hetherington

Most people in real life can’t quite understand what historians do. “You mean you read books in the library so you know what happened?” Well, not really, because there usually isn’t any need to recycle what has already been written in a book. But how do you know what happened if it isn’t already in a book? This is an illustration of how it’s done.

Easing the Way: Samuel Martin Prepares to Leave the South African Mission, 1929

I liked this account of a letter written by an outgoing mission president to his successor. That is, I thought President Martin’s letter gave some interesting insights into the work of a mission president in that era – but beyond that, I enjoyed writing this post because it’s how I find new stories to tell about our history: Anything, even a businesslike letter serving a practical purpose, can tell a human story when you stop to think of who and why and when.

“Death is Conquered, Man is Free”

I try not to preach on Keepa … not too often, anyway. I think it’s usually more effective, and certainly more fun, to let the words and actions of Latter-day Saints of the past bear their testimonies for them. Once in a while, though, maybe more often lately, I’ve claimed the pulpit and either preached or borne my testimony. Here are some Easter thoughts.

What in All That’s Good and Holy is THIS?

This post came from an accidental discovery. A friend-of-a-friend on Facebook said something so annoying that I glanced at his wall to get an idea of who he was, and saw this meme. Two good things came from that discovery: A reminder that we can and should check out claims that don’t seem right, and an illustration that ordinary people like us can sometimes clean up things that need cleaning. (I can’t know beyond doubt that this post prompted the takedown of that meme, but the timing of its disappearance certainly suggests that.) Yay, us.

FIRM Foundation: My Last Distressed Thoughts

My attempted attendance at a conference of those advocating fringe Mormon beliefs – some well beyond fringe – was unpleasant. Perhaps if I were to try it again – I will not – I would not be so shocked and disoriented, having now had some exposure to that mirror image of an intellectual Mormon gathering. I hope I would remain just as dismayed, though, if the same speakers and themes were featured. Blogging about it made me try to analyze why my mind and soul recoiled from it so reflexively. Still some work to do on that, but this post is a start.

“The Lesser-Used Detritus of Long-Dead File Clerks”

This one was fun, because Brigham Young is plum wonderful. It’s an old post from my days at Times & Seasons, but it gained new traction BECAUSE THERE IS ART.

There Are No “Other People’s Babies”

World affairs and political firestorms have made 2017 an emotional war zone. Don’t know about you, but I swing between wanting to storm the palace with pitchforks and torches, and a kind of desperate numbness that I can’t allow myself to care because it will crush me. While I try to abstain from partisan politics at Keepa, and appreciate all of you for cooperating with that, I still wrote several posts this year that had their origins in world or national affairs, where I tried to find gospel principles addressing them. This is one.

Some posts I enjoyed putting together were just weird, like the one about vacuuming the Salt Lake Tabernacle, and some of them were, I think, important because the events they recounted were significant but not widely known, especially with the human faces I was able to put to them, and some were just for us Keepa’ninnies.

I’ve been making a list of stories I could tell in 2018 – it helps me to list them in advance so that I don’t face a blank screen at 5:30 a.m. with nothing in mind – and there will certainly be posts I can’t dream of today because I haven’t yet read the document that will trigger the investigation and storytelling. Keepa isn’t going away.

Thank you, 2017.