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Keepa’s Illustrations

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Keepa was the first LDS blog to regularly use images — they are a key component of showing our history.

I have used a paid service to host my images, one that has provided a link for each image, that I can then plug into posts. Images posted that way have been of markedly higher quality than those I upload through WordPress, as you can see from the poor quality of the Arrington Lecture flyer posted just before this sad rant.

That service has, without warning, changed its business model. The money I am paying now allows only storage, not linking. To use a link for posting on Keepa, I must now pay an additional $156 per year, something I simply cannot afford.

I do not know what this means for images already illustrating posts — will they remain as is? will links go away because they are now disallowed on my plan?

Continue reading Keepa’s Illustrations →

Utah history

Alejandro Bacca: Salt Lake City’s Landscape Gardener

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The area we know as Utah was part of Mexico when explorers like Jedediah Smith saw it in the 1820s. It was Mexican territory in the heyday of the trappers and mountain men, and still Mexican territory when Brigham Young entered Utah in 1847. Utah became American territory only in February 1848 when Mexico ceded the region at the conclusion of the Mexican War.

Mexican ownership of Utah, though, was little more than a paper ownership. There was no Mexican governmental presence here; Utah’s native tribes paid no allegiance to Mexico City. Although Father Escalante’s expedition had entered Utah Valley in 1776, and while there had been some Spanish mining in southern Utah and considerable traffic on the part of the Spanish Trail that passed through Utah, there was little permanent Mexican presence in Utah anytime during the 19th century.

Continue reading Alejandro Bacca: Salt Lake City’s Landscape Gardener →

Mormon history

You have been listening to the Tabernacle Choir and Organ Broadcast, 6 April 1969

The following broadcast, written and announced by Richard L. Evans, and originating with Station KSL, Salt Lake City, Utah, was presented from 9:35 to 10:00 a.m. Sunday, April 6, 1969, through the courtesy of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s network throughout the United States, parts of Canada, and through other facilities to several points overseas:

Announcer: Once more we welcome you within these walls with Music and the Spoken Word from the Crossroads of the West.

CBS and its affiliated stations bring you at this hour another presentation from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, with Richard Condie conducting the Tabernacle Choir, Alexander Schreiner, Tabernacle Organist, and the spoken word by Richard Evans.

The Choir sings a “Galilean Easter Carol” by R. Deane Shure: “… Joy dawned again on Easter day, the sun shone out with fairer ray, when to their longing eyes restored, die apostles saw their risen Lord.

(Choir: “Galilean Easter Carol”— Shure)

Continue reading You have been listening to the Tabernacle Choir and Organ Broadcast, 6 April 1969 →

personal

Kathleen

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Kathleen.

I don’t remember her last name, but sometimes — like when a Christofascist is installed as Speaker of the House — I remember her and wonder where she is and how she remembers her early school years.

She was the only one in my elementary years whom I knew wasn’t LDS. She was Catholic.

The Supreme Court declared mandatory public school prayer to be unconstitutional in 1962. I started school in 1967. Despite that ruling, we had prayer in our first grade classroom in Sandy, Utah, every day, offered by one or another LDS kid — the same kids I walked to Primary with one afternoon every week.

Early in the year we took a vote in our class about whether or not to say a prayer in the morning. I suppose now that was to overcome the “mandatory” part of the Supreme Court ruling.

I don’t have any memory of how Kathleen voted, or whether she ever said the prayer in our room. But I understand now that a specifically LDS prayer, and never a prayer that would have been familiar in her tradition, was a mandatory part of every school day for her.

Anyway, I think about Kathleen sometimes.

Poetry

Autumn Morning

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Autumn Morning

By Lydia Hall

Here in the morning sunlight,
Far from the dusty town,
I walk where fields are purple
And hemmed with gold and brown.

A trailing vine is spilling
Color on an old stone wall,
And from a fence comes ringing
A red-winged blackbird’s call.

The wayside bushes blossom
With hosts of butterflies,
And cottonwoods are torches
Against the tender skies.

The clouds are far-flung banners
That march in bright array,
And I am so much richer
Than I was yesterday.

(1951)

Mormon history

You have been listening to the Tabernacle Choir and Organ Broadcast, 4 April 1971

The following broadcast, written and announced by Richard L. Evans, and originating with Station KSL, Salt Lake City, Utah, was presented from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. Sunday, April 4, 1971, through the courtesy of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s network throughout the United States, parts of Canada, and through other facilities to several points overseas:

Announcer: Once more we welcome you within these walls with Music and the Spoken Word from the Crossroads of the West.

CBS and its affiliated stations bring you at this hour the Tabernacle Choir from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, with Richard Condie conducting the Choir, Alexander Schreiner Tabernacle Organist, and the Spoken Word by Richard Evans.

“Green wave the palms along the path today; blossoms of gold and purple greet the King. Jesus, our Lord, in triumph leads the way; O, dry your tears and joyful homage bring!”

(Choir: “The Palms”—Faure, arr. Ringwald)

Continue reading You have been listening to the Tabernacle Choir and Organ Broadcast, 4 April 1971 →

Uncategorized

A Life Too Short: Biography of a Small Child

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(A somewhat fuller story can be found on Keepa here. Below is the version published as a Salt Lake Tribune column on 3 March 2012, offered as a lure to Keepa’ninnies who may not have been readers in 2012.)

How do you write the biography of a child who died so long ago that no one remembers her, or how she sounded when she laughed or what she liked to do? Utah’s past is well stocked with the short lives of children who left little mark in this world, no matter how great a hole they left in their families when they died.

Anne Maria Jewkes was born in Fountain Green, Utah, on September 18, 1866. Her parents were Samuel Jewkes and Mary Nash Gardner, emigrants from England who met in St. Louis and married after they reached Utah. By all accounts, theirs was a happy family.

Continue reading A Life Too Short: Biography of a Small Child →

Mormon history

You have been listening to the Tabernacle Choir and Organ Broadcast, 6 April 1975

The following broadcast, written and announced by J. Spencer Kinard, and originating with Station KSL, Salt Lake City, Utah, was presented from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, April 6, 1975, through the courtesy of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s network throughout the United States, parts of Canada, and through other facilities to several points overseas:

Announcer: Once more we welcome you within these walls with Music and the Spoken Word from the Crossroads of the West.

CBS and its affiliated stations bring you at this hour the Tabernacle Choir from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, with Jerold Ottley conducting the Choir, Robert Cundick, Tabernacle Organist, and the Spoken Word by Spencer Kinard.

The Choir first sings these words from a worshipful setting as arranged by Wilbur Chenoweth: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation! O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation! …”

(Choir: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”—arr. Chenoweth)

Continue reading You have been listening to the Tabernacle Choir and Organ Broadcast, 6 April 1975 →

Where our past is never very long ago