Summer 1991
The Summer 1991 presents diverse perspectives on faith, history, and personal introspection within and around Mormonism. Dennis Prager explores the possibility of religious tolerance, while Kahlile Mehr examines LDS missionary work in Hungary. Charles S. Peterson reflects on Dale Morgan's contributions to Mormon history through a regional lens, and Larry W. Conrad discusses scripture and authority in the Reorganized Church. In "Personal Voices," Karen Rosenbaum contemplates doubt and faith, Gay Taylor reflects on life’s purpose, Marni Asplund Campbell explores life’s rhythms, and Russell Burrows shares a reflective piece on gambling in Utah. Erich Robert Paul comments on the ever-evolving nature of science, and Thomas F. Rogers’s fiction piece, "Heart of the Fathers," delves into themes of heritage and spirituality. And more!
When I was in my early twenties, a prominent American rabbi, Yitz Greenberg, once heard me lecture to a Jewish group. I was offering comparisons between Judaism and other religions. Afterward he complimented me on…
On the periphery of his thoughts, iron wheels clanked, March winds scratched past windows, a swaying passenger wagon groaned, and a steam engine chugged rhythmically. The tracks traversed the massive Iron Gate gorge, a slit…
At the 1968 annual meeting of the Utah Historical Society, Juanita Brooks read a paper about the Southern Utah Records Survey of the early and mid-1930s that had been a forerunner to the Federal Writers’…
From the earliest days of Mormonism, Latter Day Saints have held distinctive views about scripture. Particular, even peculiar, Latter Day Saint understandings of scripture surface at the very foundations of the movement. Historian Jan Shipps…
The Child is father to the Man Wordsworth You wake before the alarm you’d set for 4:30. You dress, almost ritually, and decide to fast. Today of all days you must maintain the proper mood—and…
Although the exchange in Dialogue (Winter 1989) between Charles Boyd and David Bailey concerning the epistemological status of con temporary science was interesting and informative, in the final analysis it was lacking. To begin, Boyd…
In times of drought, it is hard to remember times of flood. After yet another California winter without sufficient water, we take quick showers, rarely flush the toilet, let our lawn grow long to hide…
I found this philosophical bit by Chip Janis in In the New World (1988), a little book of poems put together by young Indian students at the Pretty Eagle School and St. Charles Mission in Ashland, Mon tana. Why am I here? It is a question most of us come face to face with. I have heard that Leo Tolstoy, after he had fathered thirteen children, helped Tsar Alexander II free the serfs, and written dozens of articles and books, still tortured himself with the question: “Why am I living?”
My father’s heart is strong and scarred, bound in spots by thread, a delicate patchwork of veiny fabrics. I imagine, when I talk to him on the telephone, his physical presence. I can hear his…
The old hometown, Ogden, Utah, has long been an overlooked sports town. That is, if you take the adjective overlooked in an underground or an underworld sense, and if you broaden “sporting men” to include…
Cornmeal, dusted over these loaves
like pollen. And I wish again
for the old unwritten recipes: brown breads,
chicken baked in a wrap of cornmeal,
family reunion picnics I can’t match
with my own.
It throbbed a little, the gash in my left palm.
I pressed the gauze, something to finger
while we waited —boys here, girls over there,
all of us wearing jump suits heavy enough
Late at night, the kids in their rooms come
drifting towards me, thinking of home, perhaps,
wrestling a kiss fire of pain.
And the ward is yellow with breathing,
In Another Part of the Twenties (1977), Paul A. Carter upended all of the stereo types advanced by historians about the 1920s. The jazz age was really more of a waltz than most people thought;…
Recently I was asked to review Margaret and Paul Toscano’s Strangers in Paradox for a local newspaper. While I tried in that review to be as honest and true as I know how, I realize…
