By Edje JeterAugust 1, 2009
In my effort to understand Mormons’ cultural position by studying names applied to them, I recently encountered an unfamiliar epithet:
Bluebeard asks for a seat in the Senate. He stands with one hand locking the door of his chamber of horrors, and with the other he knocks for admission to the supreme legislative assembly of the foremost Christian republic of all time….
How large is the territory over which the Mormon Bluebeard exercises sway? …[two paragraphs describing the Great Basin] …The American Bluebeard rules over the American Potosi. [1]
The flower genus Caryopteris goes colloquially by “bluebeard” (See Figure 1: C. incana). So far as I know, however, no one compared Mormons to vicious flowers. The name “Bluebeard” comes from a French fairy-tale, “La Barbe-bleue [The Blue-beard],” that Charles Perrault published in 1697. [2] In the story, a young woman marries a rich nobleman despite his cerulean whiskers, which make him “frightful and ugly.” [3] Afterwards, he gives her all the keys, forbids her to enter one particular room, and leaves on (supposed) business. Then, as later made into a nursery rhyme (!)
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By Jared TJuly 31, 2009
The Juvenile Instructor will be reviewing the contents of a number of Mormon-related periodicals including BYU Studies, the Journal of Mormon History, the John Whitmer Association Journal, Restoration Studies and others as they come to us. This will be a regular feature on the JI.
Today, it’s BYU Studies 48:1 (2009).
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By ElizabethJuly 30, 2009
I post this because it may be of some value to someone. I strongly believe in sharing faith journeys. Listening forces us to confront the prismatic nature of another person’s spiritual experience and accept that perhaps a multiplicity of paths lead to the same truth or to a different truth entirely. We become less judgemental of others as we learn the ways in which God has worked in their lives, sometimes inexplicably, but usually in ways that are similar to our own.
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By matt b.July 29, 2009
This morning, several hundred members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints gathered on the steps of Salt Lake City’s Matheson Courthouse and on the lawn of the Salt Lake City and County Building across the street to express their dismay that District Judge Denise Lindberg was considering ordering the United Effort Plan trust, which contains a great deal of church property, dismantled and sold.
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By July 28, 2009
A reader has asked that we post the following Call for Papers.
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By Steve FlemingJuly 27, 2009
This is sort of a statement of contrition as well as an advertisement for the upcoming EMSA which probably none of us can make it to.
My first trip to MHA was at the end of my master’s program. My paper was on the early Mormon branches throughout North America and why we should study them.
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By StanJuly 26, 2009
Freedom was closed the day I visited. A pity: I was curious to see what it was all about.
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By Edje JeterJuly 24, 2009
A. simplex cannibalizes another A. simplex
All that is green west of the Rockies quivers before that most fearsome of Mormon beasts, the Mormon cricket. It wasn’t always so. Before the 1870s (in the Anglo-European world), mesch, “a curious kind of cricket,” “an ugly cricket,” “a large kind of cricket,” the “mountain cricket” ravaged the left side of the American map. [1] Colonel Kane and the Mormons described it:
Wingless, dumpy, black, swollen-headed, with bulging eyes in cases like goggles, mounted upon legs of steel wire and clock-spring, and with a general personal appearance that justified the Mormons in comparing him to a cross of the spider on the Buffalo, the Deseret cricket comes down from the mountains at a certain season of the year, in voracious and desolating myriads. [3]
As you’ve probably grown tired of hearing, the Mormon cricket isn’t really a cricket. It’s a katydid sporting the genus name Anabrus, “in allusion to [its] unprepossessing appearance”; an + abroV = “not soft, delicate, tender, dainty, or beautiful,” which I think fits pretty well. [4] (Image: A. simplex cannibalizes [2])
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By Jared TJuly 24, 2009
Well, a friend tipped me off that it appears we will be taking a break from the Teachings of the Prophets series we’ve had over the last few years as the Relief Society/Melchizedek Priesthood course of study. The new curriculum for two years, 2010-2011, will be the [fanfare]
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By Jared TJuly 22, 2009
The most recent issue of the Journal of Mormon History actually arrived a little while back, but I’ve been slow to post this. Since the next will be here soon, I’d better get this out! I’ll be more prompt next time!
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