By Ben PAugust 3, 2009
[This is the fourth post in the Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography series. Adriane Rodrigues Coelho was baptized nearly 23 years ago. She is married to Ricardo Choairy Coelho and they have four children. She received her B.A. degree in English Language and Literature from Faculdade de Letras, of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, in 2000. After working for 15 years as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language for primary students in her country, she dedicated herself to her graduate program. In 2006 she received her M.A. degree from the same University. Her thesis Ordinary Accounts of Extraordinary Value: Mormon Pioneer Women?s Life Writings was a pioneering effort on Mormon Studies in Brazil. During the Summer Seminar on the Pratts, she wrote “Parley Pratt’s Ready Pen and Satire.” Her future projects include further research in the field.]
Parley Pratt?s high command of the English Language as well of the use of some of his notable literary skills are even expanded in chapters 33 and 34 when he describes his runaway from prison in Missouri.
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By Jared TAugust 3, 2009
Just in my email is a notice about a forthcoming publication from Eborn Books. In January the Deseret News had a story about a newly discovered William McLellin manuscript that had been previously known and subsequently lost. Brent Ashworth, the owner of the manuscript has made it available for publication through Eborn Books with Harvard Heath as editor. Details are slim, I don’t know of any set title or timetable for publication, but Brent Ashworth will be presenting on the manuscript this Thursday at the 2nd Annual Eborn Book Event. I will be going back and forth between the Eborn Book Event and the FAIR conference Thursday and will provide notes from selected presentations from each including Brent’s presentation.
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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 Ben PJuly 30, 2009
[This is third post in the Perspectives of Parley Pratt’s Autobiography series. Matt Grow has a PhD in History from Notre Dame University, where he studied under George Marsden. His first book, a biography on Thomas L. Kane, was published with Yale University Press. He is currently co-authoring a biography of Pratt, tentatively titled Parley Parker Pratt: The Saint Paul of Mormonism, to be published with with Oxford University Press. Matt is an assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana.]
In late 1853, Orson Pratt, then in Washington, D.C., excitedly wrote to his brother Parley about an effort to publish genealogical information on the descendants of their ancestor William Pratt, a Puritan who migrated from England to Connecticut in the 1630s.
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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 Jared TJuly 29, 2009
Continued from Part 1.
The next article, “The Tragic Matter of Louie Wells and John Q. Cannon” by Kenneth Cannon discusses a rather messy series of incidents. Louie Wells, the talented daughter of Emmeline B. and Daniel H. Wells was the sister-in-law of John Q. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon. John was married to Louis’ sister Annie and all three lived under one roof for a time. After a number of pages of biographical information on Louis and John, Cannon launches into his story.
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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 Edje JeterJuly 28, 2009
In a previous post, I quoted an entomologist who thought the name “Mormon Fly” was “an insolvable mystery.” [1] He went on to say that “there was somewhat more plausible ground for calling the Chinch bug the ‘Mormon louse;’ for that little pest really did swarm for the first time in Illinois about the same year that the Mormons settled there.”
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