More wisdom from Catherine Hurst, answering letters to the “Girl Query” department of the Young Woman’s Journal –

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“Pearl.” – In most of our meeting houses the first row of seats near the platform are reserved for mothers with babies to be blessed, and they are supposed to occupy those chairs when first coming into church. Usually the father is invited to participate in the service of blessing children, and if he so desires can bless and name his own child.

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Can you tell me what to do for cold sores? – Anna.

When you first feel the irritation of developing cold sores, paint the spot with flexible collodion. If already developed, rub with spirits of camphor several times a day.
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(See here for background)

From 1962 –

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Benjamin Franklin Hulme (1890-1970), the fourth child of nine, was raised on a farm in rural Bloomington, Idaho. He was a 27-year-old school teacher in 1917 when he left his ranch and his aging, dependent mother to cross the Atlantic. Only the unknown and the spectre of total war on the battlefields of Northern France awaited him. In order to “make the world safe for democracy” he had joined the 162nd Infantry Regiment of the First Army Corps and taken the oath of a soldier.

While little is known about his army experience (he served as a cook), much more is known about his first visit to France. Three years earlier he had landed on the continent to preach Mormonism in the newly re-established French Mission. He was assigned to Lille, about ten kilometers from the Belgian frontier. He was only in France two months when fighting erupted across Europe but his missionary journal offers some notable foreshadowing of the coming conflict. Although he finished his mission in England, he witnessed the start of the war first-hand in France.

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Buried in the comments of another post is some delightful discussion of the making of Danish beer by the early immigrants to Sanpete County (and no doubt other places). I’ve copied the comments here so that they can be more easily found later.

Enjoy! (The discussion I mean, not the beer …)

Then counselor in the First Presidency, David O. McKay gave an extraordinary talk at a BYU assembly on January 29, 1935. The full text is posted here; below are excerpts and a summary.

Building on the text that “Zion shall flourish and the glory of the Lord shall be upon her,” Elder McKay invites listeners to consider a picture of the Zion the Latter-day Saints intend to build.

If we have in mind the physical Zion, then we must strive for more fertile acres; bring from the mountains gold and silver in abundance; found factories to furnish more employment; extend in length and width our concrete public highways; build banks to protect, or to dissipate, as has been the case recently, the wealth we accumulate; transform our vast coal fields into electricity that will furnish light, heat and power to every family; improve the means of communication until with radio in our pockets we may communicate with friends and loved ones from any point at any given moment.

In case you wonder whether he was inspired by pop culture, know that Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio didn’t appear in the comic strip until 13 January 1946, nine years after this BYU address.

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Little White Lab Rat has been forced by ill health to eat as close to a no-fat diet as possible for the past few months. It’s a case of the mouse trap with its potential to snap my neck being less painfully dangerous than the cheese with which the trap is baited.

I call it my “Know Nothing Diet” based on a conversation I have with myself at least three times a day:

I: Can I have something tasty for breakfast/lunch/dinner?

Myself: No, nothing.

No fat means no dairy (pale blue water peddled by lying capitalists as skim “milk” doesn’t count), virtually no meat, no egg yolks (whoever invented the eggwhite omelet probably thinks it’s a good idea to fry the feathers and throw away the chicken, too), no nuts, no avocados, no olives, no salad dressing, no oils used in foods or for frying, and a very careful reading of labels to ferret out the sneaky marketers who set their serving sizes to unrealistically minuscule fractions of teaspoons in order to take advantage of the law that says you can label something as “nonfat” as long as it doesn’t contain above a certain amount of fat-per-serving.

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Lesson 32: “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”

Job 1-2; 13; 19; 27; 42

Purpose: To help class members develop strength to face adversity by trusting the Lord, building their testimonies of him, and maintaining personal integrity.

Preparation: Print “Theodicy” on a piece of paper so that it is large enough to be seen throughout the room.

LESSON DEVELOPMENT

Attention Activity:

[Clip “theodicy” sign to board.]

Scholars of religion have specialized terms to refer to various aspects of the scriptures. One of those terms, theodicy, refers to “divine justice,” or the “justice of God.” We have seen a great many examples of divine justice in our discussions of the Old Testament this year. In the very beginning of time, Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden because they had disobeyed God’s instructions with respect to the fruit of the tree, and his divine justice required that he keep his word that they should surely die. Later, we see that Abraham, who was faithful throughout his life to every instruction from God received the justice of the rewards God had promised him for his obedience.

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Lesson 35: God Reveals His Secrets to His Prophets

While not strictly a gospel lesson taught in the auxiliaries of the church, this lesson comes from an Old Testament study published by Sidney B. Sperry, then “Head of Department, Bible and Modern Scriptures, Brigham Young University,” The Message of the Twelve Prophets (Independence, Missouri: Press of Zion’s Printing and Publishing Company, 1941), and is therefore no doubt representative of Old Testament teaching at BYU during the 1930s and ‘40s.

AMOS – PROPHET OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

EARLY LIFE AND TIMES OF THE PROPHET. – The name of the prophet means “burden-bearer” or “burdened”. The reader is cautioned against confusing the name of Amos with that of Amoz, the father of Isaiah the prophet. The early life of Amos, and for aught we know, most of his life, was spent at Tekoa, a small town located on a hill at the edge of the Judean plateau six miles south of Bethlehem. The writer spent considerable time at this place and a more desolate site for a town or village can scarcely be imaged. It is necessary to walk the six miles from Bethlehem or ride one of the poor donkeys that can be hired for a small sum from Arab owners. Little remains of the buildings that were constructed at various times on the site of the town. (more…)

For background, see here
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… and still more funnies from the church magazines of 1948:

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Sales manager: “Miss Lee, wire Matt Brown that I’ll meet him Friday in Oconomowoc.”

Miss Lee: “Yes, sir. But how do you spell Ocon – that town?”

S.M.: “Good gracious! Don’t tell me you can’t spell such a simple name. it’s capital O-c-o- — Capital O-c-k – Tell him I’ll meet him in St. Paul.”

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