Comments on: From our exchanges: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s “A Pail of Cream”

By: Michelle Glauser

Michelle Glauser — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:53:32 +0000

Wow, this is wonderful, and in the area that I want to do my doctorate thesis in. Thank you for the post.

By: BHodges

BHodges — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:51:02 +0000

Excellent quote, there, Rick.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:33:17 +0000

Has LTU ever written an article that *wasn’t* as thoughtful and relevant as these? One of my all-time favorite books is her — aargh, the title escapes me. It’s the one where she begins each chapter with a description of a piece of needlework, then explores a topic in women’s economic history. I keep having to buy replacement copies of that, because I keep giving them away to women who do handwork.

I still haven’t read the collection of Arrignton lectures, but if it has an Ulrich piece, you’ve given me the incentive to look it up. Thanks, Rick.

By: Rick Grunder

Rick Grunder — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 02:44:02 +0000

I enjoyed Dr. Ulrich's article about her great grandmother Rachel Davis Thatcher, a fairly powerful example of the differences between perceived and recorded history: "Rachel's Death: How Memory Challenges History," in The Collected Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lectures . . . (Logan, Utah: Utah State University, 2005), 205-21. Her first paragraph:

There is the past. Then there are people's recollections of the past, the stories they tell themselves and pass on to their children. Scholars call these stories, whether preserved in families or celebrated in public events, "memory." Memory is not history. History is a documented account of the past. It asks memory, "Where did you get that?" and "How do you know?" "History," as historian Richard White has observed, "is the enemy of memory. . . . History forges weapons from what memory has forgotten or suppressed." Yet, memory is powerful, and it will not go away. In White's words, "There are regions of the past that only memory knows." [p. 205, author's ellipses; citing Richard White, Remembering Ahanagran: Storytelling in a Family's Past (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), 4, 20, 21.]