Like just about every other blogger, I planned on doing a year-end summary — but only Keepa would have this wonderful graphic from the Relief Society Magazine to mark the passing from one year to another!

But rather than list a bunch of stats or my favorite posts, I only have a few superlatives to share –

* Greatest pleasure: Meeting so many Keepa readers face-to-face or through personal friendships developed through private email. I may have had to go as far as Pennsylvania to meet some of you; others have said hello to me in the library, or we’ve met for breakfast; most of you I already knew, but at least one — a reader in Texas — has never yet commented. It is fun to meet you all.

* Greatest regret: Losing Tatiana as a commenter through a misunderstanding.

* Most fun email attachment: Jami’s photos of her chickens, named Keepa, Pitch, and Indy.

* Most exciting addition to Keepa: The organ and piano recordings made by the Phantom. They add a whole new dimension to the blog, and there will be more, non-Christmas, recordings of early 20th century Mormon music in the new year.

We’ve had a happy 2009 together — here’s to a Happy New Year for all Keepa’ninnies and your families.

Bits and pieces addressed to Latter-day Saint women in 1906:

Duties of the Tenant

It is the duty of each family to keep the home clean and beautiful. No man is too poor to keep his place clear of weeds and rubbish. And no one should excuse himself for living in a place that is run down and dirty because he rents from someone else. The filth left by tenants has caused dismay in the heart of many a landowner; and, too, the neglect of tenants in general prevents most landlords from beautifying their property to any great extent. Often the lawn and trees, to say nothing of flowers, are permitted to die for lack of a little care, when ten minutes a day would keep them alive and flourishing. The wilful waste and selfishness begotten in the characters of many renters is the most potent argument against living in a rented house. Heaven shield us from the habit of neglecting to do what is right, simply because someone else may be benefitted by the act.

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Boys and girls engaged in the seasonal activities of a mid-century American childhood appear on the covers of the 1951 Children’s Friend.

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Our ward ran out of lessons from the Sunday School manual with one week left in the year. Since it was my turn in the teaching rotation and because we had focused on other matters in the recent lesson on continuing revelation, I proposed teaching a lesson on Official Declaration–2 and the priesthood revelation of 1978. I don’t think the subject matter turned off the Sunday School president; other considerations caused him to give my week to my co-teacher. In any case, I didn’t know I would be teaching after all until receiving an email from my bishop last Tuesday evening. I spent about 30 hours since then working on the lesson; below is what I came up with, adapting from the drafts and experiences of friends who have taught similar lessons recently.

I wanted class members to feel a personal connection to some of the early black pioneers, with the goal of remembering how important the 1978 revelation was to the lives of real people. I also wanted to help anyone who might be uncomfortable about jettisoning the teachings of beloved church leaders of the past, by stressing that since we believe in continuing revelation, it should not be surprising that we as a church understood less yesterday than we do today. PowerPoint slides of pioneers and church leaders, with pertinent short quotations, helped class members focus.

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Under “Suggested Lesson Development” – provided, evidently, more for the teacher’s information than for teaching to the class – is the statement:

Introduction to the Old Testament

The Old Testament is an account of God’s dealings with his covenant people from the time of the Creation to a few hundred years before the Savior’s birth. The Old Testament provides powerful examples of faith and obedience. It also shows the consequences of forgetting, disobeying, or opposing God. Its prophecies bear witness of the Messiah’s birth, redeeming sacrifice, second coming, and millennial reign.

Past Sunday School manuals have devoted entire units to what is covered here in two sentences. In 1944, the Gospel Doctrine course “Feed My Sheep” based on the Old Testament reserved an introduction and five lessons to explaining this background statement. Some extracts:

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I’m going to pick up a series that I tried last year: The presentation of lessons from past LDS Sunday School manuals corresponding with the topics presented in the current year’s manual. Although those posts understandably drew little comment, I found them valuable as a Gospel Doctrine teacher because the old lessons were often presented from a different point of view, or at least in a different style of language, that helped me better understand a principle, or at least be prepared for the comments offered by my class of generally much older members who grew up learning from a different style of lesson presentation.

I don’t offer these old lessons as being better but merely different, not a substitute or replacement for the manual but another way of approaching the same material.

The current Old Testament Sunday School course is a blend of two tracks previously followed in LDS Sunday instruction:

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Adapted from Leaves from My Journal, by Wilford Woodruff; artwork by Douglas Johnson. (Links to previous installments are found at the very bottom of this post.)

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Enjoy some more  jokes from the 1944 Millennial Star, published at a time when the staff was British, not American:

Little Moron

Did you ever hear about the Little Moron who –

– moved to the city because he heard the country was at war?

– thought he was deformed because his Army uniform fitted him perfectly?

– went to the lumber yard looking for his draught board?

– was too modest to go near his car when he heard the gears were stripped?

– swallowed some copper so there’d be some change in him?

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Artist: Charles Nickerson

Artist: Arnold Friberg

Nature’s best, from the Lord’s own department store — nothing says “Merry Christmas” like a cantaloupe or a jumbo stalk of celery!

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I know what you’re thinking, or at least what you’ll be thinking in a few minutes: You’ll be thinking that I made this up, or that I’ve watched too many sappy holiday movies. No. The story, so far as I have been able to verify what seem to be absolutely legitimate sources, is true.

James Albert Anderson (“Jim”; 1874-1926) married Martha Sophia Heiner (“Sophia”; 1884-1978) in the Salt Lake Temple in 1907. They settled in Morgan, Morgan County, Utah (that’s northern Utah, in the general neighborhood of Ogden). Morgan was, and is, a small community, but one that provided great economic opportunity for Jim. He was a successful businessman in coal mine management, among other enterprises which included either a cannery or the wholesaling of canned goods; he was the ward’s bishop, and represented the community in state politics at various times, and served on community boards of all types. Sophia was a gracious hostess, a Relief Society worker, and a woman who watched hopefully for children who never came.

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If you lived off-campus at BYU in the ‘70s or early ‘80s, you’ll remember this gimmick practiced by Storehouse Markets (a private commercial enterprise, with no connection to the church’s system of bishops’ storehouses):

Storehouse Markets were cavernous, cold, and dark warehouse-type grocery stores that students and young families patronized because they were much cheaper than national chains. In those pre-barcode, pre-electronic scanner days, grocers stamped prices on every single can and box in a case, and individual items were rung up by hand at the checkstand. To keep prices down, Storehouse didn’t hire clerks to do that labor-intensive price-stamping work; instead, they posted prices on the shelves by each product, then furnished customers with grease pencils to write the price on each can and box themselves as they put items in their baskets.

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Adapted from Leaves from My Journal, by Wilford Woodruff; artwork by Douglas Johnson.

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Some (ahem) gems from the church magazines of 1942 –

Knitting Lessons

“So that striptease dancer couldn’t learn to knit.”

“No, she’s been trained to drop every stitch, you know!”

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Past Church lesson manuals and magazines occasionally offered short dramatizations of scriptural stories for use in classrooms, family programs, or ward activities – at least, they did this in the days when people expected to participate actively in both learning and entertainment.

These plays were simple, called for the most rudimentary of costumes and props, and usually needed little memorization – a straightforward plot with some improvised dialogue and the reading of scripture carried the story along. Children who had heard the scripture story a time or two could put on the play with no more than a single rehearsal.

Would your children, perhaps with a Primary class or some cousins visiting Grandma on Christmas Eve, enjoy putting on this simple play from 1961?

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I really, really like this one from the Improvement Era of June 1944 — if anybody had an original copy of the magazine and wanted to sell it, I’d make a bid.

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The Hotel Utah (now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building) in Salt Lake City was Utah’s grandest hotel from the time it opened in 1911 until it closed as a hotel in 1987. The historic corner it occupies directly east of Temple Square was the long-time site of the General Tithing Office, the Salt Lake Bishop’s Storehouse, and the Deseret News, and the Church was the major (but not exclusive) holder of Hotel Utah stock.

These advertisements from the Improvement Era of 1944 are almost “anti-advertisements” — they seem on the surface to say “Don’t patronize us! Leave us to serve the cause of the war!”  In any case, these ads kept the Hotel in the minds of possible patrons, allowed the Hotel to continue to support the magazine with necessary revenue, and give us a great glimpse at the variety of home front activities that made up the war effort during World War II.

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Did you ever try it this way? I’d never heard of it before seeing this advertisement from a 1956 issue of the Improvement Era:

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Another page from our family photo album:

(I wish the reproduction quality were better. Most of these come from magazines printed on cheap, yellowing paper, and the inking quality was not always of the best. Think of it as looking back through the mists of time and make it a feature, not a flaw.)

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Scouts of Hull, England,

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Who doesn’t smile to see a model train chugging around its track, miniature houses and trees in place, lights and whistles on the engine? The longer the track, the more the curves and switches, the longer the tunnels – the better.

Douglas Gordon Hook (1939-1992) loved model trains. His father bought him his first one when he was two years old to brighten a childhood filled with too many lengthy hospital stays. Born in New York City, Douglas was injured at birth, lived his first months in an incubator, and was hospitalized at intervals until he was eleven. Even then his body was not robust. His first child’s train was replaced through the years by more sophisticated models, longer and more elaborate tracks, engines that whistled and smoked, and toy villages to complete the illusion of a miniature world in which he had total freedom of movement.

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The General Board’s “Christmas Program Committee” (Inez Witbeck, Nellie Kuhn, and Margaret Ipson) suggested the following program reflecting the prayer of “Peace on Earth” during the dark days of war.

Christmas Program

Suggested for Sunday Schools

I. Appropriate Opening Exercises.

II. Explanation of the theme by the superintendent.

Theme

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.” Isaiah 52:7

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Adapted from Leaves from My Journal, by Wilford Woodruff; artwork by Douglas Johnson.

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Winder Farms, which is, I think, the last Salt Lake-area dairy to deliver milk to families’ front doors, is having a contest — subscribers have decorated their milk coolers, and the public gets to vote on the favorite. Winner gets their milk delivery for free for the next year.

Among several terrific entries is the one created by my LDS neighbors, with their three young children: the “Monster” cooler pictured here. If you’re so inclined, please help them win by voting — no registration required, no spam resulting. One vote per IP (which levels the playing field, after the first go-round generated more than 6,000 votes for one entry by a contestant who created an automated program to generate votes as fast as the poll could handle them — that’s one reason I’m so willing to promote my friends’ entry). Thanks.

Links in other blogs’ sidebars ( http://poll.fm/1ez29 ) are solicited.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Mormon history …

From the Juvenile Instructor of 1933 –

Time Healeth All Things

“Is the climate in this town healthful?” asked the stranger.

“Sure is,” the native replied. “Why, when I came here I couldn’t utter a word, I had scarcely a hair on my head, I hadn’t strength enough to walk across the room, and I had to be lifted from bed.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed the stranger. “And how long have you been here?”

“I was born here.”

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Elbows, fingernails, and necks are some of the parts giving difficulty to the young women of 1919. Oh, and as usual, constipation. Thank heavens for advice from the “Girl Query” columns of the Young Woman’s Journal!

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“Farmer’s Girl.” – There are so many ways for a girl or woman to make money “at home” aside from sewing, then sewing does not always find a ready market in these days of factory-made clothing. As our space is limited, please send stamped addressed envelope for specific suggestions.

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Even while stating my commitment to support the change, I commented on another blog that I was hesitant to see “care for the poor and needy” added to the traditional “threefold mission” — the Church, led by the priesthood, is the only organization on earth with the power to “proclaim the gospel, perfect the Saints, and redeem the dead,” while anybody and everybody ought to be caring for the poor and needy regardless of any special priesthood commission.

But as I lay sleepless early this morning — the time I do my best (or sometimes my weirdest) thinking — I recalled comments made elsewhere by those discussing this development: “The poor will always be with us.” “How can we care for the poor without making them dependent on charity?” “If charity is forced — whether extracted from us by a government or by the Church — it isn’t charity, it’s socialism.”

And then I wondered …

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Let’s celebrate Christmas and Friday both, with a puzzle submitted by Coffinberry!

As usual, please solve only one letter so that readers who come a little later can play too; if there are still letters to solve late in the morning, feel free to solve another one.

My whole has 18 letters:

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

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The Salt Lake Tribune is announcing, apparently on the authority of a statement by Church spokesman Scott Trotter, that a fourth “mission” — to care for the poor and needy — is indeed being added to the traditional formulation of the Church’s unique responsibilities in the world to “proclaim the gospel, perfect the Saints, and redeem the dead.” This news has already been discussed in the bloggernacle (by Chris Henrichsen here, for example, drawing on David H. Sundwall’s report here), and will no doubt receive even more attention now and when the additional phrase is presented to the Church in a more formal way.

Keepa’s angle on this story is, naturally, historical.

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(Mosiah 16:8)

The Mormon relationship to the graves of our loved ones is a complex one. Perhaps because of our understanding of the importance of the physical body to our eternal progression, most of us prefer to lay our friends away in peaceful graveyards, yet cremation is not prohibited. There may be an added layer of emotional turmoil in the event a body must be left in the ocean or on the battlefield, but we don’t believe there is any lasting consequence to one whose body is not buried in consecrated ground. We dedicate our graves and pray that they will remain undisturbed until the resurrection day, and many of us like to visit family graves, yet we know that our loved ones are not there but have gone elsewhere.

As a people – the Mormon people, distinct from individual people who are Mormons – we have a special relationship, I think, to graves that reflect (celebrate? even exaggerate?) our history as a suffering people. Who could visit Winter Quarters, for instance, without pausing at the cemetery there? You might visit an individual grave if you are a literal descendant of the pioneer buried there, but most of us view that cemetery, and a few others, as a symbolic whole, representing the sacrifices and sufferings of our ancestors as a people.

If that’s true of entire cemeteries, I think it is sometimes even truer of individual graves in lonely spots.

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Here’s what wordle.net says we talk about here, after analyzing the words used in post titles (the larger the word, the more often we use it). We’re nothing if not consistent, comparing this to last year’s Wordle — we talk about Mormons a little more often, if possible, and we still tell knock-knock jokes.

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