From Keepa’s first day on through to this morning, Keepa’s RSS feed has carried the full text of all posts. I apologize for the inconvenience it may cause some of you, but from here on forward, the RSS feed will carry only a summary rather than the full text.

This change is made because of one too many commercial websites run by so-called Latter-day Saints who have been using the RSS feed to republish the full text of Keepa posts, sometimes without a link to Keepa, sometimes without even my name. Abbreviating the RSS feed won’t absolutely prevent that kind of theft, of course, but it will make it less convenient for the thieves.

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(I’m moving this back to the top since ward members continue to ask me for Keepa’s address.)

Keepa isn’t going to be what you expect. If you’ll poke around a little, though, I think you’ll find something you like.

The church history I write here is different from what we talk about in church. Rather than retelling the familiar stories, everything here is supposed to be new to most readers — stories about people you’ve never heard of, bits of church history from the 20th century that we never quite get to in Sunday School, and a lot of material that shows how we Mormons have lived our lives. It is as much cultural as it is religious.

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The current lesson emphasizes birthright blessings, including the importance of the right kind of marriage to preserve the birthright, by focusing on Isaac’s character and family relationships. The older lessons, including these two from 1965, cover the same ground.

Isaac: Succeeding Patriarch Prepared

Concept

Men in important positions seldom simply happen to acquire their station and status; proper preparation brings them to responsibility and proper handling of it directs their destiny.

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I teach Relief Society four or five times a year. These are my notes for today’s lesson. We’ll never get through all of this because the sisters in our ward are very willing to share their thoughts and experiences, but I find it’s better for me as a teacher to have more discussion in mind than can possibly fill the time, rather than running unexpectedly short.

October Conference, 2009:

Richard G. Scott, “To Acquire Spiritual Guidance”
Boyd K. Packer, “Prayer and Promptings”
Vicki F. Matsumori, “Helping Others Recognize the Whisperings of the Spirit”

Attention Activity

Sisters, I’d like to begin by asking you to close your eyes for a minute while I ask you three questions. Just answer them to yourselves.

1. There are windows on each side of our Relief Society room. How many windows are on each side?

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Artwork by Nelson White; text by unknown author

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If it’s Saturday morning, it’s another page of jokes from the old Church magazines, this time from 1928:

A Question of Tears

“The wedding was a failure?”

“Yeah. The groom’s mother cried louder than the bride’s.”

The Short Side

“Say, waiter, I ordered strawberry shortcake, and you brought me a plate of strawberries. Where’s the cake?”

“Well, sir, that’s what we are short of.”

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Before the Los Angeles temple was dedicated in 1956, the Latter-day Saints of California traveled long distances to attend the temple. An earlier post described the first such temple excursion from Long Beach to the temple at Mesa, Arizona.

So many Saints were traveling so many miles for temple attendance in those days before everyone had the kind of private car to make that trip safely. To ease the burden, the Los Angeles Stake Genealogical Committee purchased a bus in February of 1933 specifically for temple trips. Most of their excursions were to the temple at Mesa, but in October 1933, 29 members of the stake rode all the way to Salt Lake City. By the time they returned home at the end of that trip – having attended the temples in Salt Lake, Logan, Manti and St. George – the bus had carried nearly 600 passengers, making it possible for members to perform 22,473 temple ordinances.

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The same extreme drought and wind conditions that brought the Dust Bowl to Oklahoma and other Plains states in the U.S. extended north into the Prairie provinces of Canada. Saskatchewan was especially hard-hit, beginning in 1929. Year after year the rain failed to fall. The land dried and the earth’s surface cracked and hot winds stirred up huge dust storms, carrying away the parched soil and piling it in drifts against fences and buildings. At least a quarter million people fled Saskatchewan during the ‘30s. Those who remained hoped against hope that each year of drought would be the last, that when they planted their seed in the spring it would take root rather than blowing away with the next wind. But year after year the drought continued until by 1934, its resources exhausted, Saskatchewan could not feed itself.

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IV. Traveling
VI. Ball Room Etiquette

V. Suggestions for Travel by Sea.

A sea-voyage is looked forward to with pleasure by some, and with dread by others; but it is well to know some of the ethics of sea-travel now-a-days, as not only our girl-missionaries, but many of our sisters as well, cross the great waters into foreign lands.

If you can choose your own route, it is well to secure the advertising matter of a number of steamship lines; and there is as much difference in the prices and comforts offered by the several companies as there is between the various hotels of a city. You can sail on the White Star Line, or on any other of the expensive lines, including the North German Lloyd, and pay anywhere from $125 to $700 for your one-week’s voyage. Or you can go by the Anchor Line for from $60 to $100 and be fairly comfortable. If you are going to England, select a line that will land you at Liverpool or Southampton, the latter place being not far from London; but if you desire to go to Germany, choose a ship that will land you at Cherbourg or at Hamburg. If, as is often the case, you travel, for company’s sake, with the Elders, you will sail from Boston on the Anchor Line and land at Liverpool.

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A review of the people involved in the Mormon and Old Settler conflicts in Missouri in the 1830s will provide a list of familiar names of some of the most notorious aggressors: Boggs, Lucas, Clark, Bogart, Price, as well as many others. One not quite obscure but not readily familiar name is that of Cornelius Gilliam, captain of a belligerent Missouri Militia battalion.

Gilliam’s offenses occurred in 1838 in the Far West and Adam-Ondi-Ahman areas of Caldwell and Daviess counties and are disclosed in the redress petitions prepared in response to the Lord’s instructions in Doctrine and Covenants 101:76. Gilliam’s name is mentioned in twenty-seven of these petitions and related memorials as compared with Boggs’s seventy-one, Clark’s eighty-one, and Lucas’s sixty. Gilliam is described as leading a mob of 200 men with faces painted black with red spots, forcing families out into the cold, plundering and burning their homes, and stealing their livestock.[1]

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You’re no doubt familiar with Brigham Young’s disgust with the novels read by young people. He said that novels were lies made to look as much like truth as possible, and that “our young women and boys read these lies until they get perfectly restless in their feelings.”

[M]any of our young women just hope and pray, if they ever thought of prayer, “I do wish some villain would come along and break open my room and steal me and carry me off; I want to be stolen, I want to be carried away, I want to be lost with the Indians, I want to be shipwrecked and to go through some terrible scene, so that I can experience what this beloved lady has experienced whom I have been reading about. Oh, how affecting! And they read with the tears running down their cheeks, until their books become perfectly wet, and they do so wish that somebody or other would come and steal and carry them off.

“If I had the dictation of a society,” he said, “all this would stop … I would have every person learning something useful.” [“Discourse,” 23 July 1873]

“Learning something useful” … hmm … like the usefulness of this article from 18 January 1873 Juvenile Instructor?

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The Abrahamic Covenant

Abraham 1-2; Genesis 12:1-8; 17:1-9

Purpose

To help class members understand the blessings and responsibilities of the Abrahamic covenant.

Scripture Discussion and Application

1. God covenants with Abraham
2. We are heirs to the blessings and responsibilities of the Abrahamic covenant

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This lesson comes from Ellis T. Rasmussen’s An Introduction to the Old Testament and Its Teachings. Part 1. (Provo, Utah: BYU College of Religious Instruction, 1972), the syllabus for Religion 301 at BYU. It surveys Abraham’s entire life, along with much of Isaac’s, and includes much material on the call of the Lord to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

Beware of the several places in this lesson which read the discredited “curse of Cain” doctrine into the decision to transfer the birthright from Esau to Isaac, because Esau’s wife was a descendant of Ham which, according to the old thinking, rendered her descendants ineligible for the priesthood. (More recent interpretation of the relevant scriptures is that the Egyptians, including the Pharaoh in the days of Abraham, were eligible for the priesthood, but the Pharaoh had erroneously claimed the “right of the priesthood,” i.e., the presiding authority or keys, to which he was not entitled since they had passed down through Shem’s lineage and had been bestowed on Abraham.)
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Artwork by Nelson White; text by unknown author

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Yuk-yuks from the church magazines of 1948 –

History

Teacher: “Johnny, who was Anne Boleyn?”

Johnny: “Anne Boleyn was a flat iron.”

Teacher: “What on earth do you mean?”

Johnny: “Well, it says here in the history book, ‘Henry, having disposed of Catherine, pressed his suit with Anne Boleyn.’”

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Last November we had a post on concert recitations, the discontinued practice of having an entire Sunday School class memorize an assigned verse of scripture, then stand and recite that scripture in unison. In the discussion that followed, Maurine raised a question:

While working on the Hyrum Stake 100-year history, I ran into something similar to the hymn reading in concert that intrigues me. Primary minutes for 19 Mar 1904 show: “. . . Prayer in concert with the children by Pres. Jensen.” Why would the prayer be in concert? This is the only example I have right in front of me now, but I saw it notated several times.

I had no answer, and the practice was unfamiliar to other commenters. (I am sure that on another – probably earlier – post, a reader brought up a similar question, although I cannot now find it). Since then, I have run across a few items that shed light on the practice, although it isn’t in sharp focus for me yet.

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Anne (U.K.) offers this wonderful story to supplement yesterday’s list of ways to slip almost painlessly into family history progress: “Having read the post and pondering how it is possible to make family history less scary and more appealing, I thought of ideas we had tried as a family. The article is missing one trick – family history days out during holidays, visiting areas where your ancestors once lived. We gained so much appreciation for our ancestors by seeing the areas in which they lived and learning more about the lives of the people who lived contemporaneously.”

When our children were small, my (now) ex husband and I used to plan our summer holidays and short camping trips, very carefully, so as to be sited near places of genealogical interest. Our poor children got used to spending part of each holiday in local history libraries, or in cemeteries, and, in smallish doses, were fairly compliant, providing a treat was promised for ‘afterwards.’

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This was a fun project for the girls on a wet and cold Saturday afternoon. The best question was an incredulous: “Is that how they played with dolls back then?” This one kinda stumped me: “How did they color them back then?”

[Answer: Crayola crayons in the 8-pack -- red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, black, brown -- were available by this date.]

The pictures are courtesy of a ten-year-old photographer.

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You remember him … he showed up just in time for 2010’s Snowmageddon.

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This checklist made up a kind of graduation portfolio for those who participated in Sunday School genealogical classes of the 1940s. Virtually all are projects that you could complete with a little effort but without a major investment in research – completing even a handful of them will result in an important collection of family information and increased confidence in your ability to do family history research, one step at a time.

Indented lines are brief explanations or suggested modernization offered by me.

Which will you do first? Which can you complete in 2010?

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The New York Times published its first crossword puzzle on February 15, 1942 — that’s 68 years ago yesterday. The clues are difficult, since they speak to a completely different era.

But one clue didn’t take long to figure out. See 140 across …

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III. Dress
V. Travel by Sea

IV. Traveling

Traveling has become so common now-a-days, that nearly everyone has had a little journey somewhere, or is planning to take one. Our people are great travelers – perhaps no other upon the face of the earth, relatively speaking, can compare with the Mormons in this respect. But, naturally, it is the men who have gone out more than the women; however, a great many of the latter are beginning to venture forth into the great world beyond the confines of Utah, and this paper is designed to give all who may contemplate a journey East or West, some information which will be helpful to them in traveling.

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William Edward Berrett (1902-1993) was a lawyer by training and practice and a teacher and historian by love. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1924 and received his legal degree there in 1933. In between, he joined the LDS Department of Education and taught seminary at half a dozen high schools from Rigby, Idaho in the north to Kanab, Utah in the south. Even while maintaining an active law practice in Salt Lake City, he taught outgoing missionaries in the Mission Home throughout the 1930s and ’40s.

He became a professor of religion at BYU in about 1950, and soon afterward was appointed vice president of BYU as well as vice administrator of church schools in charge of religious education (i.e., seminaries and institutes). He wrote a number of textbooks for the seminaries and institutes system. He retired from active teaching in 1970, serving then as a stake patriarch until his death.

William E. Berrett, “How Do You Teach Church History?” Improvement Era, February 1959, 94-95, 104-110.

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“Noah … Prepared an Ark to the Saving of His House”

Moses 8:19-30; Genesis 6-9; 11:1-9

Purpose

To help class members desire to live worthily and avoid the evils of the world.

Scripture Discussion and Application

We have now reached one of the most familiar stories the Bible, the history of Noah and his ark and the great flood. It is an episode that has so many layers:

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The second of the three Abraham lessons in the current manual focuses on episodes in Abraham’s life which illustrate the do’s and don’t’s the modern church teaches for “living righteously in a wicked world.” The 1965 Gospel Doctrine manual on “Patriarchs of the Old Testament” does not divide its lessons on Abraham in quite the same way, but much of the material in its pages does correspond to points promoted by the current manual.

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Artwork by Nelson White; text by unknown author

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Not many jokes in LDS publications this early. Here are a few –

1885

A teacher wishing to explain to a little girl the manner in which a lobster casts its shell when it has outgrown it, said “What do you do when you have outgrown your clothes? You throw them aside, don’t you?”

“Oh, no!” replied the little one; “we let out the tucks.”

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Who were we, and what were we doing as a people, in 1959? Here are a few of us –

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Carlota de Yalibat, Relief Society President,
Coban Branch, Guatemala

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August 15, 1900, Logan County, West Virginia: not far from the scene of the longstanding feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, 41-year-old John Dempsey, a Mormon, left his rural home to summon a doctor for his wife, Mary, and their week-old daughter Mahulda. As he approached the ford crossing Pigeon Creek, separating his property from that of his neighbor, 41-year-old Thomas Clark, a Campbellite preacher, John was met by the blast of a double-barreled shotgun. His mule bolted back toward the barn, and Dempsey fell to the ground, dying moments later. Clark ran into the nearby woods and hid himself.

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Get out your crayons and scissors, boys and girls (whatever your age). In honor of the winter storms some of you are, uh, enjoying this week, here’s a story and an activity you can do in your cubicles and classrooms and courtrooms everywhere. Well, maybe not your courtrooms. But everywhere else.

From the Children’s Friend of 1918 –

Coasting in Paperville.

By M.E. Benjamin.

“Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted Peter Paperboy as he hopped out of bed and pressed his chubby face close to the little paper window in his little paper house. “It has been snowing for fair! I see where somebody is going to have lots of fun today.” And in a jiffy he appeared outside, dressed all in his winter toggery.

He had a pretty red toboggan cap on his head, a nice warm sweater to match, and even leggings and mittens of the same color.

He hurried into the woodshed to get his sled, and was soon on his way to the hill down by the circus grounds, where all the other little chaps were.

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Here is the next chapter in our turn-of-the-last-century course in courtesy and refinement for the young girls of the church who had grown up in rough pioneer conditions. Before reading this entry on dress, take a moment to imagine what you expect it to be. What would a lesson on clothing address if it were written for today’s Young Women program?

Lesson II. Visitors in the Home
Lesson IV. Traveling

III. Dress.

We are told that the outer clothing does not always bespeak the lady or the gentleman. This may be true to a certain extent. The clothing may be poor or mean; but if the person who wears it is cultured and well-bred, no matter how poor, his clothing will be clean and neat, and at the same time simple and unostentatious. It is the height of ill-breeding to appear on the street or in the church or at any other inappropriate place clothed in gaudy raiment, and clad in such a way that the eyes of passers-by are attracted and offended.

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