To My Grandmother’s Portrait

By Bee Forsyth

You’re nothing but a picture on the wall.
Yet your young, serious lips and eyes are all
The grandma I have ever had. You know,
Before I came here, you were called to go.
But lots of times when I’m alone, I play
That you, O Lady of a Bygone Day,
Are still alive to wear your long black frock
Of taffeta, that rustles when you walk
And wafts a subtle scent of wild rose leaves –
A scent so delicate it almost grieves –
Dried in a tiny, painted china jar
Grandfather gave you when he went to war –
I’m sure, if you should call some bright spring day,
That I should know you, and I’d smile and say,
“Grandmother dear, why did you leave so soon?
(Yes, isn’t it a lovely afternoon?)
Won’t you sit down? Take off your bonnet, too.
I’m Bessie’s oldest daughter. How are you?”

(1931)

How much we change, how much we remain the same …

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Berlin, Germany . . .
MIA Convention . . .

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An ideological artifact from the past — less a story than propaganda. Feel free to have at it.

From the Relief Society Magazine, September 1936 –

The Relief Check

Sadie Ollorton Clark

The first time Elizabeth accepted the Relief check, she rushed to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her so that the children should not see her tears of shame and humiliation. Twice she almost tore the pink slip in half, but the knowledge that Melvin, her eleven-year-old son had no shoes for the approaching winter, and that Robert, seventeen, and the oldest of her seven children, could not finish high school without a little necessary money, kept her from it. Other people took it without any pretense of shame, and few had as many mouths to feed with as little to give them as she, although, she reflected bitterly, she was glad that she was ashamed. Somehow it set her apart from the mob that so regularly collected on the steps of the Relief Headquarters building.

She was disappointed rather than surprised when her husband accepted the check calmly enough. She handed it to him saying, “I suppose this is the first time a Galbraith ever accepted charity.”

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Sam Cowley, son of Samuel P. Cowley, legendary FBI agent during the gangster era of the turbulent 1930s, honors Keepa with the text of his talk given at the Chicago FBI Memorial Service for Fallen Agents on May 17, 2011.

I feel honored to have been asked by Special Agent Ross Rice to meet with you today and tell you a few things about my father, Samuel P. Cowley, who gave his life in the service of the FBI in November 1934, number eight on the Hall of Honor, now up to 55, I think.

A little background on Dad: He was born in a small southern Idaho town on the Utah border. He was raised and educated there and in Logan, Utah, part of a large religious Mormon family; his father was a leader in the church. When just 17, he was called to a four-year LDS mission to the Hawaiian Islands. He returned to college at Utah State University, where he studied economics, played football and served as president of his Sigma Chi fraternity. Then on to George Washington Law School in Washington, D.C., where he graduated in 1929 during the depression when there was very little work for new attorneys. Dad signed on with a fledgling investigative bureau within the Justice Department, a very different organization than the present vastly expanded Federal Bureau of Investigation, which it was later named.

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Lesson 33: “Ye Are the Temple of God”

1 Corinthinans 1-6

Purpose: To inspire class members to seek the blessings that come from being unified in Christ and following the Spirit. [Because we have so recently had a Priesthood/Relief Society lesson on chastity, I am omitting the remainder of the manual’s purpose statement: “... and being morally clean.”]

Follow-up to Previous Lesson

The last time we were together, we talked about Paul’s preaching on Mars Hill in Athens, particularly about how the philosophers there “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” (Acts 17:21) I suggested that in our case, the problem wasn’t so much that we had to be the first to tell or hear some new thing, but that we clung to old ideas, old speculations, things that had been written and spoken by Church members of the past who didn’t draw a line between divine revelation and human speculation, but who taught that speculation as revealed truth. I read a list of ideas that I had heard discussed by ward members, even taught by teachers, in the past couple of years, and suggested that they all fit into the category of old ideas that we loved to perpetuate for some reason, but which were at best speculative, and at worst wrong and hurtful.

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For background, see here
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An Appeal to Mother

“Ma! Ma!” sobbed Willie, “Do my ears belong to my neck or my face?”

“Why, what is the matter?” was the temporizing reply.

“Well, you told Mary to wash my face, and she’s washing my ears, too!”

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On the Trails of the Old Kaibab

By Elsie C. Carroll

Previous chapter

Chapter 12

“I come close to the tree in the cave,” Lon explained to the group listening to his strange story of the stolen steers. “I hear sound. I listen. Steers bellow back in hill, ver’ strange. I heap scart. I listen more. I hear men. Tree move little more. Then come still. I wait little while. Then I look at tree. I bring axe to cut down. When I hit, it jump off ground and show door. I show you.”

Lon struck the dead tree which was apparently rooted to the floor of the cave, and it sprang upward to the ceiling of the cavern, revealing an aperture in the wall of the cave which led to an open valley behind.

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From the Improvement Era, 1940 –

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Because I do so little reading of early Church history (history generally begins for me on July 24, 1847), I don’t know how well this may already be known — it was new to me, at least.

In 1832, Washington Irving, the noted writer (Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow), returned to America after nearly two decades residence in Europe, and made a trip with friends and government officials deep into Indian territory on the Plains. He wrote a letter to his sister, Catherine Irving Paris, while he stayed for a day or two in Independence, Missouri. As I read it, I suddenly realized that all I’ve ever heard of the Mormon experience in Missouri is our clashes with other people — nothing at all about the beauty of the land as Joseph Smith and his colleagues would have seen it so soon after Irving passed through.

Independence, Mo., Sept. 26,1832.

My Dear Sister

We arrived at this place the day before yesterday, after nine days’ travelling on horseback from St. Louis. Our journey has been a very interesting one, leading us across fine prairies and through noble forests, dotted here and there by farms and log houses, at which we found rough but wholesome and abundant fare, and very civil treatment. Many parts of these prairies of the Missouri are extremely beautiful, resembling cultivated countries, embellished with parks and groves, rather than the savage rudeness of the wilderness.

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Zintka Latuni

(Little Lost Bird.)

by Augusta Joyce Crocheron

Cold fell the snow on the mountains,
Fierce fell the fire of the foe,
Yet safe in her fur cov’ring
Little Lost Bird slumbered low.
Cold were the arms of her mother
Clasping her still though in death,
Her lips answ’ring not with caresses
Little Lost Bird’s tender breath.

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Martha Jane Knowlton Coray (1821-1881) was an early convert to the Church, a member of the Nauvoo Relief Society, and the woman who took dictation from and helped Lucy Mack Smith write her History of the Prophet Joseph Smith by His Mother. She and her husband Howard Coray emigrated to Salt Lake City, then moved on to Provo, where Martha became the first woman to serve on the board of trustees of Brigham Young University. She was a mother, a teacher, a student of natural medicine, an advocate for women, and many, many other admirable roles.

One of her daughters, Harriet Virginia Coray (1846-1872) married Wilson H. Dusenberry, one of the brothers who operated the school that eventually became BYU, and who was also mayor of Provo. Harriet – called “Hattie” – died shortly after delivering her fourth child, a girl who died soon after birth, named for her mother. I don’t know the circumstances of Hattie’s death beyond its connection with childbirth, although the following letter suggests incompetence by her midwife – if any reader knows more of the circumstances, please share that.

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For background and links to chapters in this series, see here

LESSON XVI

VOCATIONS DEVELOPED IN RECENT YEARS

In the modern world there are so many changes in practically every industrial activity that new problems are constantly a rising and new occupations are rapidly being developed. This is an age of machinery – of new kinds of machinery which is ever changing as a result of new scientific discoveries. During the past century there has been more advancement in the physical equipment of the world than during all of the rest of the history of the world. This means that there must be constant shifts in vocational adjustments. The young man who wishes to protect himself vocationally must always be alert to make such adjustments as are in line with progress. There is no stopping the mighty tide of advancement that is sweeping the world, and the young man who is wise will not try to do so, but will study the situation and try to adjust himself to the progressive movements.

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For background and links to chapters in this series, see here

LESSON III

KINDS OF VOCATIONS

In the days of our great grandfathers, there was little need for a classification of industries. Farming was the main work of man and housekeeping the main one of woman. A few merchants sold the articles which the farmer and his wife could not readily raise or make at home, and the miller, the blacksmith, the doctor, and a few other special workmen supplied all outside wants. Today, however, the wants of man have multiplied many fold and it has been found that articles formerly made at home can be made more cheaply in factories by men and women with special skill. The result of this is that the number of types of work one may choose to do cannot be counted on the fingers of two hands as they formerly could. Our government, in 1920, listed about 600 occupations in which men and women were engaged, but many of these occupations included several distinct trades such as grouping “movie” actors, theatre actors, and other showmen and actors into a single group. Professor Snedden says there are 2,000 distinctive vocations form which an American boy or girl may choose his career.

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For background and links to chapters in this series, see here

LESSON VI

THE TRADES

“A parent who does not teach his child a trade teaches him to be a thief.” – Brahmanical Scriptures.

If I had my way every young man would be skilled in some useful trade, not that every person should be a tradesman all of his life, but that he should have the educational value which comes from being able to make a living with his hands should circumstances make it necessary or desirable to do so. The doctor, the lawyer, the merchant, the school teacher, and the farmer would all be better for experience in the handling of tools.

Many kinds of work may be classed under the general title of the trades. It is impossible to draw sharp lines, since the trades merge into the work of the artist, designer, and manufacturer, on the one side, and into the field of the unskilled laborer on the other. The work of the tradesman requires special skill and cannot be well done without a certain amount of training. This work may include the activities of the carpenter, mason, painter, plasterer, plumber, paper hanger, etc., in building; or that of the blacksmith, machinist, shoemaker, printer, tailor, etc., in manufacturing and other industries.

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