I wonder what I can say about Earl Durand that won’t throw me back into the family storm. Again. Supposably, Earl Durand was my grandfather. But I don’t believe it. On good days I think of him as a sort of ancestral godfather. On my bad days I think of him as just a PR piece for my dad’s very romantic life. I found a letter a few days ago from my dad. He wanted me to change my...
Mental Maps, not mind maps. Mind maps are something different. Peter Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City, says, “A mental map is just your own personal geography of the city and all of its personal and emotional attachments.” In other words, we carry a picture of the city in our heads. It’s our own map, one we create as we live in it. It includes, not just places and their relationships...
I count on High Country News for compelling stories about my Western homeland but I don’t always get to the articles right away. I had this one marked to come back later but somehow it’s been over a year — Nick Bowlin, “How Mormon history helps explain today’s public-land fights” (Apr. 13, 2020). It’s got Mormon history, which would usually put it at the top of...
I’m reading Joseph Bates Noble: Polygamy and the Temple Lot Case (2009). Goodreads says: “In 1892, a deposition was taken in a Salt Lake City courtroom to gather evidence in a land ownership battle between two offshoot branches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) The dispute centered on ownership of land purchased to build a temple, known as the Temple Lot...
A few days ago I wrote about the Baptist church in Champaign, Illinois where my great grandparents Wilford Luce and Essie Wilson were married in 1898. Almost immediately I ran across a bookmark where I saved a link to information about the (Lutheran) church in Gärdserum, Sweden where another set of great grandparents Adolf Svanström and Josefina Klasson were married in 1886. You can see a picture...