A 2020 Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph of the grave marker of Susan B. Anthony. Please notice the “I Voted” stickers around and about the marker. A number of such stickers were present today, as well.
My wife and I drove around today to look at the Eastman School of Music, from which two of our friends graduated, and at the University of Rochester and its medical school (where a former next-door neighbor earned his medical degree). We crossed the Erie Canal several times and went to the former home of Susan B. Anthony, in the parlor of which, in 1872, she was arrested for violating the law that prohibited voting while female. She was convicted in a widely publicized trial, but refused to pay the fine — and the authorities prudently decided to let the matter drop. In 1878, Ms. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton arranged for the Congress of the United States to be presented with a proposed amendment that would grant women the right to vote. It came to be popularly known as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” and, in 1920, it was ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Unfortunately, Ms. Anthony had already died in 1906, in the same house in Rochester that we visited and where she had been arrested in 1872 for attempting to cast a ballot. She did, however, live to see women granted the vote in Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870), before her arrest, and then in Colorado (1893) and Idaho (1896).
Although Ms. Anthony’s home announced its open hours as extending from 11 AM to 5 PM, it was empty and locked up when we arrived at about 2 PM. But we also visited her grave. It is located in nearby Mt. Hope Cemetery, which is effectively enclosed by the University of Rochester and its main medical school campus. (I’ll resist the powerful temptation to offer sardonic comments on the proximity of medical school and cemetery.) The plain simplicity of Susan B. Anthony’s tombstone was a striking contrast to the huge and grandiose obelisk located almost immediately to its right, marking the ostentatious burial place of some apparently once-prominent local family.
We also visited the grave of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), the escaped slave who became a famous nineteenth-century abolitionist, crusader for women’s rights, orator, and writer, and the founder of the American civil rights movement. It’s amazing to me that two of the preeminent leaders of the two most consequential reform movements in the history of the United States are both buried in the same Rochester cemetery.
One of the Interpreter Foundation’s control rooms for the weekly Interpreter Radio Show (Wikimedia Commons public domain image). Please notice the photograph of the First Presidency wearing astronaut gear to the lower left of the world map.
For the 30 March 2025 installment of the Interpreter Radio Show, Terry Hutchinson and Martin Tanner discussed Come, Follow Me Doctrine & Covenants lesson 17 covering D&C 37-40, various biographies of Joseph Smith, and the new temple garments. Their conversation was recorded and, now edited to remove commercial interruptions, has been archived and made available for your delight and edification.
The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard weekly on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640. Or, if for some reason you can’t access K-TALK (or stubbornly refuse to do so), you can nonetheless listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.
The Beatles in New York City (February 1964), with John Lennon appropriately at far left (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)
In the comments section of this blog, Kenneth Gourdin shared a wonderful comment attributed to John Lennon (of all people): “It will be all right in the end. If it isn’t all right, it isn’t the end.” Very much my sentiment.
In the Sacred Grove, near Palmyra, New York (LDS Media Library)
Some of you are no doubt wondering what this Peterson clown is doing in upstate New York right now, so soon after he was wandering around Hawai’i. Well, the simple answer — very understandable, given my character and personality — is that I found balmy tropical sea breezes unendurable and badly needed someplace cold, gray, and wet. (And, of course, my Malevolent Stalker and his disciples will add the suggestion that I just can’t stand being around brown people.) But that would be too simple. There’s also the fact that, given my toxic persona, I’m obliged to travel long distances in order to find even one or two people who, because they don’t know me yet, are willing to interact with me. Occasionally, folks drop in on me from far-flung areas. The day before we left, for example, the current Istanbul branch president stopped by our home; a few weeks before, we had friends come by from Helsinki, Finland. But, for a radius of about four miles around my house, so many former residents have fled the neighborhood that it now resembles the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie. Lightning flashes in the perpetual gloom, thunder rolls, and only the occasional wailing dog can still be found.
While we’re here, though, we’ll be filming on location for our forthcoming series of short Interpreter Foundation documentary videos, Becoming Brigham. (Our film people should be arriving as I write.) And, for those who wonder — or who, at least, offer hostile speculations — about the finances of it all: No, neither the Interpreter Foundation nor Interpreter donors nor tithe payers covered our sojourn in Hawai’i. Starting today, though, my expenses here in the American northeast (e.g., food and lodging) will be covered by funds donated for Becoming Brigham. Why? Because — owing to the misconceived ideas of the filmmakers — I will be in front of the cameras here at Church historical sites in New York and, later this week, in Ohio. (Just as I was, last month, in Carthage and Nauvoo.). My wife, however, is traveling on our private personal dime. I’m really glad that she’s here; I much prefer having her along rather than traveling by myself. She will be helping out with the movie crew and actors — coordinating lunches and snacks and so forth for long filming days and helping to drive — but she’s doing it as a volunteer. Of course, that won’t necessarily prevent a chorus of indignation and complaints over at the Obsession Board. But then, entertaining those folks is a large part of my raison d’être.
Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford
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