Visiting Santa Fe, I’m reminded yet again of how very Arab the American Southwest sometimes feels.   There’s a lot of Arabic influence around these parts.  Even the name of the city of Albuquerque, the etymology of which is in some dispute, has been argued to come from Arabic.  (Many Spanish and English words beginning with the element al-, which is the Arabic definite article, indisputably do — e.g., algorithm, algebra, alcohol, the star-name Aldebaran, the palace of... Read more

    This week’s Deseret News column is a brief and hasty attempt to lay out what I see as one of the chief misconceptions held by a certain breed of critics of the Book of Mormon:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865632671/Book-of-Mormon-apologetics-and-scholarship.html   Posted from Santa Fe, New Mexico Read more

      An interesting article on the perceived monochrome whiteness of Mormonism:   http://blog.oup.com/2015/07/history-black-mormonism/   Paul Reeve was in the small day-long gathering up in Park City in which I participated last week.  So were two black LDS women, one of whom coincidentally commented that, while Sunday mornings are the most segregated time of the week in contemporary American life, Mormons have no racially-based or racially-segregated congregations.  Our image notwithstanding, we never have.   But, of course, that remains very... Read more

    To no informed observer’s particular surprise in the wake of the deaths, first, of Elder L. Tom Perry and, then, President Boyd K. Packer, Elder Russell M. Nelson, who is now the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been set apart as the president of that Quorum:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/russell-m-nelson-new-president-of-the-quorum-of-the-twelve-apostles   I’ve been somewhat acquainted with Elder — now President — Nelson over a number of years... Read more

    I’ve already noted that we spent a fair amount of time early today in the Georgia O’Keefe Museum.   After that we all went to Baja Tacos for lunch.  Excellent.  No atmosphere at all.  In fact, no place to sit inside.  Drive-through and some tables and benches out in front.  But the food is well worth blogging about.  (Incidentally, the sit-down restaurant where we ate lunch yesterday is called The Shed, and it too provided some really good... Read more

    “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.  To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”  (St. Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274)   Posted from Santa Fe [Holy Faith], New Mexico     Read more

    I want to register a public protest against the lazy and intellectually dishonest use of loaded questions and the employment of potent but inaccurate epithets in order to marginalize one’s opponents.   I take this stance partly because I’m tired of it being done to me, but also as a matter of principle.  It’s done too often, all over the place.   For example, it isn’t racist to differ with Barack Obama or even to criticize Martin Luther King.... Read more

    We just walked back from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.  I’ve always liked her work, and I like it even more now.   Ms. O’Keeffe visited this area of New Mexico for many years, staying for months at a time, and, after the death of her husband (who owned a famous art gallery in New York City), took up residence here for the last decades of her exceptionally long life (1887-1986).     Next door to the Museum is... Read more

    I’ve never been impressed with Mr. Obama as a negotiator.   From the start, starting with his withdrawal from an American pledge to provide anti-missile defenses to (in exchange for nothing more than hopes of friendship from Vladimir Putin), to his gift to Cuba of normalized diplomatic relations (in exchange for really nothing at all), he hasn’t shown much promise as a bargainer.  I wouldn’t send him to represent me in a Middle Eastern bazaar, let alone as... Read more

    I’m aware — although an egocentric conviction that others ought to be interested in one’s every thought seems pretty fundamental to being a writer, and especially to being a blogger — that  not everybody out there will care very much about the details of my daily round here in the Santa Fe area.  Nonetheless, this blog serves in part as a sort of public journal for me and as an explanation of where I am to certain family and... Read more