Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.  (Mark Twain)   I’m in the mood for some quotations from Americans.  And there’s nobody more American than Mark Twain.     Read more

    One last little note about Germany:   This morning, before heading to the airport, we visited a place called Mathildenhöhe, not far from our hotel in Darmstadt.   It was, at one time, an artists’ colony dedicated to what’s called, in German, Jugendstil — better known in English as art nouveau.  Darmstadt was a leading center for Jugendstil, which remains a favorite of mine.     There are a number of houses and other buildings in the area of... Read more

    Still catching up on the trip diary.  But this should do it.   We spent most of our last full day in Berlin in the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz (which is, itself, of historical significance).   And most of that we spent in the Museum für Film und Fernsehen   There’s more German and German-speaking film history, I suspect, than many Americans are aware of — and I’m not referring merely to such figures as Peter Lorre... Read more

    And no, I’m not talking (right now) about the establishment of a new mission, headquartered in Istanbul, under my friend and BYU colleague Jim Toronto (who, not so very long ago, took a break from teaching Arabic at BYU to preside over the mission in Sicily).   I’m talking about the surprising electoral setback handed to Recep Tayyeb Erdogan over the weekend:   http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/06/08/turkish-president-party-loses-parliamentary-majority-faces-struggle-to-form/?intcmp=latestnews   Mr. Erdogan has been moving in an Islamist direction, and also in a... Read more

    A nice little piece in the Deseret News by the Interpreter Foundation’s Taylor Halverson, citing the Interpreter Foundation’s Matthew Bowen:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865630202/Evidences-for-the-Book-of-Mormon-Why-the-missionary-zeal-of-Abish.html?pg=all   Posted from Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany     Read more

    “I have made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should require more.”  (“Jean Paul”)   Posted from Darmstadt, Germany     Read more

    We attended services today at the Darmstadt Ward, which claims to be the largest single German-speaking unit in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   I can believe the claim.  It was as a congregation as large as any ward that I’ve seen in Utah.     Afterwards, not wanting simply to return to our little hotel rooms and sit there, those of us who were still around headed off to Bingen — think of St. Hildegard of Bingen... Read more

      It’s not precisely admiring, but it’s amusing:   http://gkcdaily.blogspot.de/2015/05/mormonism.html Thanks to Nicol Sorenson-Legakis for alerting me to this. Posted from Darmstadt, Germany Read more

    When I was growing up, the theory that all Amerindians, without exception, came to the New World  from northeastern Asia relatively recently across the now-submerged Bering land bridge was known with absolutely dogmatic certainty to be true.   Perhaps, though, some questions need to be asked:   http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/19/how-linguists-are-pulling-apart-bering-strait-theory-154063   Thanks to Kevin Taylor for bringing this item to my attention.   Posted from Darmstadt, Germany     Read more

    In an interesting little article, the eminent — if not downright venerable — Austrian-American sociologist of religion Peter Berger considers the possibility that there might be a religious revival of sorts occurring in German-speaking Europe.   He looks particularly at recent phenomena in Dresden and Stuttgart:   http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/06/03/are-evangelicals-winning-the-world/   If true, this wouldn’t altogether surprise me.  I recall a talk from many years ago by a BYU historian of Europe, Douglas Tobler, who argued that such a rebirth of... Read more