On Monday morning, we spent about three hours out on the Amazon and some of its tributaries.   The first thing that we did was to look (successfully, I might note) for fresh water “pink” dolphins.  They’re called pink dolphins because, while they’re normally grey, they turn pink when hunting or agitated.  This occurs because the blood rushes to their capillaries, which are very visible in their dorsal fins.  There are also freshwater gray dolphins who don’t change... Read more

    Much as certain of my critics might desire it, I have not been swallowed up by the Amazon rainforest.  But my ability to blog was temporarily impaired to the point of quite ungratifying frustration.  So I stopped trying.   WiFi simply isn’t always quite up to standard when one is traveling.  It’s actually been quite good out here in the jungle – I mean, we’re in the jungle, for goodness’ sake! – but I’ve generally been able to... Read more

    After church services, we boarded a medium-sized motorboat and headed out onto the Itaya River, soon joining the Amazon River itself (or, as it is apparently sometimes still called at this point, with the Marañón River).  The place where they join is easy to recognize, because the Itaya is blue while the Amazon is distinctly brown, roughly the color of coffee with cream.   Although I’ve been to Peru once before — and also, very briefly, to Brazil... Read more

    This morning, we attended sacrament meeting at a small barrio or ward located just a few blocks from our hotel in Iquitos.  (Our non-LDS local guide says that there are 23 LDS meetinghouses in the Iquitos area, but I don’t know whether he has the entire “conurbation” in mind or merely the city of Iquitos proper.  Anyway, I’ve now seen two of them.)  Our non-LDS tour manager, a young single woman accompanying us from Lima, also attended with... Read more

    I maintain a blog for many reasons.   One of them is purely personal:  It’s a kind of journal for me, and, even more particularly, it’s a way of remembering things, and especially of remembering people, whose memory I refuse to allow to be wholly lost.   So, for instance, I’m afraid that readers of this blog will have to put up with my regular yearly memorials to my brother and my parents.   Today marks the fifth... Read more

    One of the places pointed out to us here in the city of Iquitos, in the Amazon rainforest area of northeastern Peru, was La Casa de Fierro (the “Iron House”), located on the major city square between Próspero and Putumayo streets.  It is a large iron house that was built during the rubber boom that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.  Its walls, ceiling, and balcony are plastered in rectangular sheets of iron and it is said to be the first prefabricated... Read more

    We were up fairly early this morning to fly from Lima to what claims to be the largest isolated city in the world — which is to say the largest city on earth that cannot be reached by road.  It must be reached, if it’s reached at all, either by boat or by airplane.  And, although Iquitos is a Peruvian city, it’s linked more naturally by boat  — via the Amazon River — to Brazil than to Peru.... Read more

    As we went through the “Control de Aduanas” just now, I couldn’t help but think about the etymology of the word aduana (“customs”).   Like its French equivalent (douane), it derives from the Arabic diwan (or, perhaps better, diwaan), which means a “registry” or even an “anthology.”  A poet’s collected work is gatherd into a diwan.   So, for example, there is a diwan of the poems of Abu Nuwas, and one of al-Mutanabbi, and etc.  The great... Read more

    It being Friday, a new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Prospering in the Land: A Comparison of Covenant Promises in Leviticus and First Nephi 2”   Abstract: A careful examination of the Abrahamic covenant, as contained in Leviticus 26, and the covenant established with the Lehites during their exodus to the New World, found in 1 Nephi 2, shows deliberate similarities. These similarities are important to understand, as the role of covenant is central in... Read more

    I now want to say something briefly about the approach to the scriptures — my approach to the scriptures — that disturbed those two or three elderly sisters in the old Mar Vista Ward, decades ago.  Because it’s also my approach to the history and historiography of the Church and is, thus, relevant to certain very recent controversies here on this blog.   I read the scriptures — the historical parts, anyway — pretty much the way I... Read more