Camrey Bagley Fox and I spent the first part of the day being filmed in conversation together down at the Mansion House, mostly inside, and then on the grounds of the Smith Homestead, across from the Bidamon Stable and, much more importantly, the adjacent Nauvoo House. Joseph and Emma lived in the Mansion House with their family and with his widowed mother — in part of it, anyway, since the front portion of the building was managed as a... Read more
We were up early and spent most of the first part of the day filming in and around Carthage Jail, a place of deeply tragic significance in the story of the Church. It was the longest time that I’ve ever spent at the site in Carthage, and it was pleasant to be there with very few others around. I’m glad that tourists come to the place in mass quantities — most of them Latter-day Saints but, I’m told, about... Read more
My wife and I headed out this morning, Monday morning, over the Mississippi River and into Illinois, to the Cahokia Mounds, which are both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an Illinois State Historic Site. I’ve wanted to visit Cahokia for many years but, somehow, we’ve always been in a hurry and unable to spare the time. On this occasion, though, we arrived early for precisely that reason, and we were able to spend much of the morning on... Read more
The flight today from Salt Lake City to St. Louis took something on the order of two and a half hours. O, the suffering that I endure for my art! I couldn’t help but associate myself in my mind with the discomforts and hardships undergone by nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint pioneers, who often traveled roughly the same route, albeit in reverse. (They commonly came through St. Louis for supplies as they began their journey across the plains and over the... Read more
I have a number of linguistic pet peeves. Not all of them are related to Latter-day Saint usage — e.g., “she advocates for x” rather than, simply, the perfectly adequate “she advocates x” is not — but some of them are. Here is one of them that is: Back in the General Conference of April 2018, I was very pleased to hear President Dallin H. Oaks ask us not to use the word priesthood to refer to the body... Read more
These two articles were posted today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “The Lamb of God: A Note on the Significance of Meir Bar-Ilan’s Paper for Latter-day Saints,” written by Jeff Lindsay Abstract: Dr. Meir Bar-Ilan’s paper, “The Heavenly Lamb, Sacrifices on the Heavenly Altar, and the Song of the Lamb,” appearing concurrently in Interpreter, is a welcome contribution from a noted Jewish scholar. Bar-Ilan has called the world’s attention to a remarkable Hebrew manuscript... Read more
This can’t go on forever: The offer of free streaming for the Interpreter Foundation’s 2021 dramatic film Witnesses will need to come to a close at some point — we have contractual obligations, for one thing, and, for another, we have a need to raise money for future film-making — but, for the moment, it’s still available. Don’t presume that it will be available indefinitely, because it won’t be. And the docudrama sequel to Witnesses, our 2022 production Undaunted:... Read more
Every week, it seems, there’s a new Hulu or Netflix miniseries focused on Latter-day Saints — and these productions never seem to be positive, friendly, sympathetic, or even balanced. The latest of them — so far as I’m aware! — is Hulu’s Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke. With his kind permission, I share something that Christopher Blythe posted a day or two ago on his Facebook page, about Devil in the Family: I watched the... Read more
I spent several hours today interviewing Dr. Ronald K. Esplin on camera regarding Brigham Young, Sidney Rigdon, the early Quorum of the Twelve, and the 1844 succession crisis for the Interpreter Foundation’s forthcoming series of short videos, which are collectively entitled Becoming Brigham. We captured some extremely good material; he is a good interview, with encyclopedic knowledge of the relevant topics. My interview questions were largely but not entirely based upon Ronald K. Esplin, “Authority, Keys, and ‘the Measures... Read more
Tomorrow — Tuesday — I’m slated to spend a significant amount of the day interviewing Ron Esplin on camera. He currently serves as a general editor of The Joseph Smith Papers and as director of the Brigham Young Center. I’ll be interviewing him for the docudrama portion of the overall Six Days in August project, a series of short features that we’re calling Becoming Brigham. So yesterday, in preparation for the interview, I reread Ronald K. Esplin, “Authority, Keys,... Read more
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