Omarosa Manigault, who ended up as the Trump campaign’s director of African-American outreach, explains the duty of those who ever dared to criticize or oppose the Leader:   http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/trump-supporter-omarosa-manigault-explains-bow-president-trump-43469541   She says that the Trump team has been keeping a list of those who failed to support Mr. Trump’s presidential bid, and that “Mr. Trump has a long memory”:   http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/omarosa-list-donald-trump/     Read more

      “Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not.  God knows.”   “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.”   “I thought I saw the face of God.”   With friends, my wife and I attended a performance of Händel’s complete Messiah tonight.  It was put on by the BYU Baroque Ensemble, the BYU Concert Choir, the BYU Singers, and the English... Read more

    Here’s an interesting and very readable article (with a slightly inflammatory title!) that some will enjoy:   21 Reasons It Doesn’t Matter if The Church is True     Read more

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    Today, as a special treat, the Interpreter Foundation has published not one but two new articles in its journal.  (Solid proof, I guess that our critics are right:  We’re still dying!)  Here’s the second article:   Reading 1 Nephi With Wisdom     Read more

    If you can muster 37 minutes — even if it’s only in small increments while you’re getting dressed or doing the dishes or shuffling papers — this 1983 talk by Hugh Nibley is an often-funny and frequently challenging classic.  And the introductory remarks, by President Jeffrey R. Holland of Brigham Young University, are also thoroughly enjoyable:       Read more

    More good reading from the Interpreter Foundation:   “Arise from the Dust”: Insights from Dust-Related Themes in the Book of Mormon (Part 2: Enthronement, Resurrection, and Other Ancient Motifs from the “Voice from the Dust”)     Read more

    I was disappointed when Utah failed to make a stronger statement on election day — though the statement may actually have been stronger than some have realized; see this — but I was deeply saddened to see the headline of an article in the Salt Lake Tribune:   http://www.sltrib.com/news/4565608-155/worried-utah-muslims-on-trumps-win   I understand the concerns of many of Utah’s Muslims.  As the saying goes (but I really mean it), I feel their pain.  Donald Trump’s statements about Islam and minorities... Read more

    This is really sad news:   http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/leonard-cohen-dead-at-82-w449792   I’ve been a big Leonard Cohen fan since I was a teenager in late 1960s California.   I came to know him first through his 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen.   Here are two of the Cohen songs that I first learned (and often played myself):   “Suzanne”   “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”   This is another favorite from that 1967 album:   “So Long Marianne”   And... Read more

    Understandably, Americans like to travel to see Maya ruins in Mexico and the Acropolis of Athens and the pyramids of Egypt and other such archaeological sites.   Many aren’t aware of a really important site on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, just outside of St. Louis.  Here’s a new discovery there:   http://www.realclearlife.com/2016/11/10/researchers-rewrite-history-of-cahokia-with-new-beaded-burial-findings/     Read more