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The John Whitmer Historical Association<\/a> \u2014 an independent organization that is more or less aligned with the former Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now the Community of Christ) \u2014 has issued a very interesting statement:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSmith family members and historians have long believed that a daguerreotype, or photograph, of Joseph Smith, Jr., was made before his June 27, 1844, assassination. That daguerreotype has now been found. Learn more in the JWHA Journal Spring\/Summer 2022 issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Purchase the JWHA Journal Vol. 42 No. 1 in PDF format ($15).<\/a><\/span> Included is \u201cHidden Things Shall Come to Light: The Visual Image of Joseph Smith Jr.\u201d Ron Romig and Lachlan Mackay present convincing evidence that a recently opened watch locket that was passed down through the Smith family contains a true daguerreotype image of Joseph Smith Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I confess that I\u2019ve been a little bit perplexed by the fan-like enthusiasm that I\u2019ve seen in some circles for the work of Yuval Noah Harari, and especially for his bestselling works Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind<\/em> and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow<\/em>.\u00a0 So I was very interested in this critique by Darshana Narayanan<\/a>, which appeared in Current Affairs<\/em> and which was kindly called to my attention by Professor Trevor Luke:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari: The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We were happy, yesterday afternoon, to see the fog burn off.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t really minded it; the low visibility (i.e., beneath the cloud cover) had been pretty good anyway.\u00a0 But last evening was magnificent, and it seems that today will turn out very nicely, as well.\u00a0 There is a colony seals stationed on the rocks about fifty yards from our patio and rear windows, and we\u2019ve seen spouting whales from our living room as well as while walking along the edge of the cliff on which we sit.\u00a0 These are gray whales.\u00a0 A more or less resident pod \u2014 they spend some time each year off the coast of San Diego and\/or Mexico \u2014 they like to graze very close in by the shore, so we have excellent views of them.\u00a0 Last evening, at least, we even saw a small whale in the tiny inlet right by our building.\u00a0 Gray whales are approximately the same size as humpback whales, but very different in appearance.\u00a0 They\u2019re baleen whales, and they evidently feed by diving, scooping up large quantities of muck at the bottom, and straining out and consuming the small crustaceans that live in it.\u00a0 They seem to graze incessantly, probably including all through the night.\u00a0 There are also innumerable seabirds that live on the rocks near us.\u00a0 Mostly gulls, but also what I\u2019m guessing to be cormorants.\u00a0 They\u2019re very noisy, but one immediately begins to filter the sound out, and it\u2019s actually just pleasant and \u201csea-like.\u201d\u00a0 Truth be told, we can scarcely hear them inside.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The other night, feeling tired and unambitious, we re-watched the 1997 thriller Air Force One<\/em>.\u00a0 It was the first time we\u2019ve seen it in a very long while.\u00a0 I had, I discovered, altogether forgotten the opening several minutes.\u00a0 I was especially surprised, though, to see a young Vladimir Putin appearing in the film under the name of Ivan Korshunov, played by the great Gary Oldman (aka Winston Churchill, Sirius Black, Sid Vicious, Count Dracula, Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, Lee Harvey Oswald, Rosenkrantz, George Smiley, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Commissioner Gordon) and spouting seemingly genuine Putinisms.\u00a0 The movie suggests, and recent history seems to bear it out, that \u2014 appearances to the contrary notwithstanding \u2014 Mr. Putin actually survived his reluctant acceptance of President James Marshall\u2019s invitation to \u201cget off of [his] plane.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The 2022 edition of the annual FAIR Conference is rapidly approaching.\u00a0 It will be held in Provo, Utah, on 3-5 August.\u00a0 We invite you to take part in the conference and, if possible, to do so in person.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t come in person, though \u2014 and, strictly speaking, even if you can<\/em> \u2014 streaming will be free this year because of a generous anonymous donation.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The kindly folks at FAIR are apparently creating images for individual speakers in order to promote the conference.\u00a0 Here above, anyway, is the one that they\u2019ve created for me<\/em>.\u00a0 It allows prospective participants to steel themselves for the visual horror that they\u2019ll behold should they elect to attend the conference or to participate online.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m really pleased to see inter-religious tolerance and religious liberty emerging \u2014 as they manifestly have over the past decade or more \u2014 as major themes in the public messages of leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 They have been significant interests of mine for quite a while.\u00a0 President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church \u2014 and, in his previous life, a professor at the law school of the University of Chicago, a president of Brigham Young University, and a justice of the Utah Supreme Court \u2014 is especially well qualified to address the topic, and he has done so rather frequently:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nPurchase the JWHA Journal Vol. 42 No. 1 paperback on Amazon ($25)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n