In Hurricane

Courtesy of Russell Richins, a still photograph from the set of “Six Days in August,” currently in production near Rochester, New York

Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, there is a poster who goes by the pseudonym Everybody’s WC, or something of that sort. One of his odd specialities through the years has been inventing fictions about me that, unless and until he’s called on them, he tries to pass off as true. Among his most egregious lies was claiming to have been an unbelieving bishop who went on one of the tours that I led to Israel in order to observe at first hand my buffoonish antics and my shameless falsehoods. But that’s only one among many such instances. It’s pretty safe to assume, whenever he pretends to know me well or to have damning inside information on me from, say, my neighbors, my university colleagues, my former Maxwell Institute associates, my fellow volunteers in the Interpreter Foundation, and so on — he’s claimed all of these on various occasions — that he’s either lying or, much less likely, that he’s being played.

A few days ago, supposedly on the basis of intelligence from his supposed network of supposed informants, Everybody’s WC revealed to his eagerly credulous marks that relations between me and Mike Parker (aka “Peter Pan”) have grown frosty because of my refusal to come to Mike’s defense when his identity as the person behind the invaluable Neville-Neville Land blog came to public light. Since that was the first that I had ever heard of such “frost,” I wrote to Mike to ask him about it and to inquire whether he needed me to act in some way or to do something that I hadn’t. This is his reply, which I share here with his kind permission:

Now that I’ve picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard that I was wheezing, I can say no, there’s nothing that I need from you.
Honestly, where do these people get this stuff? There is not even a shadow of a thread of truth in his claim.

Not surprisingly, a gullible member of the audience for whom Everybody’s WC performs responded very quickly by reminding them of a previous act of similar disloyalty on my part: When my late and lamented friend Bill Hamblin was involved in an informal but public online debate with a prominent non-Latter-day Saint academic about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, I did not come to his assistance despite the fact (as they imagine it to be) that he was being badly beaten and publicly humiliated. This, of course, further confirms the verdict of Everybody’s WC, that I am [an unrepeatable epithet].

However, back in the day when that claim about my alleged disloyalty to Bill was all the buzz at the Obsession Board, I dropped a note to Bill about it. I explained to him that I had judged him to be doing just fine in his back-and-forth with Professor X, and that I hadn’t thought that he needed any help. Still, I asked, had he felt that I had let him down? Quite seriously and honestly, I wanted to know. No, he responded. He hadn’t needed any help, and I hadn’t let him down at all or left him twisting in the wind.

(I expect that the usual suspects will claim that I’m lying about that exchange with Bill, but it’s authentic. It’s just that I have literally thousands of notes from Bill and see little value in spending the time to comb through them all in order to find it: The Obsession Board would just dismiss it anyway.)

Mostly, I don’t respond to the myth-making of my Malevolent Stalker and of his less-talented wannabe, Everybody’s WC. Doing so in every case would be the equivalent of a full-time job, and not a very satisfying one. Now and again, though, I feel that I need to flatly deny some of the allegations, lest, unchallenged, they become a permanent part of my online “biography.” I apologize for taking the time and space here for so unworthy a subject.

MAAY just before marring BY — Mary Ann Angell, at her wedding with the widower Brigham Young

To change the tone pretty completely, here’s a wonderful undertaking at Brigham Young University that you might find of interest. It is headed up by my friend and former department chairman, Professor Dana Bourgerie: “The Cambodian Oral History Project”

And here’s something new on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Interpreter Radio Show — September 17, 2023

In the 17 September 2023 episode of The Interpreter Radio Show, Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Robert Boylan discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 42 during the first hour and then were joined during the second hour by Janiece Johnson to discuss her new book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. You can listen to or download the 17 September 2023 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show at the link provided just above.

The “New Testament in Context” portion of this show, for the Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 42, “I Can Do All Things through Christ Which Strengtheneth Me” on Philippians and Colossians, will also be posted, separately, on Tuesday, October 3.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

These archived recordings have been edited to remove commercial breaks.

they're actually married, of course — Newly married, Brigham Young and Mary Ann Angell Young walk home together.

We are briefly down here in southern Utah in order to attend the open house, tomorrow, of the renovated St. George Utah Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This pioneer temple, the oldest still functioning in the Church, holds a special place in my heart and in the history of my family, as well as in the history of the Church itself. We’re staying with friends, former neighbors, who have moved down this direction. The view from their house (in just about every direction) is perfectly astonishing. (Their backyard vista probably covers about 170 degrees. And the view from the front of the house is magnificent, too.) On a partly cloudy day that has been washed clean by rain, we watched the light of the descending sun move across Pine Valley Mountain, the peaks of Kolob Canyon, and a broad expanse of Zion National Park. We enjoyed dinner out on their veranda. It’s difficult to say which was better, the food or the view.

Posted from Hurricane, Utah