A Note to Readers: Writing Project

Jane "Jeanette" Vaughan Lewis Johns
Born: 1827, Hay, Breconshire, Wales; Died: 1890, Jacks Valley, Nevada.
Mormon Handcart Pioneer of 1856

It may seem that I'm in a blog hiatus. There's not much more than I can say about the lunacy of trump in charge. I refuse to follow every foible and only hope and pray that the sleazy huckster does not launch off WWIII and nuke us all.

I am heavily involved in writing. It is far enough along that I can feel confident there will be some kind of finished product. It is a history of my 4th-Great Aunt, Jane "Jeanette" Vaughan Lewis Johns (1827-1890). Her life was fascinating and I have so many pieces of it but not the full story. So . . . I'm taking some poetic license to write in the historical-fiction genre.

I'm modeling after John dos Passos or Aleksandr Soltzenitsyn who wrote historical fiction interspersed with real documents and contemporaneous newspaper articles of the day. I have some of those things for Aunt Jane and family so I'm putting them in and writing stories around them. I also have some themes and I think I can work it into an artistic whole.

"Obeying, Honoring, and Sustaining the Law"

My Elders' Quorum President Buddy and I, as High Priests Group Leader, at the Multi-Stake Priesthood Training
with President Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles

This will be blogged in at least two parts. As I was able to ask a question and have it answered, I thought I would start with that as it reflects current concerns expressed on this blog. The question may not have been articulately posed, and I can't remember exactly, but it went something like this:

Me:

"Over the past few months or years we have all felt the heartbreak of people leaving the church because of a crisis of faith or some other conflict with the church. Much of this seems to be people who have self-departed, but there is a serious problem I see in the extreme right-wing views of some members who have not left. We lost both politically and legally on same-sex marriage and we can live with the church's own standards and are protected in them. But there are some who claim that the Supreme Court is evil, the President is evil, and some have gone to the extreme to face down the federal government at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon. I know one of those people up there who was a member of a ward when I was bishop. I helped get him to the Temple and I had no idea he had such anti-government sentiments. Now he faces the real possibility of being shot or shooting someone else and it tears at my heart. For disclosure, some of my stake people know me, but I am an attorney for the U.S. Department of the Interior and have tried for 32 years to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. There are some in the church and even in my family, while not nearly extreme as those at the stand-off, still believe me some kind of apostate just for working for the government. [laughter] But what can we do to help these people who are on the extreme right wing and don't seem to listen to anyone?"

Mormon Church Condemns Armed Protesters at US Wildlife Refuge in Oregon

As President Uchtdorf once said, "Stop it!"

I don't want to hear any more allegedly scriptural arguments for extreme right-wing political views. That includes the teachings of W. Cleon Skousen. It includes the political preachings of past leaders of the LDS Church that in any way be used to justify resistance to the Constitutionally established government of the United States. That includes the false teachings of lobbyist/legislator Ken Ivory arguing that the states have a valid and legal claim to the federal public lands, they do not. That includes the erroneous idea of posse comitatus a bizarre reading of medieval Anglo-Saxon law of England (not the US!) that the county is the supreme authority of the people. It includes any crazy idea that the Fourteenth Amendment somehow created a class of citizens different than the alleged white Christian founders of the United States. I don't want to hear any more offensive argument that somehow our Constitutionally elected President, Barack Obama, is not legitimate because of where he was allegedly born or who his parents were.

It has appalled me that members of my own religious faith have held and promoted such erroneous ideas - not just because they threaten my livelihood as a public servant employed by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and not because my life may be threatened by those who would promote violence against law-abiding officers of the United States performing our Constitutional duties. It is because it breaks my heart and my soul to see such people misuse the sacred scriptures and doctrines of my church to such ridiculous purposes.

The Second Worst Mining Disaster at Senghenydd, 1901

My mistake in the previous post was not to recognize that the new memorial to miners killed in the Welsh mines, dedicated on the 100th Anniversary of the 1913 Senghenydd Explosion, also included the victims of the 1901 Senghenydd Universal Mine Disaster.

Searching for a David Vaughan who possibly died in 1913 and born 39 years earlier led me on several false trails, one even to a David Vaughan who went to Utah and is buried in Provo! When I finally realized the right dates, it still took some work but then it all fit with a David Vaughan born in Cwmdu from a family from Llangors that I have already researched. They are somehow related to my Vaughans, but the connection appears to be 17th Century or earlier and I haven't yet found confirming records.

We did visit the beautiful church in Cwmdu with its huge yew trees and the Tegernacus Stone, a seventh century (!) Christian burial marker. Cwmdu, meaning "Black Valley" as it lies in the Black Mountains or Y Mynnyddoedd Dduon of  South Wales, although I much prefer the name of the stream, Y Rhiangoll, the Brook of the Singing Birds.

Scraping Away the Thin Veneer

I made a terrible mistake. It took me a long time to think about it. It was that in  my pre-blogging days I wrote a guest opinion piece for the Salt Lake Tribune in which I celebrated the signing of Obamacare (no, that wasn't the mistake) and went on to challenge modern Mormons on their wrong-headed beliefs in States Rights (no, that wasn't the mistake either) arguing that many seem to cover their political beliefs with a "thin veneer of religion" to justify them.

That was very offensive to some in my family who expressed it to me in no uncertain terms. They let me know that they are guided by their deeply held religious beliefs that frame their politics. The odd thing is, so am I.

Recently, a person of significant public and private trust who shall be unnamed here proposed a new perspective to me. He said that the sometimes extraordinarily odd and conservative political views of Utah did not represent the true nature of its people. He said something to the effect that if you "scrape of the veneer," and I think he used that word, the "veneer" of politics, that people of Utah really were good at heart.

We're Not Done Yet!

"I'm not dead yet . . . . I feel happy. . . .I feel happy."

[Clonk]

Yeah, I can cut and paste more email with Anonymous/D. As long as I don't have to address the Republican clown car with Romney waiting aside the road for it to crash.

Grant Vaughn
to D

While still not blogging, and enjoying telework especially when I can't link to office computers, I note this for the record that there will at least be half a win for same-sex marriage.

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. US Cons. IV.1.

That's pretty clear and concise language from the Constitution even if there is nary a word in there about marriage. If same-sex marriage is legal in one state, it has to be recognized in all just like they have for Nevada and Maryland quickie weddings (there used to be blood tests, etc. in most states). So, it they have to be recognized in all, some states just won't allow it to happen in that state - the wedding, that is, not the state of marriage.

Simple and straight forward preserving both the right for whomever to marry, and states rights, to some degree, in a federal union (of states - not gays)

Is It Time Yet?

No. And it will never be. The coming presidential election fills me with dread. Hillary will be a fine president but the 47% (that voted for Romney not the 47% who . . . oh, never mind!) will make it shear misery for the nation and her. She may slip and commit an actual foul. And I sure don't want Bill in the White House again with too much time on his hands.

What pushes me to this cataclysmic decision as I go off to confer, converse, and otherwise hobnob with my fellow weirdos, was the vitriolic religious hatred for Senator Harry Reid for daring to confirm a new member of his church who happened to be a former Senator (Republican) and a friend. And that was from people in Harry's own church!

Anyway, I'm not ending the blog but it will see only sporadic posting from me as I just don't want to do it anymore. I'm tired. And my left arm hurts.

So, I leave you with this recent sparkling repartee between me and Anonymous D. I started out, for which I take full responsibility - but I may be closing comments on this:

Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong

My Mom unintentionally started my grudge with Thomas Wolfe. I never was happy about moving from the Seattle Area. I made some good friends in Wyoming and there are many beautiful places in Wyoming. Rock Springs is not one of them. I once told my Mom that I intended to buy back the house on Finn Hill where I grew up. It was only a pipe-dream and she recognized it as nostalgia for our old home and some resentment in me for the move to Mos Eisely Spaceport, er, Rock Springs.

And I had my troubles at my first high school that I have chronicled here. Yes, I was kind of a dropout. There were the teenage turmoils and Quadrophenic angst going on as well. Maybe I do get Thomas Wolfe's point that if you write fiction based on your family and friends and are honest enough to the point of recognizable characters in your critiques, yeah, you can't go back home.

To Us, the Bloggernacle Is a Mass of Confusion

In a recent email exchange, Anonymous D expressed some frustrations with a couple of posts and endless comments on some "other" blogs of a "different" disposition. In expressing his general contempt for the Bloggernacle he goes on:

We seem, in our modern Mormon intellectual smugness, to be doing the same thing that was done in the 1930's, and which is fashionable every once in a while, which is de-mystifying the scriptures, removing any trace of the supernatural.  (Think Thomas Jefferson's Bible).  It's a nice easy way to have it both ways, to say, well, I like the Book of Mormon I think it teaches great things, but all that nonsense about the angel and golden plates?  If the origin stories are not true, especially of the Book of Mormon, why bother with it at all? There are plenty of nice moralistic stories you can use to lead a better, happier life. I wouldn't bother with the Book of Mormon or the Church if I didn't actually believe it, or Jesus for that matter if I thought He was just a great moral instructor.    

 

So with that, I wave goodbye to the Bloggernacle forever.  I'm sure I'll be missed what with my zero comments and postings.

 

 Then, me, and so forth: 

To Whom Shall We Go?

Anonymous D and I have been exchanging a lot of emails on the latest issues tearing up the Bloggernacle. Also inspired by the post on these themes at another friend's Keepapitchinin, Mormon History blog, I share some excerpts from Anonymous D's thoughts with regard to the sound and the fury:

None of them mean anything. Not one addresses the central issues we deal with. They are all momentary distractions from the central questions and facts. We are all going to die, then what? Do you have an answer supposedly-LDS-blogger? Do the things you are ever so concerned about answer those questions? If I (which I am not in the slightest, tempted to do) follow them, am I happier? No. In the end, I've had experiences I can't deny: experiences about Jesus; experiences about the Book of Mormon, multiple times; experiences and testimonies about the Temple; experiences about my family in the Temple; These weren't imaginary things.

Black History Month

One example of 19th Century African-American Christianity

Before you start, I've heard the whine before, "When are we going to have White History Month?" It is true we don't have White History Month, the principal reason being that we already have twelve.

Case in point: I'm reading a great book, Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith's Ohio Revelations, by Mark Lyman Staker. The author is not some radical, black-panther type, just a historian working for the LDS Church.

Why I'm Not Going to my Rep's Town Hall Meeting

My U.S. Congressman of the whatever gerrymandered District we're in now, is holding a town hall meeting this month that I will not be attending. There are some questions I would like to ask, but I don't think they'll get me very far with my political tea-partier, erstwhile Mormon-pop, apocalyptical-fiction* writer, and Beck-buddy Representative. My questions follow:

Open Letter to Senator Mike Lee

Dear Senator Lee:

Let my start by stating that I am an American Citizen of legal residence in the State of Utah. That makes you one of my two U.S. Senators even though I did not vote for you. But I am your constituent and I write this to offer a little advice.

I understand that you had a little talking-to from your Minority Leader today. It's really too bad you didn't pay more attention to my blog, or your old Home Teacher - Brother Reid, or even your Dad. I knew your Dad. I realize that you must have known him much better. And I can't understand how you came away from such a good man and a conservative of solid credentials to promote the ideas about government and the U.S. Constitution that you do.

There is help that I offer in the form of a publication that one of Senator Hatch's Aides gave me up there on the 8th Floor of the Federal Building in SLC. I went to get some of those copies of the U.S. Constitution that Senators give away so I could pass them out to Boy Scouts working on their First Class Badge. I used to go down to Senator Bennett's office because I liked him best of all, but he seems to be gone. You can also get the book on-line at this place you can click at. Anyway, the booklet is called "Our American Government." Here's a picture in case you haven't seen it:

It's a really cool guide to the U.S. Constitution and our wonderful system of Government. It was printed by the Government Printing Office and produced by a Concurrent Resolution of the One Hundred Eighth Congress of the United States of America. H. Con. Res. 108-139 (so you can have a staffer look it up to check!) That was the Congress elected in 2002 right when President Bush was rallying us all for our patriotic fight in Iraq! Those guys (and a few gals) must have been real patriots! I mean, even the President said that those who weren't with us were against us so I know the Congress went along with him!

Anyway, there's some really good stuff in there about how our Government works with three branches, checks & balances, and all the stuff about how to make laws! That part might really be good since you're now one of those guys with that job!

Help Deseret Book Ban Beck

With a very compelling guest post in the SL Trib from Historian Alexandra Karl this morning, I updated my posting here on Glenn Beck's latest disturbing behavior - much more disturbing than even I thought when I was joking about it. And, I was motivated to send the following to Deseret Book:

Good Advice from Anonymous D on Blogging and Life

In some email exchanges about my new blogging opportunities at MormonDems.com, my good buddy offers me this:

I don’t worry about such things going to your head, or really anything about you. If I were in your place the only concern I would have would be maintaining my intellectual integrity. I guess that’s the soul of the artist, what little there is of it in me. The whole subject of draping your personal belief on the gospel has been a real bugaboo with me of late. I’m constantly reminded of the various tales of the counsel in heaven, how that has been co-opted to argue against communism, socialism, health care.

Recently, and you made a comment on this about rape, chastity, and virtue, but the thing is that Moroni 9:9 wasn't meant as a comment about sin. The Lamanite young women were not sinful, but the Nephite men robbed them in a very real way of something they can never get back - [their innocence]. Even with the healing of the Atonement and feeling perfectly clean, victims of such things go through the rest of their lives changed. I’m not saying that the object lessons we teach about the atonement, with the nail leaving a hole, or other craziness are true, they aren’t. But still in this life we live with the burden of things taken, the result of our own sins or others.

Battle of Internet Ethics

Leaving aside the trolls, sock puppets, hijacking, and general rudeness of the internet, I had my first experience (that I know of) with old-fashioned plagiarism. That is, stealing my intellectual property - and I won. (Well, sorta).

It went down like this. My uncle called me out of the blue yesterday afternoon and said there was this interesting Facebook historical page with some pictures of people I might recognize. When I went there, I saw my little brother at my Grandpa's bowling alley and then, a family portrait of my Grandparents and their offspring, including three young grandsons, I being the oldest. I knew immediately that they were from my posting on the Gay Way in Fruitland, Idaho. I thought that was kind of cool. But then, "Wait a minute! There's no link to my blog!" There wasn't any attribution at all. So, I went to battle.

I first posted a fairly polite notice  on the Facebook page that they had taken my pictures without permission or any link to my blog and I added such a link. Then I posted this on Facebook [with reference to their site I am now boycotting]:

So this is kind of cool. Pics from my blog got posted on the ____ Co. Historical page. But WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION!! I gave them a friendly and diplomatic reprimand and I'll be waiting for the apology . . . waiting . . . . I easily forgive, but . . . waiting. . . .

Dad, What Do You Do at Work?

Bison by Ernest Thompson Seaton
(not an official Interior Buffalo as I am not in official capacity at present)

Well, as my kids have occasionally asked that question and been bored to tears with my explanations, I though I would share that joy with you all. As I have explained ad naseum, I have to be careful about my blogging because I am a federal employee, an attorney for the U.S. Department of the Interior. I am entitled to my freedom of expression, but can't use government resources or time for political speech, and I have to keep attorney/client confidences (I do my part, but it's not like the government can ever keep a secret. Hence, my distrust of conspiracy theories.) So I don't talk about my job much. Most of it is rather boring but there are a few interesting things out there in the public domain (a few more if you have a Westlaw or Lexis subscription).

Doing another one of those Google searches to see what's out there in my internet footprint, I find the blog all over the place. And there are also a few published decisions from federal courts but mostly in administrative proceedings with my name on them. Litigation is actually a small part of my work. Most of it is advising (wrangling) client agencies to figure out how to accomplish things legally, because no federal employee can do anything for the government that is not authorized by the laws of Congress. So if you have any problems with us, go complain to Congress and I'm sure they'll fix it (heh, heh, -little joke there).

Thomas Jefferson Said . . . . (!?#*)

Credit to my buddy Phil at The Liberty Tree
(And Tom didn't really say that!)

It happened again! This time a comment on one of my blog pieces about guns. (So far, I'm getting a lot of interesting material from gun advocates but not a lot that makes much sense). There was another one of those made up quotes attributed to one of the Founders. This time, Thomas Jefferson:

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

Anti-Communism & Racism II (with Digressions to the Spanish Civil War)

I don't know why I can't get more of my FaceBook friends to comment here on the blog. They have these great discussions going there on my links to the blog that I would like to share. This discussion comes out of the previous post about Anti-Communism & Racism which might serve as some background. Two out of three of the main commenters have granted permission to use their names. I'll call the third "anonymous" for now.

To start off the fun, we have Anonymous:  

this article is a liberal generated, unbalanced, and spurious hypothesis that tries to brand as racists anyone who opposes barrak hussein obama and his socialist agenda. the article is consistently typical of openly hostile and viruently anti-conservative liberal tacticians, especially manifest since the year 2000. class warfare and exploitation of the masses with a persistent disinformation campaign against rule of law and order are well documented tactics of insurgent movements and communist ideologues, who expect that the "unwashed" masses are not educated, intelligent, or remembering enough to know the difference, or to recall that it was the republicans that emancipated slaves and the democrats/dixiecrats of the deep south that ran the klan and perpetuated the racists policies and sympathies (to include anti-communism) in that region. The very same that this artical now tries to lay that at the feet of modern/reaganite conservatives. Because one in infavor rule of law over unbridled illegal immigration does not make them a racist - although this article and the left want you to believe it. the t-party is not racist as a whole (there may be individual cases - as in all movements), but rather it stands for rule of law, accountability, and fiscal integrity - which the left, in order to marginalize their opponents, identifies as racist policies.

Keepa Still Rules!

Very pleased with my guest post today on the great Mormon History Blog, Keepapitchinin!

I blogged on a mix of Mormon and family history relating to sugar beets along with some political philosophy (It has been made known to me that I was not subtle). There are a few comments that have digressed into a discussion of irrigation practices and the Moody Blues.

Besides my second guest post now published there, I read Keepa regularly and frequently comment. It really is one of the best blogs out there, IMHO.