| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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The time difference can sometimes be helpful, as I could
call before getting started for the day.)
John Wesley Powell, as we have already said (I think), was the first
person to travel down the Green and Colorado Rivers and map them, beginning
on May 24, 1869, emerging from Gray Canyon on July 13, reaching the Grand
Canyon on August 5, and the Virgin River on August 30. (This was all the
more remarkable because he had lost his right arm at Shiloh.) The Museum
covers his life as 'war hero, geologist, explorer, and ethnologist,' and
also the rivers of the area in general.
One extremely annoying aspect of the Museum was their film, 'The River
Experience' by Floyd Holdman. This uses footage from a couple of local
companies who run rafting tours of these rivers, with a narration consisting
of excerpts from Powell's diaries. Now Powell's party faced constant
danger, not the least of which was not knowing whether there was a way down
the river. If they got to a set of falls in the river too steep to go over,
and with no portage around (due to the sheer walls of the canyon), they were
doomed, because the current was too strong for them to return upstream. Add
to this hunger (an accident early on lost them most of their supplies),
disease, hostile Indians, and bad weather, and it's clear that this was not
a trip to be undertaken lightly. Which is why it's all the more irritating
to see happy vacationers frolicking on the screen while you hear Powell's
descriptions of hardship, or to seeing them eating sumptuous meals while
Powell talks of hunger, or to see them self-absorbed while Powell talks of
the beauty of the river, which for all his trials he seems to have
appreciated more than the modern-day rafters.
After this somewhat depressing experience, we made the three-hour drive
to Provo, gaining altitude--and precipitation. In fact, at times the rain
was so hard it was difficult to see.
In Provo, we stopped at the Brigham Young University Earth Science
Museum. Since it was lunch hour, even the staff was somewhat sparse.
Though the Museum is small, it does have several nice mounted skeletons.
Again, we found ourselves wondering, 'What is the Mormon Church's position
on evolution?' (A later reading of RELIGION, FEMINISM, AND FREEDOM OF
CONSCIENCE by George D. Smith makes me believe that while the Church accepts
the scientific notions of the age of the Earth and the existence of
dinosaurs and such, it does not endorse the principle of organic evolution.
But I could be misinterpreting.)
Lunch consisted of 'milk shakes': actually soft ice cream with flavors
mixed in to order. Utah is supposedly known for its ice cream, but Mark
prefers hard ice cream to soft.
We then drove to Salt Lake City (an hour away) and checked into La
Quinta (US$54.26 including tax). It was still early, but raining, so we
decided to try to catch THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A
MOUNTAIN, which we had seen on the marquee of a cineplex we had passed. We
arrived at the theater at 2:40 PM, ready to wait if necessary, but it turned
out the next show was at 2:50 PM. Is that good planning or what?
When this was over, it turned out the rain had stopped, so we decided
to drive into Salt Lake City itself and have a look around. Our first stop
was--you guessed it--a bookstore. Deseret Books seems to be the largest
bookstore in the downtown area. Owned by the publishing house of the same
name, it has about half LDS books and materials, and half secular books. I
managed to find an LDS alternate history book; Mark found an LDS science
fiction series (not by Orson Scott Card, either!). Since I already have an
LDS Sherlock Holmes (well, what else would you call A STUDY IN SCARLET?),
that covered the bases fairly well.
The selection was okay--about what would expect from a mall store, but
not up to the level of a decent independent or superstore. I ran across Sir
Francis Burton's comments from 1862; they still seem somewhat relevant,
literature, after vainly ransacking the few book-stalls which the city
contains, I went to the Public Library, and, by sending in a card, at once
obtained admission.... The volumes, about 1000 in number, are placed in a
large room on the north side of the 'Mountaineer' office, and the librarian
attends every Thursday, when books are 'loaned' to numerous applicants.'
Dinner was at Cafe Trang, a quite good Vietnamese restaurant
recommended in THE UTAH GUIDE. After dinner (at 7:00 PM) we returned to
Temple Square to wait for the 8:00 PM rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir, which is open to the public.
I suppose that any description of Salt Lake City must include a
description of Temple Square, and any description of Temple Square must
include some discussion of the Mormon Church (a.k.a. The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints). What follows is clearly personal opinion (as
is much of this log, I suppose).
I suppose I should note here that one of the things I like about
Judaism is an attempt by its philosophers to explain the reasons behind all
the rules (e.g., Maimonides' GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED). I haven't seen much
along these lines in other religions, which often seem to rely on pleas to
faith rather than evidence. So my views are colored by my desire for
explanation rather than just proclamations from 'authorities.'
One big point of debate I hear is whether Mormons are Christians.
Well, from my perspective they are: they believe that Jesus is the son of
God and that by dying on the cross redeemed mankind. Now I admit that some
of the Mormons' theology seems less in line with what other Christians
believe (for example, that God is a material being living on the planet
Kolob). Then again, one can also say that the belief that a priest actually
transforms wine into blood is not one held by most Christians either. In
both cases, the defining characteristic is whether the religion in question
holds certain beliefs about Jesus Christ (which is, after all, where the
name comes from).
In any case, one doesn't hear much more from the 'guides' in Temple
Square about the Mormon religion than this basic Christian message. The
guides are all young women who appear to have gone to what Shelley Berman
called 'Smile School.' They also all dress alike: long skirts, opaque
stockings, and jackets, and carry satchels. Are they all young women
because it's harder for them to go on missions and so they promote the
Church this way? Or is it because it's felt that they are less intimidating
to possible converts than any other group?
The guides take groups of tourists around to the various sites on the
Square which are open to Gentiles. (The Temple itself is not open to non-
Mormons.) At each one, they give some of the history, philosophy, or
message--usually all three. For example, after describing the Tabernacle,
our guide (Sister Damaske--they use the titles 'Sister,' 'Brother,' 'Elder,'
and so on) told us about what a sermon preached there might say, and how she
found it very comforting to know that 'Our Heavenly Father' was guiding her.
(For some reason unexplained, the literature and computer screens use the
word 'God,' but everyone seems to prefer 'Our Heavenly Father,' or even just
'Heavenly Father.')
The Square is one city block square, surrounding by a wall with four
gates in it, and containing the Temple, the Tabernacle, a Visitors Center, a
meeting house, several statues and memorials, and a lot of landscaping.
In the Visitors Center there are paintings of the famous stories of the
Bible, done with more realism than is typical. (The background characters
in the Noah's Ark painting are reminiscent of Breughel, for example.)
However, there were no paintings of stories from the Book of Mormon, either
here or in the Museum of Church History and Art. I can somewhat understand
it here--the audience is primarily Gentile. But it does seem odd in the
Museum, which seems aimed as much at Mormons as at Gentiles.
There is also a copy of a very famous (so they say) statue of Jesus in
a room where they play a recording of someone reading Jesus's words.
Because we were taking the tour so late, we missed the first fifteen
minutes or so of the rehearsal, but it worked out okay, because we had seats
reserved for us in the front (although I guess with the Tabernacle's
acoustics this shouldn't matter). The 342-voice, all-volunteer Choir sings
primarily on the Sunday morning CBS radio show 'The Spoken Word,' the
longest continuously broadcast network radio show (having run for sixty
years now).
While the Choir sounds very beautiful (even when the choirmaster didn't
seem to think so, but then I have a tin ear), I did have a problem
understanding the *words* they were singing in the songs unfamiliar to me.
Am I the only one who has this problem: understanding the words of songs
with more than one voice?
We left about 9:15 PM. The rehearsal was still going on, but many
people had left already, and this promised to go on for quite a while more,
while we were starting to get sleepy and still had to drive back to the
motel. On leaving Temple Square, we saw all the guides leaving in a group.
I guess they live in a large dormitory or something, since they are from all
over the world and don't necessarily have family to live with in Salt Lake
City.
Minimum elevation: 4080 ft (1244 m).
Maximum elevation: 7477 ft (2279 m).
Distance driven: 220 miles (354 kilometers).
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Today was a day for the museums of Salt Lake City. We
started with the Utah State Historical Museum, housed in the Amtrak Station.
The exhibits were the usual sort of thing--old clothing and household
articles, mining equipment, and so forth. They had a list of all the
various ethnic groups that had helped build Utah, but I noticed that Jews
were not among them. Then again, even now the entire state has only three
Jewish congregations (two in Salt Lake City, and I forget where the third
one is), so I suppose that Jews were not a major force here. They had the
famous picture of the completion of the transcontinental railroad (of which
I will write more later), but although most of the work force of the Central
Pacific (and 40% of the overall work force) was Chinese, there does not
appear to be anyone Chinese in the picture.
We bought a couple of books in the gift shop: MORMONS AND JEWS by
Steven Epperson and RELIGION, FEMINISM, AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE by George
D. Smith.
After this, which took about an hour and a half, we went to the
University of Utah Natural History Museum. This was filled with school
groups, which made the visit less than ideal. For one thing, the children
press the buttons to start the programs, listen for ten seconds, then
apparently realize 'Hey, this is trying to teach me something' and leave,
meaning no one else can hear it for the full cycle. What did they expect,
rock music?
We did manage to glean some interesting facts, such as the fact that
one-third of the world's languages are from the Western Hemisphere. And I
was pleased to see some skeletons of Cenozoic mammals in addition to the
usual Mesozoic dinosaur exhibits. I have to say, though, that the exhibit
on different sandal-making styles didn't do much for me.
By the way, you get free parking (with some upper limit) on the circle
in front of the museum if you're visiting it. Just ask the person who
issues your ticket for a parking tag to hang on your rear-view mirror. |
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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