| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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We also stopped in at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, not easy to find
since all the signs seem to be obscured by foliage. It's a small
collection, and the special exhibitions were all very modern art, not my
favorite period. This is supposedly the largest art museum in Utah, but for
someone used to the art museums of New York or other major world cities, it
will be a big disappointment.
We finished here about 1:00 PM and the day appeared to be clearing up,
so I decided this would be a good time to spring my surprise on Mark. When
we had first arrived I had seen a brochure for an aerospace museum at Hill
Air Force Base. Mark likes this sort of thing, so I tucked the brochure
away and figured out where it was without mentioning it to Mark. The drive
up there took considerably longer than I expected, due to a traffic accident
and road construction, but luckily the museum hours were longer than the
information I had in the guidebook. (In general, museum hours seemed to
fluctuate wildly from what was listed in the books.)
Of course, the surprise was somewhat blunted by the signs indicating
which exit to take for the Hill AFB Museum, but you can't have everything.
The museum consists almost entirely of airplanes, some inside the
hangar, but most outside on the flight line. There are also a few missiles
and other accoutrements, but I will leave it to Mark to detail the exhibits
if he wants. I was an Air Force brat, so seeing military planes was no big
thrill, but Mark really enjoys this sort of place, so we do try to find them
on our trips.
At 3:30 PM we finished here and decided since we were so nee Ogden we
would go there for dinner, at the Cajun Skillet. I had alligator stew, and
Mark had a very spicy jambalaya. The food was good, but the service
somewhat slow (admittedly we arrived before the normal dinner hour and hence
probably disrupted their schedule). The parking on the street was one hour
only, so I had to go out right before the main course and move the car. Of
course, when time came to leave it was pouring rain--and hailing--so we
didn't look forward to the longer walk to the car.
Luckily, the waiter turned out to be somewhat interested in why we were
visiting Utah and what we thought of it. In talking to him, we also
discovered he was a science fiction fan, and ended up talking about science
fiction and science fiction authors. I don't know if it was the pink
triangle pin I was wearing, or just coincidence, but almost the first
science fiction question he asked was whether we thought Robert Heinlein was
gay (because he wrote about homosexual relationships and sex-change
operations). Based on everything I know (and I've read a fair amount by and
about Heinlein), this is not the case--Heinlein just found human sexuality
an interesting topic to write about. (And he was one of the pioneers in
writing about gender roles, though I'm not sure his attitudes would be the
most popular these days.)
By the way, the non-smoking rule does not apply to restaurants which
are 'private clubs.' 'Private clubs' are basically restaurants that have a
cover charge. These were initially created to take advantage of a loophole
in the odd liquor laws that Utah had until recently, but now they serve a
double purpose.
On the way back from Ogden, we passed a Barnes & Noble superstore.
Now, serious book-buyers in rec.arts.books have been debating the book
selection procedures of the superstores, saying that they are all cookie-
cuttered, based on the lowest common denominator and not on quality or local
customer base. So since I had the opportunity, I wanted to visit a Barnes &
Noble superstore to check out the truth or falsity of this assertion.
The Barnes & Noble was in West Bountiful, a suburb north of Salt Lake
City. In most categories it is true that it appeared to have the usual
selection. However, a closer examination of the science fiction section
showed a larger than average number of books by Orson Scott Card (the best-
known Mormon author of science fiction). My expertise in other fiction
areas is insufficient for me to judge them. In the religion section,
however, there was a noticeable difference. There were four stacks of
'Western Religion' (i.e., Catholicism and Protestantism), one stack of
Judaism (gee, I thought that was a Western religion--but I digress), and
three stacks of LDS books, including LDS fiction. (I don't believe there
was fiction in any of the other sections--books like EXODUS and THE LAST
TEMPTATION OF CHRIST tend to be found in the regular fiction section.) The
LDS books were by 'specialty' publishers which would not be carried by the
two major book distributors, so they must be ordered specially by the local
store.
I have already described the other bookstores, and from all this, my
conclusion is that, far from driving out local independent stores, Barnes &
Noble is filling a gap, and in addition, their stock is at least somewhat
tailored to the local market, indicating that centralized buying is not as
over-arching as some fear.
We returned to Salt Lake City, and managed to locate the Utah Film and
Video Commission (which was in a building somewhat blocked by construction).
They were running 'Animation for a Friday Night' and since we are always on
the look-out for compilations of short films (animated or otherwise), this
seemed like as good a way as any to spend the evening. And so it was, even
though we had seen at least one of them ('The Janitor') before, and a couple
of others were not entirely to our tastes. Then again, most compilations
will have a couple that we don't particularly like, and there was a quite
wonderful Russian film ('The Hedgehog') to compensate. (It seems as though
Russian animated films are about the best ones these days, with some
competition from the Czechs.)
Minimum elevation: 4300 ft (1311 m).
Maximum elevation: 4390 ft (1244 m).
Distance driven: 133 miles (214 kilometers).
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Well, today was somewhat of a surprise, as we went to
one place we hadn't even scheduled and found a lot more than we expected at
a couple of others.
Our surprise addition was the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine, run by the
Kennecott Copper Company--it was supposed to be named for Major Robert
Kennicott, but a clerk made a mistake and they stayed with the misspelling.
It is the world's largest open-pit copper mine, and is visible from space
(*not* from the moon, though).
Naturally, as soon as we got there, it started to rain (or maybe it was
sleet). Luckily, there was an awning over the overlook, and the Visitors
Center was of course inside.
This mine has been called 'The Richest Hole in the Earth,' producing
324,900 tons of copper (294,700 metric tons), 512,900 ounces of gold (16,000
kilograms), 3,439,000 ounces of silver (107,000 kilograms), and 12,625 tons
of molybdenum (11,450 metric tons).
As far as the rest of what is dug out (and this is fairly low-grade
ore), the tailings are dumped in Magna.
After we finished here, we drove back to Salt Lake City and the Utah
State Capitol. Given that we haven't even visited the New Jersey State
Capitol, this may seem silly, but that's what tourists do, I guess. We
waited in the car until the rain eased up a bit and went in. All we could
see, it being a Saturday, were the exhibits in the lobby and the lobby
itself. The relief map of Utah at least helped give us a feeling for where
we had been high in the mountains and where not.
After this we decided to see the Family History Library and the Museum
of Church History and Art. There is three hours' free parking for the
former, at a lot at the northwest corner of North Temple and West Temple.
(Of course, the books just say there's free parking; none of them tell you
where it actually is.) We parked the car and started with the Family History
Library at about noon.
The Family History Library is an outgrowth of the Mormon doctrine that
the deceased may have ordinances (such as baptisms and marriages) performed
in their behalf. Of course, the orientation room also notes, 'The deceased
may accept or reject the ordinances performed.'
This brings up a very recent issue. A few weeks ago, someone
discovered that the Mormon Church was performing posthumous baptisms for
Jews who had died in the Holocaust. The relatives of these people were
quite distressed upon learning this, and demanded that the Church stop
immediately. An investigation revealed that two Mormons who had visited
some of the death camps in Europe had been so moved that they decided to
have as many of these victims as possible baptized posthumously, in spite of
Church rules that you cannot have request these ordinances except for your
own ancestors (or possibly other close relatives). The Church apologized
and, I believe, declared the baptisms void.
Anyway, to get back to the Family History Library (previously the
Genealogy Library). It is now 101 years old. The present building was
dedicated in 1985, but it has already been outgrown. The records in it
cover 1550 through 1920. The latest United States census available is that
of 1920; later ones are still restricted by the Privacy Act (in 2002 they
say they can get the 1930 census).
The library has 2,000,000 rolls of film and 750,000 books. There are
240,000,000 names in their computer. The first floor is entirely books
relating to the United States and Canada, the second floor is microfilms and
microfiches for the same area. The second basement was described by the man
at the orientation lecture as 'British Isles,' but also included South
Africa and Australia. Unless tectonic shift has picked up the pace lately,
this floor might better be described as 'Eastern Hemisphere British
Commonwealth' (although South Africa is no longer in it). I suppose the
idea is English-language but not United States or Canada. The first
basement is the remainder: 'international,' he called it somewhat
inaccurately, saying it contained all the records in foreign languages.
This turned out to be inaccurate as well, since there was a copy of the
two-volume HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN THE NETHERLANDS ANTILLES (in English) by
Isaac S. and Suzanne A. Emmanuel (Dewey Decimal 972.986 F2e) here. I
imagine this floor covered countries whose major language was not English.
Naturally I had to throw a monkey wrench (spanner in the second
basement) into the works by asking where the records for Puerto Rico would
be. The man giving the orientation seemed to think they would be on the
first basement, which was partially true, but the United Census records for
Puerto Rico were on the first floor with the rest of the United States, and
most of the rest were off-site.
The claim was that if you could trace your ancestry back to 1550, then
you hit a 'superhighway' and everything before that was easy. This may be
true, but we never found out. We started with the computer, and looking up
ourselves and our parents and so on by name. Both Mark's and my family seem
to have successfully dodged the Mormons, but mine seems to have dodged the
census takers as well. I couldn't find any of my grandparents in the 1920
census. (The sound of the first few bars of the 'Twilight Zone' theme is
heard in the background.) Mark did find records in the 1920 census for his
maternal grandparents, and discovered that they were not yet United States
citizens at the time.
The library also has passenger lists, death lists from the Social
Security administration and military casualties for Korea and Vietnam. |
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