MHA 2022

 Every June, the Mormon History Association has its annual conference in a designated city. This year it was in Logan, and now that I have a master's degree, I thought I should attend this academic conference.

I have never been to any MHA sessions before. In 2015, my boss had tickets to a women's history tour in Provo as part of that year's MHA, but he sent me in his place. But this time I decided to attend of my own free will. Earlier this year I paid my membership dues to MHA (while I still got the student discount), which subsequently gave me a discount to the conference.

Saturday morning, I drove up to Logan. It's always a lovely drive up there. I saw some blotches of yellow on the hills between Brigham City and Logan, and I thought, "Oh, how pretty!" And then I realized that all the yellow was dyer's woad, a noxious weed. Oof.

I checked in and got my name tag, which made me feel fancy and official. We got custom totes and programs.

Various organizations and publishers had booths set up with swag and books for sale. But I already have too many unread books to buy any more. (And I don't really read books for fun.) 

I first attended a session about Mormon literature in suburbia. I went because one of my Sundance coworkers was presenting, but I was also able to introduce myself to people who work in the Church History Department (where I also work). 

After the session, I found a colleague who works in the cubicle next to mine, and I hung out with him, because I didn't know what else to do at the conference. He found a bunch of his friends from grad school, so I felt a little awkward. (I Felt a Little Awkward is the name of my autobiography.) We went to a plenary luncheon session with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. We hadn't registered for the lunch, so we just listened to her while everyone else ate the catered meal. She talked about the Mutual Improvement Association diary she kept in the 1950s and compared it with Seventeen magazine of the era. She is simply amazing, but you probably don't recognize her name if you don't follow the history field. But you have undoubtedly heard her quip "Well-behaved women seldom make history," which was in a random academic journal article and then took on a life of its own.

I ran into a couple of classmates from grad school, and then my coworker and I went to a session about slavery debates in Utah in the 1850s. (Yes, there were slaves in Utah.) My graduate committee chair presented at that session, but I didn't talk to him because I didn't know what to say. And also, I Felt a Little Awkward.

They had a snack session, so I grabbed some fruit and lemonade, as well as an entertaining pin from the B.H. Roberts Foundation booth. (They also have entertaining memes.)

Then I headed to my final session, which was about race: a Mormon pioneer who fabricated a "mammy" in his reminiscence, Mormon blackface performances, and race among LDS South Indians. I learned that the hymn "Love at Home" is an old minstrel song!

There were a few more events after that session, but I didn't care to stay for any of them, because Logan is a long drive, and I had to get up for church in the morning, and also I Felt a Little Awkward.

Last year, I determined that ice cream is a Fourth of July dessert, even though it's very broad, so I decided to get some Aggie ice cream before I headed home. When I was doing Pioneer Day research a few years back, I learned that in 1996, they made a special Centennial Ice Cream for Utah's 100th anniversary, which had a cream cheese base (for dairy and agriculture); English toffee (for European immigrants); cherries (for toil and agriculture); and honey grahams (for grist mills and beehives). And I was surprised and pleased to learn that they still serve it, twenty-six years later! So of course I had to get it. And my brain keeps agonizing about how I Felt a Little Awkward buying my ice cream cone.

I don't think I'll go next year, since it will be in New York. But I'm glad I went this year.