The casual life of a historian

The title of this blog makes it sound like I'm going to write some meaningful essay about my jobs. Nope, I'm just talking about my day-to-day life, as usual, and this week just happens to overlap with my profession quite a bit.

On Monday, my colleague and I went to the Utah State Archives. They have several boxes of rejected articles for Utah Historical Quarterly from the 1950s to the 2000s. We were wondering whether we should keep them, so we went to look at them.

I know it sounds boring to look at old rejected articles. But it was surprisingly interesting! Well, for us it was. There were several articles by famous, prominent Utah historians. My colleague pointed out an article from the 1970s that was about the history of Pioneer Day—basically a prototype of my own article. (Mine was better. But in fairness, I have better access to more sources in the 2010s and 2020s than they had in the 1970s.) There was an article that I had read in BYU Studies, so I was surprised to see it in the UHQ boxes. UHQ rejected it because it really wasn't Utah history; BYU Studies really was a better fit for it.

We also got to see the correspondence attached to the articles, so that was interesting too. One letter from 1990 told the author that in recent years, UHQ was publishing less Mormon history and more secular history of Utah. (Yes, that's still our emphasis today, so it was interesting to see that they made that a conscious choice at some point.) One letter from the 1990s was an informal discussion about baseball, and it mentioned "McGuire." Mark McGwire is a name I haven't heard in a long time. (Why do I know that name? I don't even like sports!)

We decided we needed to keep the old articles, but there will need to be access restrictions on them because many of the people are still alive. It was a very interesting historiographical exercise.

Anyway, I recognize that that's probably not that meaningful to most of my readers.

On Tuesday, I went to go running. But since people park on the sidewalk, I had to step off the curb, and as I did so, I twisted my ankle. So no more running for me this week. This happens periodically; since I have injured it before, I think it's more prone to sprains: that time I sprained it on the stairs in 2000, and when I was learning to ride a bike in 2007, and when I stepped off a curb in 2014, and that trail run in 2016, and that trail run on the Fourth of July in 2017. But I think that all of my trail running has made my ankles pretty strong. I have twisted my ankle many times without getting hurt. I suspect I'll be back to normal this week.

Yesterday I finished reading Benjamin Park's American Zion, which was an amazing book. (I can't say it's a perfect book, only because I literally make a living off of finding mistakes.) It was readable and covered an enormous amount of topics. It's been a long time since I have found a book this engaging. But I don't think most of my blog readers would enjoy it like I did: you have to like academic history books, and you have to have a progressive view of Mormonism Latter-day Saintism.

I'm in charge of service projects for my ward, so yesterday I filled an assignment to help out with donations at DI. My BYU boss is in the same stake, so I saw him there also helping out. I just can't get away from him! ;) (JK, he's a great guy.) As car after car came with donations, and this week was Earth Day, and I've been watching Hoarders lately, I can't help but reflect on our society's mass consumption. It's discouraging. And I also do plenty of consuming myself. I try very hard to avoid single-use plastic (for example, I never take a water cup at a restaurant), but the system is stacked against me.

When my shift was over, I went into the store. I bought a nice pair of shorts for three dollars. Two years ago, I found two CDs about pioneer commemoration from the 1990s. Yesterday, I found a third one. Since my professional interests are in historical memory—specifically about Mormon pioneers—I had to snag it. It was well worth the dollar for this historical artifact/primary source.

Books on books

My New Year's resolution for 2024 was to get rid of something every day, and I've been able to keep it up. Books are one of the things that I can get rid of.

However, my job with Utah Historical Quarterly means that more books come into my house than go out.

Various publishers and authors send us books that they want us to review. As book review editor, it's my job to find reviewers for them. (It definitely has been out of my comfort zone to send so many unsolicited emails, but it's been a good experience.) But not all of the books are worthy of a full review. When that is the case, we usually publish a book notice instead, a paragraph that merely describes the book without analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. And it's my job to write the notices. So I have a large collection of books for which I have written notices, and many that I still have to write about.

I wrote all seven book notices for the latest issue of UHQ

On top of that, this year I'm on the book awards committee, so this week I brought home a stack of books that I will have to look at to see if they're worthy of awards. (I'm not going to read all of them word for word, just enough to know whether they're worthy of consideration.)

And then there's all the books I already have. I accumulated many books in grad school, and I had a colleague recommend to me that I keep them. I can't keep that advice totally, but there are many important books that I think I need to hold on to, because I might need to reference them in my work at some point.

I have a shelf devoted to books that I've worked on. 

I have a shelf devoted to books about holidays.

And I like buying books when I visit bookstores: "I've heard about this book! I would love to read it!"

I still have several books that I really want to read and intend to read. I'm really enjoying Benjamin Park's American Zion. I plan to read Charlie Brown's America by Blake Scott Ball, Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott, Chosen Path: A Memoir by D. Michael Quinn, and America's Public Holidays, 1865–1920 by Ellen M. Litwicki. Sometime.

But here's the thing: I don't do much recreational reading. Since I read for a living, there are so many other ways I want to spend my time.

And when I do read, I read almost exclusively nonfiction. I don't think I've read a novel since 2015. I prefer nonfiction, but it's not exactly the kind of material that calls out to me to read it. I read it more for learning and a sense of accomplishment than I do for entertainment. I liked the Harry Potter books, but even then I was in no hurry to read the sixth and seventh books when they came out.

I'm not the most organized person (I'm trying to do better), so I have various stacks of books throughout my room. I have downsized some this year and took books to the Book Garden in Bountiful. And I still have other books that I plan to get rid of. But it's hard when I actually have valid reasons to have and keep my various books.

Total Eclipse of the Sun

Since last week's post was only a short post to keep up my thirteen-year streak of never missing a Sunday, this week will cover two weeks. I will divide it into sections so you can navigate to the part(s) you are more interested in.

Leaving on a Trip

On Monday, April 1, as I was doing laundry, our dryer made a weird buzzing sound. My dad immediately heard it and couldn't get it to work. So my parents opted to just buy a brand-new drier, since my dad worried about lint hazards in the old drier, which I believe we got around the turn of the millennium. Does that count as an April Fool's prank from our house? My dad was not happy to have to replace the drier right before our big trip.

On Wednesday, April 3, I joined my parents on our road trip down south. We stopped for lunch at a diner in Kingman, Arizona, before we made our first destination in Phoenix, the first time I had been that far south in Arizona. I loved how they had saguaro cacti just growing freely. Saguaro are so iconic of the desert, yet they only grow in Arizona, Sonora, and a little bit of California. 

We stayed the night at the home of Susan and Bill. Susan was my mom's best friend back in our old neighborhood. We moved out of that house back when I was two, so I have only fleeting memories of that house/neighborhood, but we did visit Susan's family sometimes when I was a little older. (I have a memory of their kids bursting into our old house, and the son Brett went into the kitchen and started chugging a bottle of vanilla. I'm 99 percent certain this was a dream. Also, I always thought Brett was named Bread.)

Susan is losing her short-term memory, so I think that was sad for my mom. But they had a cat named Willy, so that was the highlight for me! (They also had a rambunctious dog named Buddy, but I don't care about that.)

National Parks

On Thursday, April 4, we arrived at the western side of Saguaro National Park. I loved seeing all the saguaro! We went on a short nature walk. I never realized saguaro were so big. 

That night, we stayed at a hotel in Tucson. There was a greenway right next to our hotel, so I went on a walk. I even saw a roadrunner! It was a perfect evening, and I had some envy for Tucson. But I probably would be less envious in August than in April.

On Friday, we went to the eastern portion of Saguaro National Park and did another nature walk and a short scenic drive. I just adore this desert. (Since I work in Utah history, my muscle memory wants to type Deseret instead of desert.) Cartoons tend to portray the desert as big expanses of sand with a few saguaro, but the Sonoran Desert is not like that at all. There are all kinds of prickly pear cacti, barrel cacti, cholla cacti, and other plants. I'm sad we didn't get to spend more time there.

Then we headed into New Mexico, which is Arizona's twin, but it's like the twin that didn't graduate from high school and still lives in Mom's basement. It doesn't have the Sonoran Desert, so it will never be as cool. But it still has some cool things. We went to White Sands National Park. Most sand is made from quartz, because it takes longer to erode than other minerals. But at White Sands, the sand is made from gypsum, the same material used in drywall. We stopped at the dunes, and the texture of the sand reminded me of cornmeal. I got down on the sand, and the wind was blowing the sand against me, which was uncomfortable. Just lots of white all around.

We stayed the night in Alamogordo, NM.

On Saturday, we headed out. It was snowing as we drove through Cloudcroft, NM, a village at more than eight thousand feet in elevation. 

We went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There is an elevator that goes down into the cave, but my dad and I opted to hike down (and took the elevator back up). The process for going down was really confusing, and the rangers gave us conflicting information. I could tell that one ranger really did not like her job. 

It was an amazing place to be. But I have been in other caves before (Lehman, Minnetonka, Timpanogos). Carlsbad was like the other caves, just on a bigger scale. It was really busy inside. 

Every time I go to a cave, they make a big deal about the difference between stalactites and stalagmites, and that was something I learned in elementary school. But first of all, why are there different words for them? And second, why is it important for me to know the difference? Like, why did I learn the mnemonics to remember the difference in fifth grade, yet I never learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act until grad school?

Then we went into Texas to go to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We went on a small walk but did very little here. It's my understanding that there's not a lot to do in this park.

There is a little pool of springwater

There were some homes there from the early twentieth century

And then we were done with the national parks. We spent the night in Carlsbad, NM, in a hotel with a vintage kitchen.

An egg carton built into the fridge!

Solar Eclipse

On Sunday, we drove to the home of my cousin Shane and his wife, Sarah, in Keller, TX, outside of Dallas.

On Monday, we drove to a park about thirty minutes away, and Shane's family also came. Lots of people came to the park, but it was less busy than I expected. We put on our eclipse glasses and watched partiality. There were spotty clouds, so we worried whether we would see totality.

But! Just before totality, the clouds parted, and we got to see the whole show. As totality began, people cheered. We got to see the corona around the black shadow of the moon. It was as dim as twilight, even though it was the middle of the day, and a few planets were visible. It was just as I remember in 2017. And then as totality ended, everyone cheered. I really feel happy that I've been able to see two total eclipses in my adult life. And in 2045, another eclipse will go directly through Utah, and I expect to still be in Utah at that point. But that is a long time from now!

I didn't try, expect, or plan to get a good picture of the eclipse. This is just proof that I saw it.

I wanted to stop at Krispy Kreme to get eclipse doughnuts to share with Shane's family.

And that was really the end of my trip.

Coming Home

On Tuesday morning, my parents dropped me off at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport while they continued their road trip. I had a long time in the airports, so I got to do lots of reading: a couple of books for work, and two whole chapters of Benjamin Parks's American Zion. 

I had a layover in Phoenix, and on the way home, I enjoyed looking over the land. I saw several grand canyons, and I suspect one of them was the Grand Canyon. I'm pretty certain I saw Lake Powell, and I think I saw the San Rafael Swell. 

Now, I don't like to talk about gross things, and you probably don't like to read them, so you might want to move to the next section. When I got home, Reggie had had diarrhea all over the house and himself. So much of my free time for the last several days has been spent cleaning the floor and his fur. And I will still have to do a deep clean. That has been a significant frustration.

NCPH

Part of why I came home when I did is that the Utah Historical Society (my employer) was cohosting a conference with the National Council on Public History. So on Wednesday evening, I attended the plenary session and got my conference badge. The badges came with different colors of lanyards to indicate how comfortable I am with physical interaction. I got yellow to indicate that I'm fine with fistbumps but not hugging and would rather not shake hands. It's so nice to have a socially acceptable way to say I don't like hugging! 

I attended sessions Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It can be exhausting to attend that many sessions. But of course I was being paid to be there. I was able to introduce myself to several historians whose work I have admired, and I talked to a few of my classmates from grad school. I think the networking was more beneficial to me than the sessions themselves, though I liked those as well. I think my job with the Utah Historical Society will have me attending many more conferences in my career. We lucked out that this NCPH conference was in SLC this year.

Whew! Good job if you made it through the whole post this week.

(clap clap clap clap) Deep in the Heart of Texas

This will be a short post because I'm writing on my phone. I'm on a road trip with my parents; we're currently staying at my cousin's house in Texas so we can see tomorrow's eclipse (fingers crossed the weather cooperates!).

We went through Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and now Texas, my first time in NM and TX. We also stopped at four national parks, my first time for all of them:

Saguaro,

I am in love with the Sonoran Desert

White Sands, 

Carlsbad Caverns,

and Guadalupe Mountains.

I will provide a longer travelogue another time, when I am back home. Have a good week!