Hobnobbing with historians

On Monday, the Utah Historical Society hosted its annual awards ceremony, which honors various individuals and groups contributing to Utah history. Of course, as an employee I was invited/expected to attend. This time it was at Memorial House in Memory Grove, and I enjoyed parking at the capitol and walking down the path to the park. It's nice to have something different to do in the bleak month of January.

Anyway, it was good to see and talk to different people in the history field. My last supervisor from the Church History Department was there, so it was good to see him. And my current UHS supervisor told me she talked to him, and he had flattering things to say about me, that I had a big depth of knowledge and produced high-quality content quickly. That was nice to hear, but also surprising, because I don't think of myself as fast, and I thought I had less knowledge than most at the CHD.

I spent a lot of last year reading books that were nominated for our Juanita Brooks Best Book in Utah History Award, because I was one of four people on the book committee. The winner we selected was Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath by Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown, and the finalist we selected was Like a Fiery Meteor: The Life of Joseph F. Smith by Stephen C. Taysom. I enjoyed reading those books. Within the last few weeks, I emailed various academic presses, asking them to nominate books for next year's award, and I'm excited to see and read what they send to us!

Then on Thursday, I attended a lecture by my friend Connell O'Donovan at Signature Books about Mildred "Barrie" Berryman, who studied gay and lesbian topics a century ago. It's always fascinating to learn about our queer predecessors.

In Signature's meeting space, there was a shelf with various periodicals, and I was happy to see that I was involved in three of the publications:

• They had the Summer 2023 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly, which was the first issue I worked on when I was hired almost two years ago
• They had the latest issue of Wayfare. (In the last few weeks, I've cleaned up some footnotes for our next issue, but I'm in a lull right now. More will trickle in.)
• They had Latter-day Saint Historical Studies, and it just happened to be the issue that has my Pioneer Day article

I talked to Barbara Jones Brown, the director of Signature Books, and she thanked me for awarding Vengeance Is Mine the best book award.

I don't do much historical research and writing of my own. But I feel lucky to get to associate with all the people who do.

And of course, I have to end the post with this week's irrelevant dream images.

several people are on a cliff above a lake

a website sells men's Valentine's sweaters

Mark finds some pants in his yellow bag, so he can see the First Presidency with the other guys, who are dressed in costumes (I can't decide whether I prefer this image . . .)

(. . . or this one)

there are poisonous plants around animal cages to deter predators

Lisa is distracted when tutoring Nelson (I wondered if the "distracted boyfriend" would show up, and there he is!)

Mark tries to rescue a tortoise and two frogs from Sue's burned-down house

a woman is crying at church because her thirteen-year-old child came out as gay

on June 2, Mark pulls up goat head plants outside an ice cream shop in Centerville, Utah

on Google Maps, someone put pictures of trees on the page for a fast-food restaurant

a man in a mixed-orientation marriage invites his friends to his house, and one of them is wearing a button-up Snoopy shirt

a Latter-day Saint ward has an early twentieth-century Chicago-themed sacrament meeting with musical numbers and Primary children distributing sacrament bread

Mark picks grapes in December when a family of children come by to sell something