At Fort Douglas Military Cemetery, dead warriors rest in peace. Amongst the quiet rows are nine white grave markers with distinctly German names: Otto Bross … Ernst Fuchs … Gottfried Gagg ... They all have the same date of death—July 8, 1945. This is no coincidence. For the past seven decades these weathered tombstones have borne silent witness to a war crime committed in … [Read more...]
#MeToo Pioneer Style
Stories of sexual assault, harassment and misconduct by politicians and people of influence seem to permeate the headlines with alarming increase. Unfortunately, many stories of this nature could almost be written on a template where only the names of the perpetrator and victims change. Consider the story of John W. Dawson, Utah’s third Territorial Governor. Although, it took … [Read more...]
Salty Songs About SLC
"I left my heart in..." We all know how that song lyric goes. But Salt Lake City crooners can take heart—there are songs that celebrate SLC as well. Songwriter Doug Wintch added to the list when he wrote Salt Lake City in 2013. Wintch said he based his song on “a guy who used to sit at the bar down at D.B. Cooper’s and cry into his beer over a long lost high school … [Read more...]
The Deseret Alphabet—Brigham Young’s Most Expensive Failed Experiment
“The advantages of this alphabet will soon be realized, especially by foreigners … It will also be very advantageous to our children. It will be the means of introducing uniformity in our orthography, and the years that are now required to learn to read and spell can be devoted to other studies." ~Brigham Young, delivered in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle on October 8th, … [Read more...]
Trades of History
In a society where technology is capable of out-dating itself within a couple of months, it is too easy to forget that the foundation of today’s advancements were forged in the shops of tradesmen. American colonists established communities with a strong sense of self-sufficiency. If you needed something, you made it or you hired someone to make it for you. Dozens of trades … [Read more...]
Adobe Brick is Where Salt Lake Met the Mud
Salt Lake Valley is home to a punctuated and heterogeneous clash of architecture. Its booming expansion rendered a diversified display of structural and cultural evolution. I was born and raised in Utah since 88’—and in this short time, I have seen the rise and urbanization of Riverton, the Jordans, Bluffdale, Sandy, Draper, pushing westward into Daybreak, and overtaking … [Read more...]
Stewardship Day at the World’s Longest Art Gallery
If you were at the Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah and someone started carving their initials into a sculpture, you’d do something to stop it, right? Then why don’t we do more to stop people from defacing rock art found throughout Utah’s landscape? Archaeologists from more than a dozen agencies and private organizations invited the public to tackle this issue … [Read more...]
Sherlock Holmes in Salt Lake City
A young writer is facing a blank page. What to write about? He's got it! A detective solving a case involving murder revenge, sexual predation … and Brigham Young! Throw in as a sidekick, Dr. John Watson, late of the Afghan Wars, and you have the makings of A Study in Scarlet. And the detective? None other than the esteemed Sherlock Holmes with the mailing address 221B Baker … [Read more...]
Utah’s Disappearing Past
“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” ~Joni Mitchell The 1960s and 70s were a great time to be a kid. Utah was less cosmopolitan back then and our fun was homegrown. I remember the ride from Granger (now West Valley City) to Saratoga Springs, an amusement park and resort on the northwest … [Read more...]
Delta’s Topaz Museum Brings Life to a Difficult Time in Our Past
It was 30 years in the making when the Topaz Museum finally opened in July. Its director, Jane Beckwith, said, “We come together today as a community that balances immigration … with kindness, or in this case, a lack of kindness.” The museum commemorates the internment of Japanese-Americans in southwestern Utah after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. President Franklin … [Read more...]