“Oh boy–they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: ‘There are right people to lynch.’ Who? People not well connected. So it goes.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
I survived and even enjoyed my time in Public Humiliation, I mean Public Education. Somehow, I figured out how to successfully navigate [...]

I believe in hope. I think I have to. If hope weren’t a part of my life, that would leave despair to fill its place. And there’s just no point in that, now is there?

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I often hear others longingly talk of the Celestial Kingdom. We believe this is the highest kingdom in heaven and that those who are worthy will live there forever with our families. Does anybody smell a rat?

BUT FIRST: Frankie is getting baptized March 15. Just thought you’d like to be the first to know (besides the missionaries).
I must admit that I was really nervous about posting at Segullah. I stressed over every post – even the last one, which I’d written a month before and really loved. [...]

I hate ants. With a passion. Growing up in Southern California, our home was plagued with them, and it drove me crazy. There is nothing worse than pouring yourself a bowl of cereal, adding milk, and watching ant corpses bob to the surface. It was enough to make an 8 year [...]

You know what? I’m grateful for pain.
As I watch a bunch of recent sadness unfold around me, I can’t help but be struck by the importance of it. Most of the great and important gains I’ve made in my life have been in a time of stress or sadness. Happiness, while certainly comfortable, doesn’t really [...]

If life is a stage and we are all players, then why is it that someone who has been sitting in the audience suddenly steps up on the center stage of one’s life and takes the limelight. That is how I feel about the next “person in my neighborhood.”

It’s new…do you like it?
Well, okay, now it’s a week old, the new look here at Blog Segullah. The template we had been using, which I had adapted from Juicy when the blog launched, was looking a bit cluttered and drab from all my add-ons and color changes. And, it became apparent during [...]

I am female. I am Mormon. I have read Twilight.
Okay, so maybe not every single LDS woman has read Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling teenage vampire romance, but I think there’s a chance that a higher percentage of Mormon women discussed Twilight at their last visiting teaching appointment than discussed the Visiting Teaching Message from [...]

The one-and-only annegb will be guest posting with us for the next month. When I first started blogging, she quickly became my favorite sassy-grandma in the bloggernacle.  Two years of blog-reading later and she still is my favorite writer. She regularly blogs with the “peculiar people” at Mormon Mentality. Lucky them, lucky [...]

Not only did my grandfather, “Gran” (William Ricketts Smith), lead an interesting life, he was someone I felt very close to and still hold dear. I’m so grateful he left behind a record of his life, even a relatively short one, in his own words. What a treasure it is. Because he took the time [...]

I touched his tiny leg. He started to jitter his leg around. I couldn’t help the tears, I’d tried so hard to not let them come. “I don’t think he likes having his legs touched. He doesn’t seem to shake so much if you try his head or hand.” She was so calm. So composed. [...]

Angela Hallstrom
Bound on Earth
Parables Publishing, February 2008
Softcover, 197 Pages
ISBN: 978-0961496098
$12.95
Angela Hallstrom’s debut novel Bound on Earth fleshes out the fiction and non-fiction of marriage and family. Through a series of vignettes written from the perspective of different members of the Palmer family (mother, daughter, father, grandparents and others), the book allows its reader to discover [...]

originally written January 22, 2005
My son . Almost eight years old, and sometimes I think he’s almost 40.

My parents are visiting us for the first time since our move to Europe. And despite their appearance (my dad has been known to wear a map-of-the-world polo and a fanny pack while traveling abroad), they’re pretty culturally savvy. They’ve had enough of their children move out of the country to lose most [...]

…LW and Abbie, winners of our Consecration issue contest! If anyone else would like to subscribe to our print journal, three issues a year of personal essays, poetry, and articles, you can find information here. We wish all of you a Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’m all about the love stories.
As a youth I would pester my “elders” for recitations of their first encounter, of how they fell in love. I would ask for pictures, for endless details, I wanted to know these things. I didn’t need these stories to draw selected bits from, to collage my own fantasy; I [...]

It’s not like I attend church meetings looking for stand-up comedy, but when I happen to be indulged with a few good laughs in the middle of my worship it’s a BIG bonus. Kind of like discovering one of the kids took out the trash without being asked or finding there are five different kinds [...]

Frankie* is the mother of the little boy I take care of after kindergarten every day. We’ve become good friends since the morning she was driving to work and suddenly realized we were LDS–she called me up and asked, “Are you guys Mormons?” Something about my son’s “early morning church class,” my “volunteering every Tuesday [...]

Because we at Segullah love you, our readers, we are running a contest: leave a comment in this thread, and we will send two random commenters a free Consecration issue of Segullah. Yes, you can read it online, but there’s something so solid about the printed word. Also, the ethereal Consecration art adds to [...]

I’ve got them.  Yes, yes I do.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try this experiment.  While wearing a short sleeve shirt, stand in front of a large mirror, and pretend you are conducting a choir.  Or trying to fly away.  If it looks like your flappers could actually generate enough wind speed to [...]

“MY MIND SPUN IN DARKNESS as I tried to comprehend the twilight zone this special day had become. Caitlyn, my eight-year-old daughter, was sitting in fetal position in the dressing room. The meeting should have started ten minutes ago, yet her baptismal outfit was still hanging on the door. As she rocked, she argued with herself [...]

We‘ve started bringing a large kitchen towel with us to the dinner table each night. By dinner‘s end, it is usually full of most everything I‘ve made, and sometimes extra. My younger children don‘t really get napkin etiquette very well, and the towel spends its evening being passed around from one spill to another.
My [...]

It took Devin awhile to adjust to being away from home when he started kindergarten, and it always made him feel safer if he saw his big brother during the day.  At lunch one afternoon, just before leaving for kindergarten, Devin prayed that he would see Patrick at recess.  When I picked the boys up [...]

On a typical weekday, there is always a craft, usually felt or buttons, paper and glue. There is the stacking and restacking of framed photographs as I try to furnish my walls. Yesterday there was the strategic placement of hearts. Everywhere.
Always I sweep after breakfast. And always, some cartoons, watched while flopped lazily on pillows [...]

Lucie (age 4)
“Mom, let’s play that cave game — that cave where Jesus was born. You can be Mary and I can be Joseph, because Mary had really long hair and Joseph had short, short hair. And Mary was taller than Joseph. That’s why he had that stick, because he was so short. And to [...]

Angela Hallstrom’s debut novel, Bound on Earth, hit the market this week. I just bought a copy on Amazon. Here’s why you should whip out your credit card and do the same:
1. The writing is skillful and artistic, a true literary novel. I’ve never seen anything like it in Mormon lit (although I’m no expert–I [...]

Who do you exclude? I’m pretty sure everyone does it. I’m afraid I must admit I do it. I’m not even really sure why I do it. But I know that I do. I don’t think I do it very often, but I still know it’s there.
The rotten thing is, everyone knows how rotten it [...]

5 year old son: I’m giving this note to Lucy (next door neighbor girl).
Me: What does it say?
5 year old: It says I love you.  Because I do, you know.  Me and Lucy, we love each other.
Me: Hmmm.  Are you planning on marrying Lucy?
5 year old:  Well, not yet.  We’re just taking it kinda slow.

Recently I posted about the day I met President Hinckley. It could very easily have been just another of hundreds (do the math–I bet you didn’t have any idea it was that many) of Sabbaths spent juggling kids in the foyer during Sacrament Meeting, but it wasn’t.
The other incident that made that day remarkable [...]

There are lots of things you can pick up on the streets of downtown Salt Lake City, but one of the best things I ever picked up there was a wonderful blogger named Natalie, a.k.a. “Millie.” “b.” and I picked her up right in front of Family History Library. It was the first time I [...]