MoaBlog

The Church of San Francisco De Asis in Taos, New Mexico is a classic of Spanish Franciscan architecture. It was constructed in the early 1800s with adobes (mud bricks). The exterior is plastered with mud. This mud plaster must be renewed every few years because rain washes it away. In these photos you can see volunteers replastering the walls.

Among the many places Jeff's family visited on their vacation recently was the site of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home in southern Indiana. Much of the heavily wooded area looks the same as it did 200 years ago. Five-year-old Indiana (second photo) enjoyed wearing a stovepipe hat similar to the one worn by President Lincoln.

In the Southwestern United Sates, a water runoff channel in the desert is called a wash. They are often dry for most of the year, but they can suddenly and violently fill with water during a rainstorm. This one is called Salt Wash. It is one of the few that has water most of the year. Because of the rare supply of water in the desert, John Wesley Wolfe settled near the wash in 1888. He built a one-room cabin, a corral, and a small dam across Salt Wash. A flood destroyed the original cabin. The cabin that can be seen in the background was built in 1906.

Here are two more photographs taken in the same spot 50 years apart. The top one shows Jeff's grandmother Ingra in a chair in her living room in Panguitch, taken about 1959. The other photo shows the corner as it looks today. Remarkably, a few of the items remain on the shelves after 50 years, most notably a commemorative plate depicting President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Grandma passed away in 2000 at the age of 86.

Two photos of Main Street, Panguitch, Utah, taken roughly 50 years apart. The top photo shows the street being torn up around 1958 or 1959, probably to install a drainage system. The bottom photo was taken by Jeff's dad in nearly the same spot in August 2009.

Today is Pioneer Day, a state holiday in Utah that celebrates the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Jeff plans to celebrate by going to the southern Utah town of Panguitch and attending the annual Owens reunion at Panguitch Lake. Early Utah pioneer William T. Owens (1854-1941), who now has several hundred living descendants, is Jeff's great-great grandfather (his father's father's mother's father). Mary Emily Jones Owens (1861-1904) was one of William's three wives, and the one from which Jeff's family is descended.

Last Friday, (Jeff's 44th birthday), members of Penny's extended family gathered at the site of the Pinhook Battle, a gunfight that resulted in the deaths of several white settlers and an unknown number of Indians. A stone marker (bottom photo) has been placed at the ambush site, where eight of the victims were also buried. Penny's brother Kevin (top photo) told family members the story behind the event, which occurred near Castle Valley, Utah on June 15, 1881.

Penny and Trudy sampled a few swords, knives, and daggers on sale from a vendor during the "Scottish Days" celebration held in Payson, Utah last weekend.

Jeff's parents visited the historic Mormon Tabernacle in downtown Salt Lake City this week. The oval-shaped building on Temple Square was constructed between 1864 and 1867 by Mormon pioneers, and underwent a major refurbishment between 2005 and 2007. The building is 150 feet wide and 250 feet long, and has a seating capacity of over 7,000 people. It is home to the world-famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and also houses one of the largest pipe organs in the world (the bottom photo shows a close-up view of some of the organ's 11,000 pipes).

Crews are getting the Cisco Hotel ready to move. This historic building in downtown Moab has served as a hotel for the past few years. After the move it will be converted to a private residence. This is not the first move for this building. It was originally built in the neighboring town of Cisco about 100 years ago. Around 1950 the building was moved to Moab. Local legend has it that part of the journey took place on a barge floating down the Colorado River.

A brush fire along the Colorado River destroyed a local landmark recently. The Dewey Bridge was constructed in 1916 and at the time it was the second longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi. In 1986 the bridge was retired and replaced with a modern concrete bridge, but the Grand County Historical Commission restored the bridge and converted it to a foot and bicycle bridge. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After the restoration work, the bridge became part of the Kokopelli Trial bike route that extends from Moab, Utah to Grand Junction, Colorado. The wood portions of the bridge were destroyed by the fire leaving only the steel towers and cables.

Click here to see a photo of the bridge before the fire.

During a recent visit to Salt Lake City, Jeff saw this stone marker, which was originally placed at the southeast corner of Temple Square in 1855, eight years after pioneer surveyors Orson Pratt and Henry Sherwood had determined its location (the point from which all land surveys and land measurements are determined throughout the entire state of Utah, with the exception of a relatively small area in the Uintah Basin). The stone was later moved and is now housed in the Mormon Church's Museum of Church History and Art, about a block away from its original location.

William Shakespeare’s vocabulary in his works includes over 17,000 words. This is four times the number of words a well-educated English speaker of today uses in conversation. Shakespeare is credited with introducing over 3,000 new words into the language. Here are a few examples: frugal, lonely, fixture, discontent, bedroom, worthless, and zany.

Photo: Shelly Gaza (left) as Cordelia and Dan Kremer as King Lear in the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s 2007 production of King Lear. (Copyright Utah Shakespearean Festival. Photo by Karl Hugh.)

Shakespeare’s writings have had such a strong influence on the English language that even today many people will use phrases from Shakespeare in common speech. Sometimes they don’t even realize they are quoting Shakespeare. Here are a few examples: It's Greek to me, salad days, vanished into thin air, budge an inch, green-eyed jealousy, played fast and loose, tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked, in a pickle, too much of a good thing, bag and baggage, the long and short of it, and dead as a doornail.

Photo: Leslie Brott (left) as Volumnia, James Newcomb as Caius Martius Coriolanus, and Kate Cook as Virgilia in the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s 2007 production of Coriolanus. (Copyright Utah Shakespearean Festival. Photo by Karl Hugh.)

This photo is of a bust of William Shakespeare at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Shakespeare, who lived from 1564 to 1616, wrote in an older form of English that used the pronoun thou. Although we don’t commonly use this form today, most Americans are familiar with it and can still understand Shakespeare’s writings. The word thou is the second person singular pronoun, and ye is the plural pronoun, but in modern usage both have been replaced by you. Thou is the nominative form; thee is the oblique/objective form, and thy or thine is the possessive. Verbs that follow thou have -st or –est added to the end of the word. For example the phrase “You gave me a present.” would be "Thou gavest me a present."

Although it is not yet considered standard English, there is a similar shift taking place in the language today. Many people will use the plural pronoun they to describe a single person instead of using the singular pronouns he or she.

Today is Pioneer Day, a state holiday in Utah that marks the anniversary of the Mormon pioneers' initial arrival in the Salt Lake valley. On July 24, 1847 (160 years ago), upon arriving with other pioneers at the mouth of a canyon overlooking the valley, Mormon leader Brigham Young reportedly proclaimed, "This is the right place, drive on." Today, there is a granite monument at the spot where Young made his famous remark telling the displaced settlers that they should make their new home in the Salt Lake area. Jeff's family visited the "This Is The Place" monument earlier this month, and took these photos.

Jeff's family visited This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City today. The site is where Brigham Young and other Mormon pioneers first entered the valley in 1847. Dozens of historic buildings have been either relocated or rebuilt as replicas on the site, which now resembles a pioneer-era town from the late 1800s. They spent the afternoon doing a variety of fun activities, including leatherwork, doing farm chores, and riding horses.

Jeff recently came across this old photograph of his dad playing in a high school basketball game 47 years ago, in 1960. Jeff's dad, a senior, is pictured shooting the ball. "I remember that this photo was taken just a few seconds after the game started, and that the shot went in," Jeff's dad recalled, adding that the picture was published in the local newspaper the following week.

Jeff's family viewed a live Nativity scene at a Salt Lake area neighborhood Saturday night. Actors played the roles of Mary and Joseph, along with wise men, shepherds, and angels, who were all local children chosen to play a part. The scene featured live animals (goats and a donkey), a full-scale stable and manger, and plenty of hot chocolate for the 100 or so people who participated.

Historic Dewey Bridge, located adjacent to Highway 128 about a half hour upstream from Moab on the Colorado River, was constructed from 1913-16. The single-lane bridge was designed to hold six horses, three wagons, or 9,000 lbs. of freight at a time. Although it was no longer used for vehicle traffic after 1986, it remains in use by pedestrians and bicyclists. It was restored in 2000, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It remains Utah’s longest clear-span suspension bridge.

According to ancient Greek mythology, the Cyclops were a race of giants who had a single eye in the center of their forehead, much like the creature in the top illustration. Some scientists have speculated that the ancient Greeks may have found prehistoric dwarf elephant or juvenile mammoth skulls on the island of Crete. The skulls (similar to the baby mammoth skull seen in the middle photo) may have been the source of the Cyclops legend. The size of the skulls (nearly twice as large as a human's) combined with the central hole (actually the animal's nasal cavity) may have caused people to believe that one-eyed giants actually existed, as the fanciful skeletal arrangement in the bottom photo suggests. The mammoth's actual eye sockets are located on either side of the skull.

This chunk of iron (about the size of a cantaloupe) is one of many meteorites which were first found in Campo del Cielo, Argentina in 1576. It is believed to be 4.5 billion years old, or as old as the Earth itself. Scientists think the Campo meteorites fell to the Earth's surface about 5,000 years ago.

The Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi has several "hands-on" exhibits, including (from top) an erosion table where kids can submerge toy dinosaurs and trees in wet sand and water; a mock fossil dig where children can brush away the sand from buried dinosaur "skeletons"; and a "create your own dinosaur" exhibit where people can put together various body parts made out of foam and cloth to create colorful creatures.

On Monday afternoon, Jeff and his 5-year-old daughter London visited the Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi. They saw a wide variety of dinosaur fossils, including those pictured here (from top): dimetrodon, brachiosaurus, a primitive Chinese bird fossil, and triceratops. Check back tomorrow for more museum photos!

The final design for Utah's 25-cent piece, the 45th coin in the popular series of 50 U.S. state quarters was announced today by Gov. Jon M. Huntsman. Utah's coin will feature the driving of the "golden spike" that completed America's first transcontinental railroad line. That event took place 137 years ago today, on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah, where the governor made today's announcement during a re-enactment of that historic event (bottom photo, taken from a local TV website). The U.S. Mint is scheduled to produce the Utah quarters in late 2007.

On the way back from Bryce Canyon, Jeff and the Girl Scouts drove past the boyhood home of the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy, whose exploits were portrayed in the popular 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Butch is pictured in the wanted poster in the bottom photo. His real name was Robert Leroy Parker, and he grew up in this cabin just south of Circleville, Utah in the 1880s. Although most accounts say that Butch died in South America around 1908, at least one close relative claimed that Butch returned alive to the United States and died many years later (perhaps as late as the early 1940s). That relative was Butch's younger sister, Lula Parker Betenson (1884-1980), whom Jeff once met in person in the late 1970s. On that occasion at her Circleville home, Mrs. Betenson (who was over 90 years old at the time) signed for him his copy of her 1975 book, "Butch Cassidy My Brother."

The top photo, taken in 1955, shows the grand opening of the First State Bank of Salina's branch in Panguitch, Utah. Jeff's mother's father, then aged 40, is pictured at the far right. He had just moved his family from southern Nevada to take the job as manager of the new branch in Panguitch. Remarkably, this photo was taken by Jeff's other grandfather (his father's father), even though Jeff's parents (then aged 13) had not even yet met each other. The bottom photo, taken 50 years later, shows three of Jeff's daughters at the very same location (no longer a bank) on Panguitch's Main Street.