Volume 27, Number 4
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Exponent II Volume 27 Number 4 ONTENTS C Exponent II Meet Our Contest Winners....................3 Unraveling...............................................20 Tally S. Payne EDITORIAL STAFF Sisters Speak.............................................3 Editor Nancy T. Dredge I Am Emma’s Mother............................22 Kamia Walton Holt Associate Editors A Radical Life Blooms in Becket..........4 Kate Holbrook Aimee Hickman Heather Sundahl The Perpetual Reproduction Society .23 Editorial Assistants A Visit to Eliza R. Snow’s Birthplace ..5 Julianna Berry Kimberly Burnett Colleen Wiest Aimee Hickman Poetry Artists Return to the Chilean Homestead......24 Lynn Anderson Helen Candland Stark Essay Contest Winner Lena Dibble Of Clue and Cleaning House.................6 Lisa Rubilar Linda Hoffman Kimball Carol B. Quist Suemarie Lamaker goodness gracious Designer Essay Contest Honorable Mention Chocolate Chips and Exponent: Evelyn Harvill The Dogwood Trees ................................8 Contributing to the Real World..........26 Business Manager Barbara Streeper Taylor Rebecca Clarke Linda Hoffman Kimball Poetry Editor Ann Stone Are You There God? It’s Me Heather10 Book Review Book Review Editor Heather Sundahl Help for Moms is Here .........................28 Deborah Farmer Kimberly Burnett Production The Begonia Monologues ....................14 Evelyn Harvill Emma Shumway The Tsunami—Up Close Margaret Dredge Moore and Personal............................................29 EXECUTIVE BOARD A Day in the Life Jeanne Decker Griffiths President of the Cannon Family............................16 Aimee Hickman Letters .......................................................31 Judy L. Cannon Secretary Linda Andrews Treasurer Coming Attractions Barbara Streeper Taylor Historian Future issues of Exponent II will include articles on Mormon women quilters; Cheryl Davis DiVito the effects of pornography addiction on families; women and power; dealing Members with life changes; and making sense of suffering. If you are interested in writing Linda Andrews, Robin Zenger Baker, on any of these subjects, please contact us. Kimberly Burnett, Emily Curtis, Cheryl Davis DiVito, Nancy Tate Dredge, Judy Rasmussen Dushku, Karen Call Haglund, Evelyn Harvill, Submissions to Exponent II Kate Holbrook, Aimee Hickman, We welcome your personal essays, articles, poetry, and fiction. We focus on—but do not Heather Sundahl, Barbara Taylor publish exclusively—manuscripts that are women and Mormon Church-related. Please Exponent II (ISSN 1094-7760) is published e-mail submissions to [email protected] or mail disk or hard copy to Exponent II, Box quarterly by Exponent II Incorporated, a non- 128, Arlington, MA 02476. Doublespace manuscripts and write on one side only with your profit corporation with no official connection with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day name, address, and e-mail address, if available, on each page. Keep a copy of your work; Saints. Articles published represent the opin- manuscripts will not be returned. ions of authors only and not necessarily those of the editor or staff. Letters to Exponent II or its editors and Sisters Speak articles are assumed We are also looking for artwork and photography. Send samples of your work for considera- intended for publication in whole or in part and tion. If you are interested in illustrating articles, please contact us for specific assignments. When may therefore be used for such purposes. sending photographs via e-mail, be sure the resolution is at least 300 DPI. Copyright © 2005 by Exponent II, Incorporated. All rights reserved. The purpose of Exponent II is to provide a forum for Mormon women to share their life experiences in Cover: Replica of Joyful an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. This exchange allows us to better understand each other and Moment by sculptor Dennis shape the direction of our lives. Our common bond is our connection to The Church of Jesus Christ of Smith. Photograph by Lena Latter-day Saints and our commitment to women. We publish this paper as a living history in cele- Dibble. bration of the strength and diversity of women. 2 Exponent II Meet Our Contest Winners Carol Joan Bennion Quist, whose Stanford and an M.A. from the in Honor of President David O. essay “Of Clue and House University of Utah in women’s McKay, a journal that publishes Cleaning” was this year’s Helen history and literature. the winning essays of the Candland Stark essay contest win- country’s highest-paying personal ner, sold her first piece of writing Carol has lived many places in the essay contest. to the former Children’s Friend, the United States and in Al Khobar, second to Vogue, the third to Good Saudi Arabia, with her now “I served a mission to Guatemala Housekeeping, the fourth, fifth, and retired engineer/attorney husband in 1994–1995. sixth to Ensign, who lost the sixth William Woodbury Quist. They but said, “Keep the money and have four living sons and fifteen “While I deeply enjoy my outside- sell the piece grandchildren. Their eldest son of-home elsewhere.” Will died of brain tumors in pursuits, I She did. She October 2004. find has proofread myself at Ensign, Besides writing, reading, and wanting taught basic gardening, Carol enjoys traveling more and composition at with Bill and has been in every more to LDS Business U.S. state and nearly two dozen simply College in Salt nations so far. She covets trips to spend Lake City, and South America and Antarctica. time with taught human- my family. ities, communication, business Rebecca Clarke, whose essay I love to watch six-year-old Eliza English, and technical writing at “Dogwood Trees” won an honor- play soccer and love to watch Salt Lake Community College. able mention in this year’s essay four-year-old Emme show me contest, has the following to say with huge sweeping arm motions Carol has won prizes for poetry, about herself: how ‘Heavenly Father created the light verse, fiction, and non-fiction world.’ When Sam, Eliza, Emme, and teaches grammar, humor, and “When I turned seven, I got a blue and I are together in idyllic family essay writing seminars. She’s plastic typewriter for my birthday. moments—which thankfully currently editing a friend’s It really worked. I have tinkered aren’t too rare—we enjoy taking autobiography. with writing ever since. I currently walks, playing on the tire swing in teach writing at BYU, write peri- our front yard, and reading books Now associate editor at Sunstone odically for Meridian Magazine, out loud to each other. When I magazine, Carol has an A.B. in and edit The Restored Gospel and have moments free and alone I radio-TV production/writing from Applied Christianity: Student Essays love to read and write and garden.” Sisters Speak In many ways and settings, the someone who would like to you think it affected your rela- Church has been addressing the write—about your experiences in tionship the way it did? What problem of pornography addic- order to help broaden the have you learned about dealing tion and how it affects the lives understanding of other sisters in with the temptation pornogra- of LDS families. We, too, would the Church, please consider the phy holds either for you or for like to acknowledge this prob- following questions: someone who is close to you? lem and discover how women, in particular, are dealing with it. Have you had a relationship All letters will be published Therefore, if you or your family that has been affected by anonymously. Please have struggles with this issue and pornography? How would you your contributions to us at expo- would like to write—or know describe its impact? Why do [email protected] by October 1. Vol. 27, No. 4 3 A Radical Life Blooms in Becket Aimee Hickman wooded landscape on the border an upstart religious group in of the Berkshire Hills. The contrast which their daughter, Eliza, would From an early age, my grandma between the barren desert land- marry first one and then the Sylvia took me on outings to the scape of Salt Lake that Eliza second of that group’s two charis- Daughters of the Utah Pioneers would find in her late forties matic leaders, but where she Museum in Salt Lake City. There I could not be more distinct from would eventually become one of glimpsed the personal details of the land of her birth. those leaders herself. Eliza was a our early saints as I wandered woman bold enough to be a through rooms full of textiles, hair Fittingly, Eliza’s monument sits on priestess, bold enough to be a art, and hidden gems of what are the lush green Athenaeum lawn. poetess, bold enough to abandon the closest things we have to After an enlightening talk by convention and live what was by Mormon reliquaries. It was there Colleen Wiest about how the mon- any standard a radical life. in a glass case devoted to a few of ument to Eliza came about, our Walking across the wide pine the worldly possessions of “Zion’s group of some thirty women and planks that comprise the floor of Poetess”—lace gloves she made men sang a stirring rendition of the late eighteenth-century cabin herself, poetry written in her own “O My Father.” We then headed that now exists as two small hand, the elaborate golden pen up to the town cemetery and read rooms of a much larger house, I given to her by Joseph Smith— the headstones of other members imagined a family who told stories that I first met Eliza R. Snow. of the Snow family who had not by firelight, parents who encour- embarked on such wild western aged their daughter’s penchant for Throughout my life, Eliza R. Snow adventures. The fragrance of education and religious fervor, a has been a dignified old woman thyme and mint was vivid—it little girl so close to her Heavenly in a black bonnet, matriarchal Mother that her poetry would without being maternal.