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“Memories light the corners of my mind”

“Memories light the corners of my mind”

Last updated on: March 17, 2026 at 12:53 am by Dan Peterson

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“Memories light the corners of my mind” 2026-03-17T00:53:43-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The view from right field at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona. We had seats over by the third-base line, just out of the picture to the right. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Growing up in greater Los Angeles, I became a Dodger fan. And I had many opportunities to attend games in person at Dodger Stadium (or what we sometimes called Chavez Ravine, though I was too young to understand the controversy behind that name), with pretty good seats. I was in the stands when Sandy Koufax threw his first no-hit game. I was standing in front of the television with my father when Kirk Gibson hit his famous home run in the first game of the 1988 World Series. In his last years, blinded by a stroke, my father listened faithfully to Vin Scully’s broadcasts of Dodger games. He never missed. when Dad finally passed away and we came down to California to be with my mother and to make funeral arrangements, I had to have my boys take the chair where he had sat for years to listen taken out of the room onto the back patio; I couldn’t look at it without breaking down.

So my wife surprised me with tickets to an exhibition game this afternoon between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Milwaukee Brewers out at the facility that the Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox evidently share in Glendale. (The Camelback Ranch stadium holds about 13,000, as compared to the 56,000-seat capacity of Dodger Stadium.) It was my first major league baseball game in two or three decades. The weather was very hot and the sun intense, but I thoroughly enjoyed our time there. For half of the game, anyway. The Dodgers went up 7-0, and I relaxed. I thought how pleased my father would have been. And then the Brewers went on to win it with a stratospheric score of 24-9, which almost sounds more like a basketball score than a baseball result. Oh well. That’s the way sports competitions work, sometimes. Happily, this game won’t really count. Go, Dodgers!

(Please be advised, incidentally, that no donors to the Interpreter Foundation were harmed in any way by our attendance at the Dodgers/Brewers game this afternoon.)

Courtesy of Russell Richins, a still photograph from the set of Six Days in August, near Rochester, New York

Have I mentioned yet that Episode 8 of Becoming Brigham is now up online? And that the previous seven installments of Becoming Brigham remain available here for your edification and viewing pleasure? You’re welcome!

Incidentally, and not merely because I happen to have cited Richard Lyman Bushman in yesterday’s blog entry (“Tangible Divine Intervention?), I enjoyed this recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune by Peggy Fletcher Stack and David Boyce, which is based on an interview with Professor Bushman: “How the study of Mormon history has changed: ‘We have learned to face up to our facts and to be very candid’: “Our leaders are going to have flaws from time to time,” says Joseph Smith biographer Richard Bushman. “And that does not in any way weaken the force of what they accomplished.”” I share a couple of passages from it, but the entire article is well worth reading:

How do you think the study of Mormonism has changed in the past few decades?

We became more candid about errors and troubles. We had to face up to all the facts. As that has happened, secular historians have come to respect Mormon historians better. We no longer have enemies of the church. We have polemicists online, but the professionals around the country who write about Mormonism (the non-Mormon professionals) are very respectful. There is no effort to cut us down or to undermine our faith in any way. It’s really a very amiable era in church history. At the heart of that is that we have learned to face up to our facts and to be very candid. . . .

Do you think members are better versed now in the church’s real history than they were decades ago? Has that helped or hurt the faith ultimately?

They have learned to accept the fact that there will be ups and downs in the story. So it’s not just what they know, but their attitude that our leaders are going to have flaws from time to time. And that does not in any way weaken the force of what they accomplished.

And I strongly share the concern that he voices here:

How has the church’s missionary program changed?

It is a little weak on church history. People can join the church, but they also can leave very easily, because what they’re mainly getting is Christ, which is wonderful. It’s what they should mainly get. But they can get Christ in lots of churches, so people come to our church, and it’s fine for a while, they’re welcome, and then something comes along, and then they drift away, and they can go to another church and get so much Christ. We have something special, unusual and uniquely powerful. I think stories of Joseph Smith seeing the Lord, receiving the plates, translating, those should be burned in the people’s memory so they realize that we have had gifts given to us from heaven that are unlike anything else in the world.

I suppose that one of the reasons that I’ve been willing to devote so much effort to the Interpreter Foundation and to films such as Witnesses, Undaunted Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and Six Days in August, as well as, now, to Becoming Brigham, is to try, in my own weak way, to help to “burn” such things “in the people’s memory.” Contrary to the claims of a few of my anonymous critics, I’m not motivated only by insatiable personal greed and perpetually boiling rage.

“Filming in the rain. Just filming in the rain. What a wonderful feeling, I’m happy to say.”
(A still photo by James Jordan from the set of the 2021 Interpreter Foundation film Witnesses.)

If you’re looking for examples of the injuries that theists and theism inflict upon innocent people around the world, this article, which was retrieved from the venerable Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, is very likely to satisfy at least your immediate cravings: “Light the World Giving Machine donations in 2025: By the numbers: Giving Machine donations are one way individuals can ‘love one another’ as Christ did, Elder Rasband says”

And here’s another entry from the Hitchens File. It was written by Jacob Hess. Of course, if you’re one of those people who pretend to think that good, sound mental health is a positive thing, you won’t see — or will pretend not to see — the obvious harm done here by involvement in religion: “Regular church attendance associated with lower likelihood of mental health diagnoses: Analysis finds conservative church attendees least likely to be diagnosed with a mental health condition, with liberal infrequent church attendees most likely to be diagnosed.”

Posted from Scottsdale, Arizona

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