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This Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

This Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

Last updated on: August 4, 2026 at 7:06 pm by Dan Peterson

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This Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 2026-08-04T19:06:10-06:00 Dan Peterson

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John Donovan Wilson as Brigham Young, on the set of Six Days in August in a still photograph taken by James Jordan.

I think that I failed to call attention here yesterday to the appearance of the twenty-eighth installment of the Interpreter Foundation’s ongoing Becoming Brigham series. I hope that you’ll watch it, enjoy it, benefit from it, and share it with others: “To See God Face to Face — Episode 28”

For this coming Saturday evening

Every year since the Interpreter Foundation was established in 2012, we’ve celebrated our birthday on the Saturday immediately following the annual FAIR Conference. In that respect, this year is no different.

There will, however, be three significant differences:

Every year, my wife has coordinated a dinner for our invited guests (leadership, volunteers, and major donors). She has recently undergone significant surgery, though, and she won’t even be able to attend the event this year. So we’ve simplified things, and we’ll have only light refreshments. (Did you seriously expect me to organize a dinner? It would be catastrophic.) After all, the program and (especially for a largely virtual organization whose donors, volunteers, and leaders are widely scattered nationally and internationally) the mingling are the most important elements of the night.
Because we aren’t doing a dinner, we don’t need to have an exact count in advance of who is coming and, therefore, haven’t asked people to RSVP. Which means that we have no real idea how many will show up on Saturday evening. Which means that it’s entirely possible that we’ll run out of our light refreshments (and equally possible that we’ll have leftovers). It also means, since we’re not trying to provide dinner to everybody in attendance, that there’s no real reason not to invite the public to what will be, effectively, a fireside. Which is what I’m doing right now. If you’re in the vicinity, please drop by!
On the whole, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints generally declines to have speeches or presentations by its leaders or ranking employees put online by other organizations or individuals. It likes, understandably, to control its message. Our speaker this year is Derek Westra, the Church’s Director of Reputation Management. Accordingly, although the event will be open to the public, his remarks will neither be streamed nor recorded. I’ve heard him speak to his topic before, though, and have always found his report and his insights extremely interesting.

The Show Barn at Thanksgiving Point (fair use)

And, speaking of the annual FAIR Conference, here is some information that I received this morning from the good folks who run that organization:

Location: Show Barn at Thanksgiving Point
2975 Thanksgiving Way, Lehi, UT 84043
� Click here for directions

When: August 5–7, 2026

Wednesday Evening: Opening Session
This is your opportunity to check in, pick up your name badge and program, and get oriented before the full conference begins.
Please join us for:

Check-in and Mingling: 6:00 pm
Opening Address: 7:10 pm – Scott Gordon, “Unmasking the Strategies of the Enemy”
Keynote Presentation: 7:40 pm – Anthony Sweat, “The Restoration Continues: Let us Continue in it!”
Presentation of the John Taylor Award: 8:15 pm

� This evening is included with your ticket—please make it a priority to attend!

Thursday & Friday Schedule:

Doors Open: 8:30 am
Presentations Begin Promptly: 9:00 am
Lunch Provided Both Days

You can view the full schedule here:
� View Conference Program online To help you prepare for the conference, we’ve created a General Information page on our website that answers many common questions, including:

Parking and directions
Conference schedule
What to bring
Lunch and refreshments
Water bottle refill stations
Mother’s Lounge information
Accessibility accommodations
Bookstore hours
Frequently Asked Questions

We encourage you to review this page before the Conference. � General Information Page

Fairly soon — if, indeed, it hasn’t already happened — I’ll need to be carried about in a palanquin. And presumably in one borne by my “sycophants” and “toadies.” (Those are terms that are sometimes used on the Peterson Obsession Board to refer to the readers of this blog.) The image above is a public domain illustration from Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve just learned on the Peterson Obsession Board — in particular, from the anonymous poster whose adopted online moniker resembles Everybody’s WC (and for whom Truth and Accuracy are his unvarying North Star), who claims to have seen it in the Becoming Brigham videos — that, because my life has principally been devoted to gluttony, indolence, and sloth, I now require a cane in order to walk. (My basic daily diet evidently consists entirely of country fried steak, double bacon cheeseburgers, all-you-can-eat pizza, and onion rings, preferably devoured all at one sitting for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Otherwise, I apparently avoid salads, vegetables, grains, and legumes to the maximum extent possible, and I mostly consume fruit only — albeit, of course, massively — in the form of pies, cobblers, and milkshake flavors.) Anyway, I presume that I need to buy a cane now. Does anybody know where a good place might be to buy a cane? And can anyone recommend a particular brand or type? I’ve never used one or owned one or shopped for one before.

In this photograph, two American flags decorate the grave of President Grover Cleveland in Princeton, New Jersey. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph). On the day that I visited the cemetery, there were no decorations at all.

An item substantially like the paragraphs below swam across my computer screen earlier today. I don’t know who wrote the original, but I’ve shortened it and modified it a bit. I think it beneficial to think such thoughts from time to time:

In a century — which is to say, in 2126 — we will all be buried with our relatives and friends.

In the unlikely event that the houses in which we live are still standing, strangers will live in the homes that we fought so hard to build or to buy, and, to the extent that it still exists, they will own everything that we have today. Most of our possessions will be gone. If they’re still around, their connection to us will have been long forgotten. The car that we spent a fortune on and for which we cared so much will probably be scrap. If it’s an unusual one, though, there’s a slight chance that it will be in the hands of an unknown collector.

Our descendants, if we have any, will scarcely know who we were, nor will they remember anything about us. Latter-day Saints are a bit unusual in this regard, but, generally speaking, how many of us can name our grandfather’s father?

After we die, we will be remembered for a few more years, and then we’ll just be a portrait on someone’s bookshelf. A few years later, our history, our photos, and our deeds will disappear into the oblivion of history. We won’t even be memories anymore.

Reminding ourselves of such facts about the future has the capacity to powerfully affect our attitudes toward the present — potentially for the bad, of course, but ideally for the good.

I close by quoting from the lyrics of a 1967 song that I, a true child of California in the Sixties, liked very much when I was young, It’s called “Get Together,” and it was recorded by a group called The Youngbloods:

[Verse 2]
Some may come and some may go
We will surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass

[Chorus]
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now.

Interpreter Foundation

Orem Lakeview Stake

Thanksgiving Point

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