Hills Like White Lamanites
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:14 am
From the Annals of the Turley J. Hinton Institute....
Hills Like White Lamanites
By Robert B. Oberson
PART I: Krista Severson
"Boy, that sure is good." Merlyn Young set his knife and fork down and looked around for the waitress. "'Scuse me," he said to a busboy. "We're still waiting on our drinks."
"Oh. Okay. Um, what did you order?"
"We each had a root beer."
"Okay, sure: no problem. I'll go check on it."
"Thank you."
Merlin and Howell were seated at the edge of the dining room at Spencer's in downtown Salt Lake, where, just a few hours earlier, they'd met with Elder Pitt to discuss Hinton Institute business. Howell cut into his steak, which was so rare that it was almost bloody. He forked up a piece of it and held it up in front of his face.
"Look at that. Just magnificent, I tell you." He put it into his mouth and chewed. "Just delicious. These morons: these enviro-whatevers? Who think that we have to cut back on meat to save the carbon footprint or whatever? Idiots. All of them."
"It's all about control for them," said Merlyn. He looked carefully across the table at his friend, who had seemed more tired and older late. He didn't want to pry, but he knew that things were going sour in Howell's personal life, to say nothing of the other issues facing the Institute. But now wasn't the time to dwell on such things.
Merlyn and Howell had ordered a full spread: 20 oz. bone-in ribeye steaks (rare for Howell; medium-well for Merlyn), hash browns, sautéed mushrooms, mac & cheese, creamed spinach, and prawn cocktail. They felt that they'd earned it, and that they needed it. At the meeting with President Pitt, they'd been complimented for their work responding to Dylan Cross, who, it was being said in certain quarters of the Church, had been very badly discredited. Now, it seemed, poor young Cross was having difficulty securing an academic job. "A pity it had to be this way," Elder Pitt had said.
And a lot had happened at the Hinton Institute in the past year: Franklynn Carmichael had disappeared, only to be found months later; or, rather, his remains were found, clear out in the desert. He had been missing for months when some people running land-speed tests out on the salt flats had discovered a skeleton. It was a horrible revelation, and everyone at the Institute had been shaken by the discovery, though they all knew that he had been on a slow slide for some time. Many had been concerned about his spiritual health, and towards the end, he had been reluctant to do any of the heavy lifting that his post at the Institute required. Merlyn had heard strange rumors, on the message boards and elsewhere, that some phantom "Danites" had killed Franklynn: rumors which he partly helped to inflame. It never hurt, he thought, to keep the anti-Mormons guessing, and to perhaps instill a bit of fear in them. Whatever people thought of Franklynn personally, his death meant that the Institute was without its principal Book of Abraham apologist, and criticism on the boards had been ratcheting up lately. Both Nephi and Howell had taken heavy hits lately on matters pertaining to women in the Church, and race issues. Howell had been called a "misogynist" after he made an off-hand remark about Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Nephi was in hot water over comments about "lazy Blacks" and "welfare queens." One of the nastier of the anti-Mormon critics had suggested that they read John Lund's classic, The Church and the Negro in order to get up to speed on the latest Mopologetic racial theory. Offline, it was agreed that Nephi should lay low for a while until the criticism died down.
As for Howell, he had a plan, which had, in actuality, been in motion for some time. Three years ago, as part of a short-lived initiative coming down from some uppity administrator, the Hinton Institute had been obliged to make a "diversity hire." At first they had protested, but after several meetings, they ultimately decided that it could work to their advantage, and so they ran a job posting, conducted interviews, and eventually settled on a newly minted PhD in literary studies from Duke: Krista Severson. She was in her mid-thirties, and was married to Todd Severson, who was the grandson of a mission president stationed in England. Some of her publications from her graduate school days caused concern: particularly one titled, "Feminist Voices and Homosociality in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood." It was her very earliest journal publication, though, and since then she'd been completely spotless. Further, he credentials were spotless, and they could be able to refer to her as "Dr. Severson." So they'd hired her and put her to work doing editing work, and occasionally writing the odd review for the Journal of HIDM.
Now, though, Howell had a plan to promote her to Associate Editor: to give her a higher profile so as to defuse accusations of sexism.
"It's really a win-win for everyone," he said.
Merlyn nodded. "She's been with us a long time. She's reliable. It may be that it's time to give her more responsibility."
Just then the waitress came over with their two large root beers. "So sorry about that! Things got a little backlogged over at the bar."
"Oh, don't worry about it, sweetheart," said Howell, winking at her.
When she left, the two men hoisted their glasses and clinked them together.
"'Once you make a decision, the world conspires to make it happen'," said Merlyn, clearly quoting something.
Howell squinted: "Emerson?"
"You never fail to catch them, Howell," he said.
They both laughed and tucked back into their steaks, eating and talking and quietly burping into their napkins. When they finished, they were full and satiated, and they paid the bill and charged it to the Hinton Institute, and made their way outside, where the late September air was dry and warm, and they got into the car and went home.
Later that evening, Merlyn sat in his study, listening to Gustav Holtz's The Planets and chuckling contentedly to himself as he thumbed through a copy of The Five Thousand Year Leap. How he savored quiet moments like this! He realized that the only way to improve upon the situation would be to get up and get some dessert: he thought there was likely a pint of Cherry Garcia (which he ate because he loved it, in spite of the name, which he hated so much that it was almost enough to prevent him from eating it) in the freezer. But just then, his phone buzzed and he saw that he had a text message. It was from Herb McConkie:
check the boards. now.
Merlyn held his breath for a moment and then he hauled out his laptop and opened it and navigated over to MormonDiscourse.com. There, at the top of the forum, was a relatively new thread that already had over 1,700 views:
EXTRA EXTRA!! Administrative changes coming to the Hinton Institute?
Do they just make this stuff up? Merlyn said to himself. He clicked on the thread and read on. Mostly it was pure speculation, though some of it seemed eerily accurate: particularly an assertion that the Institute had been "ordered by the Brethren" to adopt a more "liberal" stance, such as being friendlier to women. Was it possible that someone had told this anti-Mormon, whose screen name was "Zelph Junior," about their plans to promote Krista Severson? It couldn't be: the circle who knew about such things was limited to himself, Howell, and three or four others. Severson herself likely didn't even know yet, though there were plenty who could perhaps have guessed about or anticipated such a move. But this complicated matters significantly. A meeting would have to be convened.
Merlyn logged in and typed out a laconic post:
It's amusing to me that 'Zelph Junior,' who seems to have no relationship to the Hinton Institute whatsoever, is insinuating that he knows anything about its inner workings. As someone who happens to actually and truly work there, I can say with a good degree of confidence that these rumors have little to no basis in fact.
He submitted it and watched the replies for another hour or so: a long-time poster called "Skeletor," (whom he'd told, on multiple occasions, "I don't like you very much") was particularly strident tonight.
Skeletor: Look, I'm sorry Dr. Young, but your blithe dismissal of this doesn't mean a whole lot. We've seen you stretching the truth on this board way too many times for us to just take what you say at face value. You remember the Hiram Sanderson letter, don't you? Or the Vogel Picks His Nose fold-in?
Merlyn Young: Sigh. Why do I bother at all? I clarify matters, but them I'm called a liar. I might as well not say anything at all. You're demonstrating quite an overactive and paranoid imagination this evening. I probably shouldn't interfere any further."
He checked his watch: it was 12:05, and he had to get up in order to teach a 9:00 AM class, and yet he was fuming. A "liar"? He'd been participating on the boards for decades, and had, he thought, developed quite a thick skin, but every so often, the criticisms: the same tired, unoriginal, repetitive criticism, got tiresome. And Skeletor had been at it for years. As he logged out and closed his laptop, Merlyn made a promise to himself that he would pursue the matter of Skeletor, and of Zelph Junior, for that matter, more aggressively in the coming weeks.
To be continued in Part II: In Sickness and in Health
Hills Like White Lamanites
By Robert B. Oberson
PART I: Krista Severson
"Boy, that sure is good." Merlyn Young set his knife and fork down and looked around for the waitress. "'Scuse me," he said to a busboy. "We're still waiting on our drinks."
"Oh. Okay. Um, what did you order?"
"We each had a root beer."
"Okay, sure: no problem. I'll go check on it."
"Thank you."
Merlin and Howell were seated at the edge of the dining room at Spencer's in downtown Salt Lake, where, just a few hours earlier, they'd met with Elder Pitt to discuss Hinton Institute business. Howell cut into his steak, which was so rare that it was almost bloody. He forked up a piece of it and held it up in front of his face.
"Look at that. Just magnificent, I tell you." He put it into his mouth and chewed. "Just delicious. These morons: these enviro-whatevers? Who think that we have to cut back on meat to save the carbon footprint or whatever? Idiots. All of them."
"It's all about control for them," said Merlyn. He looked carefully across the table at his friend, who had seemed more tired and older late. He didn't want to pry, but he knew that things were going sour in Howell's personal life, to say nothing of the other issues facing the Institute. But now wasn't the time to dwell on such things.
Merlyn and Howell had ordered a full spread: 20 oz. bone-in ribeye steaks (rare for Howell; medium-well for Merlyn), hash browns, sautéed mushrooms, mac & cheese, creamed spinach, and prawn cocktail. They felt that they'd earned it, and that they needed it. At the meeting with President Pitt, they'd been complimented for their work responding to Dylan Cross, who, it was being said in certain quarters of the Church, had been very badly discredited. Now, it seemed, poor young Cross was having difficulty securing an academic job. "A pity it had to be this way," Elder Pitt had said.
And a lot had happened at the Hinton Institute in the past year: Franklynn Carmichael had disappeared, only to be found months later; or, rather, his remains were found, clear out in the desert. He had been missing for months when some people running land-speed tests out on the salt flats had discovered a skeleton. It was a horrible revelation, and everyone at the Institute had been shaken by the discovery, though they all knew that he had been on a slow slide for some time. Many had been concerned about his spiritual health, and towards the end, he had been reluctant to do any of the heavy lifting that his post at the Institute required. Merlyn had heard strange rumors, on the message boards and elsewhere, that some phantom "Danites" had killed Franklynn: rumors which he partly helped to inflame. It never hurt, he thought, to keep the anti-Mormons guessing, and to perhaps instill a bit of fear in them. Whatever people thought of Franklynn personally, his death meant that the Institute was without its principal Book of Abraham apologist, and criticism on the boards had been ratcheting up lately. Both Nephi and Howell had taken heavy hits lately on matters pertaining to women in the Church, and race issues. Howell had been called a "misogynist" after he made an off-hand remark about Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Nephi was in hot water over comments about "lazy Blacks" and "welfare queens." One of the nastier of the anti-Mormon critics had suggested that they read John Lund's classic, The Church and the Negro in order to get up to speed on the latest Mopologetic racial theory. Offline, it was agreed that Nephi should lay low for a while until the criticism died down.
As for Howell, he had a plan, which had, in actuality, been in motion for some time. Three years ago, as part of a short-lived initiative coming down from some uppity administrator, the Hinton Institute had been obliged to make a "diversity hire." At first they had protested, but after several meetings, they ultimately decided that it could work to their advantage, and so they ran a job posting, conducted interviews, and eventually settled on a newly minted PhD in literary studies from Duke: Krista Severson. She was in her mid-thirties, and was married to Todd Severson, who was the grandson of a mission president stationed in England. Some of her publications from her graduate school days caused concern: particularly one titled, "Feminist Voices and Homosociality in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood." It was her very earliest journal publication, though, and since then she'd been completely spotless. Further, he credentials were spotless, and they could be able to refer to her as "Dr. Severson." So they'd hired her and put her to work doing editing work, and occasionally writing the odd review for the Journal of HIDM.
Now, though, Howell had a plan to promote her to Associate Editor: to give her a higher profile so as to defuse accusations of sexism.
"It's really a win-win for everyone," he said.
Merlyn nodded. "She's been with us a long time. She's reliable. It may be that it's time to give her more responsibility."
Just then the waitress came over with their two large root beers. "So sorry about that! Things got a little backlogged over at the bar."
"Oh, don't worry about it, sweetheart," said Howell, winking at her.
When she left, the two men hoisted their glasses and clinked them together.
"'Once you make a decision, the world conspires to make it happen'," said Merlyn, clearly quoting something.
Howell squinted: "Emerson?"
"You never fail to catch them, Howell," he said.
They both laughed and tucked back into their steaks, eating and talking and quietly burping into their napkins. When they finished, they were full and satiated, and they paid the bill and charged it to the Hinton Institute, and made their way outside, where the late September air was dry and warm, and they got into the car and went home.
Later that evening, Merlyn sat in his study, listening to Gustav Holtz's The Planets and chuckling contentedly to himself as he thumbed through a copy of The Five Thousand Year Leap. How he savored quiet moments like this! He realized that the only way to improve upon the situation would be to get up and get some dessert: he thought there was likely a pint of Cherry Garcia (which he ate because he loved it, in spite of the name, which he hated so much that it was almost enough to prevent him from eating it) in the freezer. But just then, his phone buzzed and he saw that he had a text message. It was from Herb McConkie:
check the boards. now.
Merlyn held his breath for a moment and then he hauled out his laptop and opened it and navigated over to MormonDiscourse.com. There, at the top of the forum, was a relatively new thread that already had over 1,700 views:
EXTRA EXTRA!! Administrative changes coming to the Hinton Institute?
Do they just make this stuff up? Merlyn said to himself. He clicked on the thread and read on. Mostly it was pure speculation, though some of it seemed eerily accurate: particularly an assertion that the Institute had been "ordered by the Brethren" to adopt a more "liberal" stance, such as being friendlier to women. Was it possible that someone had told this anti-Mormon, whose screen name was "Zelph Junior," about their plans to promote Krista Severson? It couldn't be: the circle who knew about such things was limited to himself, Howell, and three or four others. Severson herself likely didn't even know yet, though there were plenty who could perhaps have guessed about or anticipated such a move. But this complicated matters significantly. A meeting would have to be convened.
Merlyn logged in and typed out a laconic post:
It's amusing to me that 'Zelph Junior,' who seems to have no relationship to the Hinton Institute whatsoever, is insinuating that he knows anything about its inner workings. As someone who happens to actually and truly work there, I can say with a good degree of confidence that these rumors have little to no basis in fact.
He submitted it and watched the replies for another hour or so: a long-time poster called "Skeletor," (whom he'd told, on multiple occasions, "I don't like you very much") was particularly strident tonight.
Skeletor: Look, I'm sorry Dr. Young, but your blithe dismissal of this doesn't mean a whole lot. We've seen you stretching the truth on this board way too many times for us to just take what you say at face value. You remember the Hiram Sanderson letter, don't you? Or the Vogel Picks His Nose fold-in?
Merlyn Young: Sigh. Why do I bother at all? I clarify matters, but them I'm called a liar. I might as well not say anything at all. You're demonstrating quite an overactive and paranoid imagination this evening. I probably shouldn't interfere any further."
He checked his watch: it was 12:05, and he had to get up in order to teach a 9:00 AM class, and yet he was fuming. A "liar"? He'd been participating on the boards for decades, and had, he thought, developed quite a thick skin, but every so often, the criticisms: the same tired, unoriginal, repetitive criticism, got tiresome. And Skeletor had been at it for years. As he logged out and closed his laptop, Merlyn made a promise to himself that he would pursue the matter of Skeletor, and of Zelph Junior, for that matter, more aggressively in the coming weeks.
To be continued in Part II: In Sickness and in Health