I can't believe I read the whole thing.

Backwards and upside down. I'm sure glad I carry my history in my blood instead of relying on absurd gossip. The truth is that Joseph Smith was dyslexic, brilliant but dyslexic. I can understand his friends covering for him, but the rumors going around to cover that bit of trivia are absurd--that's why the curtain, the scrying, in this case a kind of automatic writing, and the sincere, beautiful work that came forth. Genius is rare, so is charisma and the Prophet had both.

There were constant Camp Meetings, which troubled him through his teens, and he half memorized, half read the bible very often. Digging for treasure was a common past time. There was a tale about an old man who hid Gold on a hillside behind his house. Gold wasn't overwhelmingly useful during the Utah War, so plundered Gold pieces from a mysterious source is credible.

The old man died when my grandpa was a boy, and the gold
could have been Mountain Meadows related. Anyway, my Grandpa used to take up to the place, near the old mill, when we were insufferable and we climbed the hill and dug.

I love and miss my ancestors. I understand that there came a time when, after so many trials they had to turn and fight. We fought with the indians, fed them, tried to understand them. This was thought a crime in the age of Genocide
that will take another hundred years or so. That is where we
need to focus.

I am saddened that this wagon train suffered, backed into
a corner by the arrogance and bushwhacking of their men
and their hired guns who underestimated and prodded us
until a kind of critical mass was achieved and the Massacre will take many more years to begin to understand.

This is our corner of history given to us to unravel and understand. Atrocity has occurred on a massive scale.
It has risen from a belief that Superior so called races are
so superior that other races should be exterminated.

As Western Europeans, I doubt we have been superior at all.
Religious Wars and Genocide, in these we must put our own
times first. We have survived the past with difficulty, the future is what we must look to now. China is funding the
Dafur Genocide, torturing Christians, often to death. The
regime intends to exterminate 1 percent of it's massive
population by making a gentle martial art favored by the old
and ill and very well educated illegal and torturing its practitioners to death.

May the suffering of our ancestors, both in the old and new
worlds and of the frontier sensitize us to those who suffer now--or do these leave our emotions too little room to
run riot. You can find information about atrocitities in China and how you can help by going to www.clearwisdom.net and following links to associated sites.