An Irrelevant Question

[Henry M]

I worked a number of years for Novell, which is hq'ed in Provo, UT, 
near Salt Lake City. That company owes much of it's success to Latter 
Day Saint (Mormon) work ethic, read hierarchical integrity. Lot of'em 
have those big cult/cow eyes, like airport moonies. We have a big 
LDS (not LSD!) church here in Washington (looks like the Emerald 
City. Someone even wrote "Surrender Dorothy" graffiti nearby). They 
let the public in (good neighbor pr I guess) for a while, and when 
they stopped, the place needed a ritual cleansing. Did you know that 
they consider anyone who isn't LDS or Jewish to be a gentile? I guess 
everyone's familiar with their data banks on ancestry. They preach 
tolerance, but practice conversion, even of the dead. A-and I'm sure 
someone else can hold forth on Brigham Young's body guard / sheriff, 
good old what's his name; nice guy...  blah, blah, blah... Don't get 
me started.

As far as Holmes is concerned, Doyle never met a secret society that 
he wasn't a member of that he liked.

> Date:          Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:34:08 -0600 (CST)
> From:          LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU
> Subject:       An Irrelevant Question
> To:            pynchon-l at waste.org

> 
> Since everyone's making lists and talking about right-wing nuts and the 
> like, I have a question that someone here might be able to address:
> 
> Sherlock Holmes fans (speaking of influential writings!) know that the
> first Sherlock Holmes story, A STUDY IN SCARLET, includes an extended
> digression on the past of the American characters who show up in London
> to perpetrate bloody deeds.  The thing is, they're all Mormons!
> There's quite a bit of backstory about how the one who actually did the
> killing was a Mormon only because Brigham Young and co. picked him and
> his young daughter up in the dessert on the way to Utah.  Then, when
> said dad refused to let her get married off to one of the more repulsive
> polygamists of the tribe, Brighma sicced a secret society on father and
> daughter to enforce the Lord's Will.
> 
> I'm curious--Is this all just the rantings of someone afraid of yet another
> religious cult, or where the Mormons actually as fascistic as portrayed?
> 
> Steely?
> 
> Anyone?
> 
> Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
> 
> 

AsB4
Keep cool, but care. -- TRP
Moderation in moderation. -- Husky Mariner
m1,ru12? - HDM, d1