SLC...Agronomy

Here I am in the Mormon City - a sprawling, square, quiet metropolis with the feel of mid-sized town. Each city block is literally TEN ACRES. Apparently Brigham Young originally designed each block to be a farm. All the streets are very wide, and they are numbered in relation to the temple. So here at 556 South 500 East, I'm 5 blocks south and 5 blocks east of the temple.
I went on an impromptu tour of the "Beehive House" yesterday, just cause I was walking by and decided to check it out. So I went up the steps (they stay open till 8:30) and lo and behold, two sisters were just starting a tour. They did a very good job, some of the things in the museum house were amazing (this was the place where Brigham Young used to live with his primera wife and kids and entertain guests) and of course, they spiced up the explanations of every room with the obligatory scripture and some utopian teaching about family or serving one another. Of course, they glazed over the fact that Brigham Young practiced some serious polygamy (they called it plural families) by saying that it was to benefit the women (all FIFTY of them, in BY's case) - who were not allowed to own property. Apparently, back east, there were lots of widows, so Joseph Smith (the first "prophet") went to God with this problem and God gave him the solution of polygamy.
"And it was not an easy thing to do," the girls said very sweetly and even a little sadly. "Brigham Young himself wrote about how difficult it was to serve as the head of such a large plural family, but he felt it was his calling to do his best to serve his Lord and His people by following their faith out here in this new territory".
(*see also: The Twenty-Seventh Wife by Irving Wallace)

So yeah, that was...interesting. And my dad was right - the Mormon Temple faces east but the statue of Brigham Young himself is facing, in fact pointing to, one of the many many banks in the city. (It was probably supposed to encompass the whole valley floor in his gaze or something, but the view is blocked by finances).

Here ends my little tutorial about what I've learned of Morman history this week. More secular observations later. I've got to go hear Dr. Swaminathan defend his Green Revolution!