Esquire Coffinberry's Great-Grand-Niece

 (Cross-posted from Facebook) This week, my mind has cast back 43 years to a pivotal high school experience: my first Mock Trial competition. The case examined whether parents had a legal right to kidnap their adult child out of a religious organization they considered a cult. I had been raised on certain foundational principles including:  "Now, there [should be] no law against a man's belief; for it [is] strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on to unequal grounds." (Alma 30:7) "We do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion..." (Doctrine & Covenants 134:4) "Know this, that every man is free to choose his life and what he'll be." (Hymn # 90 in the hymnal then in use as I played organ for worship services in our small branch, but #240 in the current Hymns.) "We clai...

  I am so easily distractible. When I was a kid, supposed to be cleaning my room, I could get stuck for hours trying to pick up a dictionary from the floor (I just was a little kid, and it was a great big fat worn collegiate dictionary that had cream endpapers printed with salmon spots, and a detailed historical summary timeline in the back), not because it was heavy but because I couldn't stop reading it line after line. I mean, who wouldn't be distracted by that! Right? Anyway, just now I was thinking of an August day in 1915 Salt Lake City, on Commercial Street, and suddenly wanted to remember where the Tribune building was at the time, so I asked Google the address thereof. Which brought me to the front page of this newspaper, where this photo caught my eye. What a magnificent church building, built in the Prairie Style of the day. Simply lovely. (It is gone, now.)