As I mentioned, a few weeks ago a friend and I visited Kirtland, Ohio, an important site in Mormon history. I've been sitting here preparing to write the sentence, "Church history doesn't really interest me," but something stopped me, because it isn't quite true: I've always found the story of the Saints Crossing the Plains thoroughly compelling, but I think that's partly because it involves the vast, expansive landscapes of the West. I guess it's more accurate to say that "Church history in Ohio never really interested me;" all that stuff about how Joseph Smith and his hardy band of trusting converts moved hither and yon after Joseph exhausted his credit or a bank failed or whatever always struck me as feeble preamble: after all, they were moving distances of a hundred miles or so, from one small- to medium-sized eastern state with trees and stores and ROADS, to another. That is an enterprise much less romantic than carving a thousand-mile-long path across a wind-scoured landscape where you encounter more wolves and buffalo than people, and where, if you want something like grains or vegetables, you either have to bring them with your or camp for several months while you plant, grow and harvest them.
Can you tell I'm a little homesick right now? We had a string of glorious fall days, but autumn has well and truly arrived now, not as the culmination of summer but as the harbinger of winter, with vicious cold rain flung from a sullen sky. I can't help checking the weather report for Tucson.... Anyway, this was not supposed to be a post about why I still prefer the parts of this country west of the Mississippi to the parts east of it; it's supposed to be an opportunity to post a picture of myself, so I'll get back on topic.
The walls of the Kirtland Temple are now an elegant, understated cream; the building is roofed with unassuming gray shingles. However, our tour guide told us that when it was originally built, its color scheme was anything but understated: the treatment the shingles underwent to make them fireproof rendered them a vivid, vibrant red; the plaster (which may or may not have contained bits of ground china, fine tableware sacrificed by the women of the church so that the House of the Lord would glitter like the jewel it was intended to be) was a rich blue like the late afternoon sky when it's barely tinged with gray; and the massive double doors at the front were painted a deep green that various members of the staff struggled to describe: not quite olive, one said; sort of a forest green, another explained.
The (once sparkly) plaster has subsequently been covered by many coats of paint, and the red roof has been replaced. However, the building has its original doors, which were recently removed and stripped, and in the process their original color revealed. They were repainted that shade and rehung. They're FABULOUS! I had my picture taken in front of one of them, and you can see it here. The color of the door is not truly captured, but still, I wanted to share.
