Utah, The Right Place revised

Preface,

In November 2002, I accompanied a number of board and staff members of the Utah Humanities Council to the annual conference of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. At the conference”s final session, Betty Sue Flowers, director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, reflected on the conference as she offered some thoughts on interpreting and writing history.

In what sounds on the surface like a flippant remark, but which on reflection tells us a great deal about understanding our history, she said, “I became a futurist because the past was too unpredictable.” Her comments built upon a lecture given the previous day. The day before, we had heard a presentation by Edward T. Linenthal, a professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. Ed talked about contested history and memory. He showed that in displays designed to commemorate events such as the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, the Little Big Horn Battlefield in Montana, the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D. C., and the Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, decisions about which facts to present or leave out and how to interpret the events themselves aroused deep-seated and, at times, violent emotions