Back to School Shopping

This year maybe we should do our back to school shopping at the army surplus store.

First Day of School in Deseret

Are you familiar with the Deseret alphabet? It was introduced shortly after the Saints arrived in Salt Lake as a phonetic means to read and write English. Brigham Young hoped it would help converts who spoke other languages better learn English. To understand why such an alphabet might be necessary, you don't have to look far, shoot, consider the word "phonetic," for example.

A major breakthrough in my efforts to learn a second language, came when I had the epiphany that there wasn't a right way and wrong way to construct a language and if there was a right way, it certainly wasn't English. Once I realized that, I stopped protesting every time I came upon a grammar rule that didn't correlate with the way we do things in English.

While it was quite audacious that Brigham Young and his friends thought that they could create a new means of learning English full cloth, it also shows a surprising bit of humility on their part to recognize how truly messed up the English language is.

Accountable

Between today's gag and last week's gag, it is clear that school is on my mind. I wonder what life will be like without the rhythms of the school year controlling my life. Outside of the first five years of fatherhood, my life has been dictated by school seasons.

1st Day of School

Would you believe that I have never posted to to social media a picture of a single child holding a sign that reads 1st Day of School. I'm sure child services will be knocking on my door any day now.

Of course, if the would-be hipster* in today's comic has his way, we'll all start posting pictures of children holding those signs much, much earlier.

*I was going for hipster, but I'm afraid my final product looks more like Mose from The Office.

First Day of School (of the Prophets)

A number of things regarding today's gag:

1. Of all the early Church leaders, why haven't I been drawing more pictures of Sidney Rigdon? He's got a face cartoonists love! I even drew him as the guy who doesn't know what to do with his hands, because don't tell me that isn't him.
2. If Facebook existed in 1833, you can be sure that Lucy Mack Smith would have insisted on Joseph and all his friends posing for this picture. (Shoot, if Facebook existed in the 1980s, maybe my mom would have taken some pictures of me on the first day of school.)
3. Of course no one snaps my picture before heading off to work these days. If they did, I might look like this guy.
4. The school of the prophets was started on January 23, 1833 at Newel K. Whitney's store. It included instruction from early Mormon scholar Orson Hyde (he's the guy to the right of Joseph Smith in the comic above--also fun to draw). Most famously, out of it came the Word of Wisdom.

Experiment upon the Word

"But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words" (Alma 32:27).

Gosh, I love that chapter.

Preschool of the Prophets

In 1833, Joseph Smith organized the School of the Prophets in Kirtland, Ohio. The school met over the Newel K. Whitney store. It was the mess of the participants' chewing tobacco that led to Joseph Smith's inquiry into and reception of the Word of Wisdom.

Some 180 years later, I came up with the Preschool of the Prophets in my sketchpad. This resulted in today's gag which led to much eye-rolling.

In the World, But Not of the World

School's starting up (although in our neck of the woods, it's been going on for over a week), so why not a school gag this week. Somehow, I doubt this is what the phrase "Be in the world, but not of the world" means.

Today's gag comes from faithful reader John V.