B23's secret source has been providing some very interesting documents over the last few days. In the ELW Diary Index, there is a curious listing:
"Church gives man $5,000.00 for his revelation on how to improve space travel"
Is this a normal/common practice for the Church to purchase revelations from members? Can anyone sell their personal revelations to the Church? What other revelations has the Church purchased?
Finally, why would the Church be interested in improving space travel? Did the Church view this as an investment? Was the Church interested in starting its own space program? What purpose could this have possibly served?
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."
Without looking at the original source in the diaries, we have only this citation. If you are in Utah, a trip down to the Harold B. Lee Library may be in order. The ELW diaries are as far as I know housed there; you could ask to take a look at them.
(I haven't looked online to see the technicalities of where they are housed, restrictions on access (they could be only in delicate manuscript form) or anything else. Check that out first.)
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
Some boxes are designated restricted access without prior approval from the President of BYU. This usually means filling out a document stating your interest/intent (research area etc) and your credentials. Sometimes you need a signature/letter from another scholar/researcher saying you are legit. That is standard procedure for most materials in Rare Book and Manuscript collections, or collections of personal papers which may contain sensitive data that the estate may have put a restriction on: for example, some of the material in the Ernest L. Wilkinson papers were originally restricted from public view until 2008, a common practice meant to insure anyone possibly embarrassed by something in them will be in the grave. (For comparison's sake there is a huge trove of T.S. Eliot's personal correspondence at Harvard that is unavailable to scholars until 2020.)
What is unusual is that approval is needed by the President of the University. Usually its just approval by the curator or archivist of Special Collections.
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
Everybody Wang Chung wrote:B23's secret source has been providing some very interesting documents over the last few days. In the ELW Diary Index, there is a curious listing:
"Church gives man $5,000.00 for his revelation on how to improve space travel"
Is this a normal/common practice for the Church to purchase revelations from members? Can anyone sell their personal revelations to the Church? What other revelations has the Church purchased?
Finally, why would the Church be interested in improving space travel? Did the Church view this as an investment? Was the Church interested in starting its own space program? What purpose could this have possibly served?
I think 5 grand is a very fair price to get the MI into outer space. I imagine there has to be a fantastic story behind the followup on this investment. This Ernest Wilkinson is an interesting fella.
The boxes with restricted access are "73-74, 248-53, 257 (fd. 7), and 258-260." These restricted collections all appear to be either the minutes of BYU board of trustee's meetings or documents relating to proposed changes to BYU's earlier junior college system. This explains why prior permission of the BYU president is needed given the nature of the materials.
There is a phone number/email listed in the finding aid linked to above. Anyone interested can contact them to set up an appointment to view materials from the collection.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
Everybody Wang Chung wrote:Finally, why would the Church be interested in improving space travel?
Planning a mission to Moon Quakers.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.