Journal 11: Dan Burlow From Paul Winters

Dan Burlow

I really liked the photo of the profile. Out the window with him peeking in has a certain framing effect and it gives the photo a good feel. The feel is a calm and gentle, it looks like he has his hands together so he looks harmless.

Another observation of this profile is that Barlow’s introduction and conclusion is one of the lengthier ones of the book and this is important because it helps put the reader in the the scene so we understand more what is happening. If he just started in that there was going to be a raid on the town we would be lost of motives and also we may have a prejudice against Mormons and the introduction can help release and resolve those thoughts to get us to really understand the profile.

Also this was a rare profile that was on the emotional standpoint that as he is telling the story he is weeping. This is vital for us as we read as we imagine he telling the story and just weeping. It gives a feel for how emotionally impactful the memory is on him.

This story today can help us in realizing that the groups we may stereotype and demonize still are just people and it may just be that we have a perception problem. Our judgement towards them can lead towards retaliation, luckily this group knew to keep their piece and not let the oppressor have a confirmation bias towards them as evil people. When they were met with disgust and hatred they brought peace instead of more hatred towards the oppressor.

Some questions that came up in the profile are how did the police force get the warrants for arrest on all these people? would they need to go to the federal level? if so why were there not read flags that they were taking in whole town and separating families?

Some of the vocab that I marked was fundamentalist Mormon- which is a belief in the validity of selected fundamental aspects of Mormonism. Also the word “vermilion cliffs” was used in the beginning and I was unfamiliar with vermilion. Vermilion is a brilliant red or scarlet pigment originally made from the powdered mineral cinnabar, and is also the name of the resulting color. I did not know that and found that interesting in the research.

Something else is I did some research on is the history of the Mormons in the area, there was a conflict called the Utah war in 1857 to 1858 where Utah settlers and Mormons killed each other mostly non mormon civilians were killed. Which can explain why locals can have seeds of hate, their parents or grandparents were likely involved and they people in the raid had strong feelings that would be hard to be talked down when they have been raised on the stories of the killings from the Mormons this can be critical to our understanding as there are two sides of every story and we can’t demonize the oppressors either which in the story it is easy to do as we can see the police as bad here but they each have their reasons but both need eyes of understanding.