Forgot to Mention...

I forgot to mention, when I posted about the conversation with my daughter Sophie, the reason she was upset - they had aired our program on TLC again in January. Apparently, for the second year running, TLC plays it on New Year's Day.

Also, it had been aired in Australia a couple of times last year...

Cougar Town

Over fifteen years ago, I first laid my eyes on our property, I fell in love. Grassy rangeland surrounded by mountain peaks. Immense, blue skies crisscrossed with contrails. Being on top of a plateau, it felt like I was in the center of a perfect circle. The feeling of safety was overwhelming. I knew that this is where I wanted to live.

Every now and then, we get reminders that we don't live in the big city. We live in the wilderness. The occasional rattlesnake under the porch. Plenty of prairie dogs. Bald eagles in the trees by the lake. Herds of pronghorn. I even once saw a badger. And coyotes. Lots and lots of coyotes. Not only do they serenade us at night, but our cat population suffers because of it. Cats have a lifespan of about one and a half years at my place.

Once, a few years ago, the kids were playing outside, and a black bear ran down the hill not more than fifty feet away from them. They ran into the house, screaming. Martha got into the van and chased that black bear for about a mile. Poor bear.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that - back in December, 2009 - we had a mountain lion sighting only yards away from my house. No one was home, but all the dogs were barking, including my indoor dog Cookie. My sister stepped outside to investigate just in time to see a mountain lion run up the hill, clearing a juniper tree in a single bound.

After this, I became a bit obsessed with this. It was a reminder that WE are the intruders. We are in the wilderness, in their terrain. I forbade my kids to play outside alone and at dusk. If kids had to go out early in the morning to do chores, they always went out in pairs. I read every documented cougar attack in the last twenty years. They are vicious animals and opportunists. And they are creatures of habit, returning back to the same locations frequently.

I was very worried about my children. At nights, sometimes Cookie would awaken us with her barks. When there is a stranger coming to our house, she has a certain bark. Late at night, this bark was different. It was a little... frightened. At nights, when I would go out to the faucet to fill water containers, I could swear that I could feel something watching me. It was probably paranoia.

It took us several months to kind of relax.

My six year-old son Alex is kind of a loner. He loves to play alone. His favorite game is to put on a backpack, grab his toy rifle and run up the hill. He will run around up there all day playing Army guy. He is determined that, when he grows up, he is enlisting in the Army. Temple, his mother, is very worried about this behavior.

"I don't want him to join the military!" she says. "We need to discourage him!"

I laughed about this. "EVERY six year-old guy dreams about being an Army guy. I did! There's nothing wrong about that."

So I took aside Alex and asked him why he wanted to join the Army.

"To serve my country," he told me. Can't argue with that.

"Who are you going to fight?" I asked.

"The Japanese," he answered.

Whoops. I guess I've been watching too many war movies.

But I would love to be sitting on the couch, looking out the window and seeing Alex - his little, plastic rifle cradled in his arms - running up the hill with determination. He would stay up there all day, if we let him.

At the end of March, Alex started to have nightmares every night about animals attacking him. Bears, wolves, etc. He would wake up terrified, asking to get into bed with his mother. Then one night, in his dream, he was attacked by wolf, and suddenly the wolf turned

into a mountain lion. Then the next night, the dream was about a mountain lion, and the night after that.

I was out of town, but Temple was at home with company staying over. One quiet afternoon, our guest was looking out the front room window - just in time to see the unmistakable body and tail of a mountain lion slip over the rocks of the hill - just thirty yards from our swing set. The swing set where our kids had been playing just about an hour earlier.

That was our second mountain lion sighting in the last year. That's enough. I decided to call Arizona Game & Fish. First of all, they wouldn't take my testimony. So I had to get my guest - who was here from California - to call Game & Fish to give a first-person account.

I thought that my report would get lost in a sea of paperwork. But surprisingly, Game & Fish called me that afternoon. They would be sending a local hunter to scout our property. The reason that they took my report seriously - our sighting was during the day. Most mountain lions keep out of sight during the day, only venturing out at night.

The next day, a pickup pulled up, and the hunter showed up. He sent his teenage son up the hill to scout things out. They found some tracks, but it was windy. They couldn't tell for sure if those tracks were made by a mountain lion.

He told us that the cats usually range about fifty miles and always come back to the same places at the most once a month. There was a particularly troublesome, old female that they had problems with occasionally. He instructed me to call him if it snowed at all, no matter how late. The snow would give them the advantage in tracking it.

After he left, he spoke to my brother. He expressed doubt that any mountain lion would be in the area.

"There's no water source," the hunter told my brother. "Mountain lions only go to where there is water."

"But there is a regular water source!" I said. "Our well."

Our water tank has no shut-off valve, so the excess water always go out of the overflow, making a constant pool of water next to the tank. There is always standing water about one hundred yards from our house. We always have problems with cattle stopping by to drink. Perfect for a mountain lion.

My brother called the hunter, and he came back and posted motion sensor cameras around the well.

That night, we got a skiff of snow. I immediately called the hunter. He said that they would start the hunt at 2AM that night. There had been a mountain lion sighting at a ranch several miles south of us.

His dogs got a scent of the mountain lion and gave chase for quite a while. They treed a female and two cubs. The cubs were already quite large, big enough to run from the dogs. Once up the tree, the female fell out, and the dogs roughed her up a bit. They collared the female and let her go. From all appearances, she seemed like a good mother, and the hunter didn't think that she posed any threats to humans.

But he said there were two problems - 1) The pronghorn were fawning, which brings the cats down from the peaks. 2) There were several males in the area, trying to kill her cubs to bring her into estrus. The threat came from them. He advised us to resume being cautious.

The tree where they caught the lioness and her cubs was only three miles from my house, near a cinder quarry owned by my in-laws. I am posting a photo. The dark spot at the base of the mountain is the quarry where she was caught.

I've lived here fifteen years. And I don't think the cats are new to the area. I think that they've been here all along. We just weren't aware of them.

In the weeks since this happened, we haven't heard from the hunter. One night, I noticed headlights up on the hill. I was recovering from surgery, so I couldn't go run up the hill. So I called the hunter. It was him, retrieving his game cam. The photos turned up several cows and some crows, but no lions. He reset the cameras to see if anything shows up.

It has now been about a month since the sighting. All in all, I think my kids are safer here than in the city. But still... Every night, when I step outside to turn off the generator/ inverter, there are only yards of black night separating me from the spot where the cougar was sighted. I can't keep but wondering - how often do these cats come back to my place? And how quickly could it cross the darkness before I am even aware it is there?

Polygamie: Au coeur de l'interdit

So, M6 is broadcasting their show on polygamy. Here is the link.

The translation is as follows:

Issue of Sunday, May 29, 2011 10:45 p.m.

Polygamy: the heart of the forbidden

Jean-François, and Karine installed with Annie, wants to marry civilly his two companions. But in Canada, the country where he resides in France as elsewhere, polygamy is prohibited by law. So he joined a group attempting to change the legislation. In France, polygamy for more than 20 000 families. In some municipalities, mayors confess powerless against the complexity of this phenomenon often mixing religion and privacy, which sometimes masks fraud to child benefit. At Nimes, master Aoudia Khadija was commissioned by the three polygamous wife of a Moroccan. None of these women knew she would share her husband. So, between Morocco and France, they seek to bring him to justice.

There is no mention of my family. I am wondering if they edited us out, not interesting enough? LOL

What I Did For Love...

After the French film crew left, they said that they were driving to Utah to film some stock footage of the Mormon temple, etc., and then flying home. It crossed my mind that they were going to film other polygamist families, like Dawn Porter had gone to Centennial Park after our house. Again, with the reticence. I wouldn't have cared if they were filming someone else. In fact, I would have made suggestions for them.

Even though Ted Anspach asked all the questions, he would not be featured at all in the upcoming documentary about my family. The segment would be called "Enquete Exclusive", and the TV personality who would be speaking about us is a man named Bernard de La Villardiere. You can check out the website here. As far as I know, they have not yet aired our segment. Ted said that it would be sometime in May. But I have tried to contact Ted and have received no reponse.

In the days that followed, I thought about the whole experience. It was much more pleasant, and we were treated with dignity. However, I am not naive to think that every experience will be like this. The media is fickle. Even though these French journalists were so NICE, there is someone I grew up with who lived several year in France and Belgium. He told me that I would be stupid to trust any French journalist.

As evidenced in my previous blogs, I couldn't help but compare it to the experience with Dawn Porter, doing the shows for British TV, TLC and History Channel. When I really think about it, the questions that both film crews asked were kind of the same.

But more importantly, my answers were kind of the same. The more I thought about it, it was kind of redundant. My response are always the same, on TV, and on the several online forums that I belong to.

It's like this - my dad used to say that he never liked taking college courses by the same professor. It only took one semester to clue in on all of the professors beliefs, platforms and stances. If you took another class with the same professor, you got just more of the same.

And that's what this felt like. More of the same. With the trouble involved in putting yourself and your family out there, on camera, it just didn't seem worth it anymore. I've said all that I can say in this forum. It's time to find another way to express myself.

Several days after the shoot, Martha took the kids to Sunday School. I wasn't feeling that well, so I was asleep on the couch. Martha was also going to pick up my daughter Sophie from her grandmother's house to spend the day with the family. I got a phone call from Martha. Sophie didn't want to come home, too much homework, or something like that.

"You're the parent," I said. "Make her come home."

A little while later, my nap was interrupted when Martha and Sophie came in, arguing loudly. I was irritated at being woken up in such a manner. But Sophie demanded to speak to us immediately.

The issue was not about having to come home. The issue was that we went in front of the cameras again.

"You're doing it just to get another wife," my daughter accused me.

That couldn't be more untrue. With my health and financial issues, I can't imagine any woman who would want to come into my family. Doing the interviews was NOT about adding to my family.

"Do you remember when your aunt Sarine sent the media after us, and they made up lies and tried to get me and the family involved in all their filth?" I told her. "I lay awake many nights after that, after the raid in Texas, just worried about that something was going to happen, that someone was going to take away the kids. There were people out there that were saying things about me, saying things that weren't true.

"I realized that if I did not speak up for myself, other people would speak for me. I needed to show them that I would not shut up, that I would not just sit by and take it. THAT is the ONLY reason that I went in front of the cameras. I'm not going to just sit idly by. Now people know that I am not afraid to say something about it. There is not any bullshit that they can pull without me speaking up, without me blogging about it."

"You don't understand, dad," Sophie said. "You're going to get the kids taken away. There are people out there who want to take away the kids. There are people out there who are just looking for any excuse to do it."

The thought that crossed my mind was that people - adults - had been speaking to my daughter at school. There are always do-gooders out there who might try to "rescue" her. I asked her to clarify, but she stayed away from giving a clear answer.

"And I will fight them," I said. "I will never stop fighting. I can't."

The truth is - I love Sophie. I love her more than she will ever know, and I would never force her into this lifestyle. There is nothing that I want more for her than to be happy. I love all of my children that way.

And it pisses me off - because Sophie is right. There are people out there who would take them away from me forever. How messed up is that? We are a happy family. We are well-adjusted. Why would anyone care enough to even bother with us?

But that is my reason - as much as even Mormon fundamentalists criticize us. I will fight for my rights. And I will go in front of the cameras again and again if it keeps us safe.

Thanks for all the kind words about my blog. There is much more to say, so I hope you will tune in.

French TV - Last Day of Filming

A few days before the crew arrived, I broke silence and told the kids about the shoot. It went something like this:

"Kids, do you remember when Hank came and filmed you, and you were on TV?"

A collective "Yeah!"

"Well, would you like to do it again?"

Enthusiastic "Yeah!"

"Well, guess what? In a couple of days, we have some special visitors coming..."

When I broke the news to my oldest daughter, Sophie, of course, she declined. I learned my lesson last time. I shouldn't force my kids to do something like this. Or should I?

Conveniently, the older kids had events going on the weekend of the shoot. There was a basketball game on Friday (the first day of the shoot). My oldest son Christian plays basketball, and Sophie cheers. On Saturday (the final day of shooting), Sophie had some activity in town. But Christian didn't.

Generally, on days they get back late from school activities, they will go to their grandmother's house in town, and I will go pick them up the next day.

Early on Saturday morning, I went to go pick up Christian. I briefly told him how the shoot was going, how cool the crew was. There were a few minutes of awkward silence, and then Christian spoke.

"Dad, do I have to be there when they are filming?"

I thought about it for a moment. "I will tell you the same thing I told Sophie the last time. If you can give me one good reason that you don't want to do it, I will let you skip out. So what's your reason?"

He fumbled for an answer. "I just don't want to."

"That's not a good enough reason, son," I told him. "You have to be there. But I will tell you again the same thing I told Sophie. You can stay out of the way - except when it's time for us to be together."

I pulled up to the house, expecting to find the French film crew to be there. Instead, I found my landlord. Typical. For the most part, we had kept the presence of our guests somewhat inconspicuous. Now I was going to have to explain to my landlord why we had cameras running around his property. Immediately, I went over and knocked on his door. He was fine with it.

In fact, as soon as the crew got there, Frank went and set the camera up on the hill and started taking scenery shots. My landlord went up and started talking to them, pointing out that he descended from French Huguenots.

Before the elusive Christian could slip away, I suggested to Ted that they should film Christian chopping some wood. So I conscripted Christian to chop some wood, and the cameras were rolling. I couldn't help myself. I stood aside, snickering. I joked with him later that some young, hot, French chick would see this tall, strapping young man swinging the ax, and ask, "Who ees zees Amereekan boy?"

Then I let Christian slip away and he was absent the rest of the day, doing his own thing - probably PSP.

The whole family remained outside after Christian cut the wood. The cameras kept running. The children were playing at our little playground, and my wives and I were leaning against the car while they asked us questions.

Again, they were very respectful questions, and I was very proud of the girls. I must say, I was't very proud of myself. I didn't say any stupid shit like I did with Dawn Porter. But I'm in a weird place spiritually right now. Everyone goes through spiritual highs, and everyone goes through spiritual lows. Even if it might be bad timing, I was going through one of the spiritual lows.

Most of it stems from trying to adjust to having our families divided into two houses (and we talked about that on camera). I felt that some of my answers were a little dry and empty. Not disingenuous. It's just hard to be upbeat about something as all-encompassing as plural marriage when you are not feeling like you are doing a good job at it. I was right in the middle of

a huge adjustment, and I was expected to say loads of positive things about it.

So my girls - great job! Me - hmph.

Next, they wanted to film my kids and I in a religious discussion. We all retired into the spare bedroom, and I asked my kids questions about their religion. I was also proud of my kids.

During a break, I happened to put the History Channel episode on the DVD for them. When they saw the bit about me standing at my dad's grave, they immediately wanted to mimic that. So again, I went out to the family cemetery plot with cameras. Except that my extended family was cluing in a little bit to what I was doing and many came out to look. I was a little bit uncomfortable, so we ended that.

So many of these interviews were in French. I had been practicing my French. Since Frank hardly spoke English, many of my conversations with him were in French. I seemed to do fine. Ted and Frank were very respectful in the way I spoke French. They didn't treat me like I was a dumb foreigner. They spoke to me in the vernacular they spoke with each other. Sometimes I had to struggle to keep up with them.

But something strange happened. When they turned on the cameras, I started struggling with my French. I don't know if it was psychological. I was having a hard time expressing myself, or remembering certain words. So I would often revert back to English to get my point across. Instead of Spanglish, it was Frenglish?

As the sun set, we had one of those beautiful Arizona sunsets. They took advantage of this by filming me walk in between the houses. The kind of displaced feeling a polygamist feels in going between homes kind of intrigued them, and they wanted to explore that. I talked about the paradox of the Principle - that in having more wives, a polygamist actually feels at times... more lonely.

The girls had gone through much detail to prepare a Mexican meal - enchiladas, frijoles, and Spanish rice. We expected that they would film us eating, but Frank and Ted put aside the cameras and came and ate with us.

Temple later remarked, "That was the difference between Dawn's crew and the French crew. Ted and Frank actually wanted to get to know us as people."

The previous crew didn't want to eat with us. Once when they were shooting the breeze at their van, I went out to socialize with them, and they all got quiet. Once of the producers took me aside and said that it wasn't quite kosher for us to associate with the crew too much, because we were the subjects. When the shoot was done, they planned a big dinner in Show Low. I hinted that maybe Martha, Temple and I might want to go, but they shot that idea down.

Here, Frank and Ted put business aside and treated us like human beings and ate our food. They also gave every child a gift - coloring books and markers. They had brought us French wine and the like, but one of their bags never made it on their flight.

In other words, this was a very, very pleasant experience, one that we don't regret.

Next time, I will talk a little bit about the fallout from this shoot... there's always fallout...

52 Minutes - First Day of Shooting

The day before shooting - on Thursday, January 20th - I got a phone call from Ted. They had completed their filming in Quebec and were at the airport, getting ready to fly to Phoenix. From there, they would rent a car, drive to Show Low, Arizona, and check into the Holiday Inn. In the evening, once they got there, they would call me and possibly come for some filming in the evening.

With this news, there was some frantic cleaning done in preparation. But as the evening wore on, it was evident that they would not be coming. Ted's number was a Paris number, and my Verizon account prevents me from making international calls. There were no worries. They probably didn't get in until late.

There was a trip to the grocery store to get food for the weekend. The girls were worried sick about meals. I mean, what do you make for dinner for someone from France?? Where cuisine is an art form?? There were memories of Dawn Porter and her crew turning up their nose at Temple's shepherd's pie recipe. I told them not to worry. Keep it simple. Mexican food is sort of a staple here in the Southwest, so I advised them to do enchiladas, or something.

The next morning, the kids went off to school, and Temple went to work. Martha and I were left at home, alone, waiting for some sort of word.

The previous film crew had been very punctual, showing up at ungodly hours of the morning to start filming. So by 10AM, I hadn't heard from Ted, so I figured something was wrong. Maybe they didn't show up. So I emailed him. No response. I couldn't place a call, but I decided to try texting his number. The text got through. They were in Show Low (35 miles away). They had just got up, were having breakfast and would soon be leaving.

I provided them with directions to my house. Since there is five miles of dirt road, I told them to pull over at a certain point of the highway, text me, and I would meet them.

A while later, I get a local phone call. It was the attendant at the local gas station in Concho.

"Is this Moroni?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"There are a couple of foreign gentlemen here at the gas station, asking if I know you," she said.

I told her that I would be there in fifteen minutes. Apparently, they lost cell service the moment they got to Concho and couldn't call me. I got to the gas station, and they were unmistakable. They looked very "French". There were a couple of local, toothless, bearded mountain men making conversation with them in the parking lot, talking about the weather in Arizona. (We had just had snow earlier in the week.)

I introduced myself. Ted Anspach, the producer/ journalist, spoke English very well. His father is English, and, even though he was raised in France, he spent all of his holidays growing up in England.

When Dawn Porter had come to Arizona, they had contracted their crew locally in Los Angeles. Ted had come with one cameraman

- Frank. Frank has had extensive experience in filming and has traveled all over the world. He has even filmed in the Himalayas. He and Ted had previous experience working with each other doing a piece on AIDS. Frank's English was quite limited. He was quite relieved that I spoke French, and we spoke quite a bit together.

They followed me in their rental to our property. When Ted got out of the car, he looked out across the grassy rangeland and snow-capped mountains that surround our ranch.

"Wow!" exclaimed Ted, as he took it all in. "This is breathtaking! I can just imagine a cowboy riding across the landscape!"

They came in, and I introduced them to Martha. I think I expected them to start filming right away, but they didn't. They sat and talked with us, asking questions.

There were some scheduling conflicts. Temple and the kids were at school, and there was a basketball game scheduled at 1PM for my sons Hiram and Ethan - their final game of the season. It was important that we make it to that game. Earlier Temple and I had discussed the possibility of taking the crew into the game to film. But we weren't sure how that would go over with the school. It could put Temple's job in jeopardy.

I brought this up to Ted. Immediately, he insisted that the priority was that we get to go see the game. He suggested that I contact the school and try to get permission.

So I called the principal at Concho School and ran the scenario by her. She was very polite about it.

"I'm so glad you called me first," she said. "But I'm afraid that I'm going to have to say no. If you were to film, we would have to get permission from every parent of every student involved. It would be too much of a hassle."

"I wouldn't do anything like bringing cameras into the school without getting your permission first," I assured her.

So we drove into Concho for the game. Ted and Frank excused themselves to film some local scenery shots. The arrangement was to meet back at the school at a certain time.

At the school, I met our kids. They were very excited to meet our "special visitors". They remembered the last shoot, and they remembered being put on TV. They were very excited to do it again. (The younger kids, anyway.) The game was really good. Concho was playing some scrappy kids from the White Mountain Apache Reservation. When it came time to meet our French guests outside, the game was still going, so I went out into the parking lot to find them.

They were smoking cigarettes by their car (until they saw the statute posted that Arizona school campuses are smoke free.) I invited them in for the last quarter (with no cameras). It was very noisy, and Concho won by two points in the last few seconds of the game. The crowd went wild. I wonder what our guests thought.

Ted and Frank were swarmed by our kids as I introduced them. (one of my younger kids referred to them as "those guys that speak Spanish".)

We all went home, and the filming started. They filmed as Martha and Temple made dinner. I left them and went up to Temple's house to do my chores, which involved getting the fire going and the generator fired up. At this point in time, we had a generator that would not start under thirty pulls. So it was always a workout - and time consuming - just to get electricity into the house.

When I came back from doing chores, dinner was on the stove cooking, and both of my wives were in front of the cameras - again! And again, I was so proud of them. Ted was asking them about the misconceptions that wives in plural marriage are dumb and brainwashed. The girls answered beautifully. When I walked in, Temple was speaking of the necessity of not relying only on schools to teach your children, but to take a proactive approach in educating your own children. She came across as the intelligent, driven woman that she is. I was very proud of her.

When dinner was done, they filmed the children carrying the pots for dinner up the hill - the 2.45 minute walk to Temple's house, where we would eat. Then they filmed us having dinner.

I hate to constantly compare this encounter with our first experience with Dawn Porter. But I have no other frame of reference. We offered food to Dawn's crew. They turned their noses up at it. It was kind of offensive. They even made references to the food being unhealthy.

Not Ted and Frank.

They sat down to eat with us. Martha made chicken noodle soup (with homemade noodles) and ladled it over mashed potatoes. It is a common meal for us, and very delicious. But we were very pleased that they would even eat with us.

Afterwards, they wanted to film us in some sort of religious service.

My family has some unusual beliefs and practices that makes us stand somewhat apart from other Mormon families. We believe in the Jewish tradition of keeping the Sabbath on Saturday. Most of our community worships on Sunday, and, so to be in harmony with our community, we attend services on Sunday. But our Saturday Sabbath is something we observe as a family.

The way we observe this is to move the tradition of Sunday dinner to Friday and the Mormon tradition of Monday Family Home Evening to Friday. We have the sacrament. And we have a mitzvah, or short lesson. It is not a big deal, but it is the way that we observe the start of the Sabbath. We are not always faithful at doing it this way. Friday nights are the sometimes the worst night to try to get the family together with games, dances, activities, etc. But this is generally how we try to do things.

So they filmed me breaking bread and serving wine (grape juice) to my family and having a brief mitzvah.

After the meeting, they interviewed Martha, Temple and I at the kitchen table, and asked us a series of questions - all of them religious in nature. But they were very polite in the way they asked questions. In other words, they were very insistent that we did not need to answer any questions that made us uncomfortable.

When the interview was over, they excused themselves and went back to their hotel. They arranged to come back at 10:30 the next morning. (What?? Not at 6AM??)

After they left, Martha, Temple and I agreed that this was a MUCH MORE pleasant experience than before. If interviews always went this smoothly, we would never have qualms about doing them.

But there is still tomorrow... which is when I will tell you what happened next...

Preparing For Shoot For French TV

In November, 2010, I got a phone call from a producer of a company called Ligne de Front in Paris, France. The guy's name was Ted Anspach, and he had been referred to me by Morgane Corbeuil, the French reporter who contacted me in 2009. Yes, the French TV crew that stood me up the DAY BEFORE we were supposed to do a shoot.

He was producing a polygamy segment for a TV show called "52 Minutes" for a French network called m6. This was like their equivalent of America's "60 Minutes". The purpose of the show was to demonstrate polygamous arrangements in a manner that the French are not used to. In France, when they think of polygamy, they immediately think of the Muslim population, and the unpleasant sentiments the French have about having these people in their country. They wanted to demonstrate polygamy in a different light. This included showing a Mormon family.

In an email to me, Ted wrote:

"Your personal experience is very important to us, as I would like to dedicate part of the documentary on plural marriages within the Mormon community.

"As you know better than me, it remains a very sensitive topic to deal with, in both the US and Europe. Therefore, I firmly believe it's important to present plural marriages, in a non judgemental way, so the public will be able to make its own decision on what they should think about it, beyond the usual stigma and prejudice.

"In order to fulfill this challenge, I am looking for a nice American family who could represent and defend plural marriages as a religious right, but a right that needs to stay within the limits of the respect of human beings: A decision made between consenting adults with no kind of pressure whatsoever or husband's domination on the wives.

"As we discussed, I do believe yourself and your family would be the perfect candidates for this testimony. "

It sounded pretty good to me. I immediately said yes, for this reason:

Morgane had already established to me that French journalists do not pay for exclusive interviews, so I had to find some other reason to do this. My reason was my love for France, Belgium and French-speaking people.

For some reason, I was drawn to the French language from the time I was a little boy. I remember being a little boy and going to a grocery store. At the checkout stand, they had a pocket-sized book on how to learn French. Every time I went to the grocery store, I wished that I had enough money to buy it.

As a high school freshman, I dropped out of band. I didn't like the teacher, and the trombone mouthpiece was chilling my teeth. There was no other class available except French. As the band teacher signed my release slip, he sneered, "I tell you what. You come back in one month and tell me just how much you like French!"

By the time I graduated, I had taken all four years of French. Students from Belgium had come to our school, and I had befriended them. (Some of these students still keep in touch.)

In 1988, I went to Belgium as an exchange student for six weeks. It was there that I picked up a knack for the language. For the next six years, I worked with my old high school teacher and her Belgian exchange program until she retired. I worked at Holiday Inn Reservations as a French agent. I taught French for six years for Salt Lake Continuing Education, St. Johns High School and for our fundamentalist Mormon community.

I have always loved French culture and don't tolerate fellow Americans to speak ill of this culture around me.

But over the years, my French has got a little rusty. Where in rural Arizona can I practice my French?

My line of reasoning - there is a REASON that I felt driven to learn French. There has to be. Who better to represent Mormon polygamy to the French than me? Seriously! I had to do this show. So I decided immediately - yes! Then I went to my girls about it.

Morgane had not impressed that I spoke French, not one bit. Ted, on the other hand, was delighted. We set plans for filming in December.

I went home and talked to my wives about it. We collectively agreed not to breathe a word about it until after it was over. The fallout from our last TV shoot was burdensome to us. To this day, we still catch flack from family/ friends for making that decision and bringing the media into our lives. The way we looked at it - they did not NEED to know anything about it. It was - and still is not - Any. Of. Their. Damn. Business. Period.

So we kept it hush hush...

December came, and I had not heard a peep from Ted. I started to get concerned that we were going to get stood up again. In the middle of the month, I got an email. They were going to postpone it until January, 2011. I kind of saw where this was heading. But none of us were going to be broken-hearted if it didn't happen.

Around Christmas, we heard from Ted again. They were definitely coming around January 21 & 22. It was tremendous the freedom that he gave us. He wanted us to come up with our own schedule. They wanted us to be a normal, polygamist family, doing whatever it is we do, and they would merely be observers. This was tremendous freedom compared to our previous experience. But it also put some pressure on us. We are boring people. What can we do to look interesting?

Ted suggested that we plan to go to a rodeo (in January??). "You know the European fantasies of the American way-of-life," he said.

In the days before the shoot, I started to practice French. It was important for me to do as much of the interviews as I could in the French language. I listened to French music, I watched French movies and read aloud from a French Book of Mormon every day. At first my tongue felt like a dead fish flopping around in my mouth. But then the fluency started to return. On days that Temple worked, she would leave the toddler with me. He would look at me in confusion as I rattled away in French to him.

And of course, the cleaning - who wants to show their house looking like a mess on - not national - but international TV?? But I told the girls not to stress about it. No need to get stressed about it. We weren't going to kill ourselves trying to impress anyone with our rural living - especially since TLC flayed us over our living conditions.

A few days before the shoot, I got a phone call from Ted. They were in Quebec, Canada, doing a shoot with a polyamorous family over there. From Canada, they would be flying to Phoenix. From Phoenix, they would be driving to the White Mountains to meet us.

Ted impressed me by asking this question: "Is there anything that is important for you to say? Is there some topic that is important for you to express while we interview you?"

Ted sold me on that question alone. That he would even CARE to ask that...

The day before the shoot, I decided to let the proverbial cat on the bag. I posted on Facebook that we were about to do a film shoot. Boy, was Temple upset with me! But I figured - there was no turning back now.

So on January 20th, we finished the cleaning and waited to go in front of the cameras. yet again. I will talk about our experience tomorrow...

Once in a Lifetime - Same As It Ever Was...

Sometime in November, I got an email from a production company called Sirens Media. They were looking to do a program on Lifetime Network. They were looking for a family that was in the process of adding another wife to their family. They asked me if I was adding a wife to my family, and, if not, did I know anybody who was getting ready for a polygamous marriage.

Usually, I am polite. So I wrote them back and said that I didn't know of anybody who was adding to their family, and that I didn't have any plans for myself. But if I heard of anybody, I would let them know.

Periodically, those of us in the polygamy world - those of us online, anyway - we will get blanket emails from these production companies. We will even talk about these offers amongst ourselves.

The world is full of rip-offs. It was obvious that Sirens Media - and Lifetime - were ripping off the whole premise of "Sisterwives" on TLC - a man adding a plural wife to his family. (But then "Sisterwives" is riding the wake of "Big Love". So everyone is a copycat, and no one is original. Except me.)

This time, my buddy - whom I will call Poly-Austin DH (or DH for short) - answered the call. My buddy lives in the Midwest and was getting ready to add two wives to his family. Essentially, the show was going to be about marriage, and they were going to follow twelve scenarios featuring unconventional marriage situations. DH adding two wives to his family, and their family would take up one segment of their series.

I had already been talking to DH about traveling to the Midwest to see him and his family for a while. This show would be the perfect opportunity for me to travel out. DH asked if I would be the one to perform the marriages. I told him that I would be honored.

There was one issue - the Mormon wedding ceremony, which we call "Sealing" is a sacred ceremony to us. It is part of our temple endowment. All of our temple ceremonies are secret. We do them in privacy. We don't discuss them. And we CERTAINLY don't perform them in front of TV cameras.

In the old days, back in the days when the FBI and the Mormon Church were trying to root out all polygamists, you didn't know who was married to who. You may know that Sister So-And-So was married, but you might not know to whom. And you certainly would not know where they were married, when they were married, or who performed the sealing. Sealing is very sacred.

In my mind, to perform a sealing ceremony in front of the cameras was something that crossed a line for me. I may be willing to say or do just about anything on TV, but performing a sealing is not one of the them. Right away, DH and I agreed on that. We decided that I would perform a tailored married ceremony in front of the cameras, and a sealing off camera.

So we set a date to film in January. In the meantime, I spoke to the producers about it. Around this time, I was contacted by producers from France. (I will speak about this in my next post.) They were travelling all the way from Europe, and their filming schedule conflicted with my trip to the Midwest. But the prospect of filming me perform a plural marriage was something that appealed to them. The French crew wanted to join in the Midwest to film DH's wedding as well. I ran this by Sirens Media, and, of course, they shot down that idea.

The week before I was supposed to travel to the Midwest, I started to get somewhat nervous. I wasn't feeling well. My legs were still swollen; I had a bleeding ulcer on the bottom of my foot. Me being gone was putting pressure on my girls, and I had a lot to do around the house to prepare for MY film shoot the new week. The thought of traveling on a plane while I felt horrible and tired didn't sound fun.

I took all of these anxieties and realized that I did not feel good about going on this shoot. Even though it was a few days before I was supposed to go, I called DH. I told him that I would not be coming to perform his marriage. He was understanding. I sent an email to the producers. In desperation, they tried to call and make me a better deal. (By the way, they would be paying me nothing - just my plane ticket.)

I felt so much better when I decided not to go.

In considering how to help them, I had a moment of inspiration. There is a Christian preacher in the Southwest that I know of who believes in polygamy. I suggested him as a replacement. It turns out that they already had him slated as my replacement. It shows me that my inspiration was true. Within a few days, he was on my plane to the Midwest to perform the weddings.

I'm not sure how it went, but the wives kind of intimated to me that things didn't go as well as they had hoped.

For instance, in their contract, they were not to be paid until AFTER the program aired on Lifetime. That is such crap! I guess that Sirens Media are a bunch of cheapskates. When we did filming with Dawn Porter, Incubator handed us a check upon the completion of filming.

On top of that, the preacher - they paid his airfare and hotel, but nothing for food. He posted on Facebook that he had to raise money just to be able to eat. Again, what cheapskates! They don't pay him for his time and expect him to feed himself? I'm kind of glad that I didn't do it, even though I am a media whore.

Tomorrow, I will talk about the show we did for French TV....

PS Sirens Media called me about a month ago asking me if I knew ANOTHER family getting ready to enter plural marriage...

A Tale of Two Houses, Part 3

I heard a maxim from a polygamist years ago. Really, it was so long ago, that I really don't even remember who told it to me, but I remember what he said about his wives and housing them:

"I keep them together until they are begging to be split apart, and then I keep them apart until they are begging to be brought back together."

So suddenly, I found myself flitting between two houses. When we all lived in the same trailer, it was one thing. I didn't have a room of my own. Now it was like I didn't have a house of my own. When I got back from the fair circuit in October, I had been living out of my bags for three months. I just kind of kept living out of my bags.

It really proved to be a challenge.

I have always mentioned that the most difficult time of living plural marriage was the first year. I didn't know what I was doing, but - whatever I was doing - it seemed to always piss of one, or both, of them. I couldn't do anything right. Then after a year, it seemed to get - well, not easy - but doable.

Splitting my family up has proved to be just as challenging. I moved back to that place where I don't know what I am doing, but whatever I am doing is making a lot of people upset.

First of all - dinners. Every wife has always taken care of breakfast and lunch for her own children. And usually the girls rotate cooking nights, where they cook enough food for the entire family and we all sit down together. When Temple works during the school year, and since she is the only one in the family that has a real job, she doesn't cook dinners. Martha does the cooking. And when the school year ends, we go back to each wife trading cooking nights.

(Some of you might be wondering why I don't cook. Trust me. I wouldn't want to inflict that kind of masochism on my family.)

I always felt very strongly that having dinners together was a crucial part of maintaining unity in our family. That was one of my observations when we lived in a United Order. The sense of community, the sense of family was there when we ate our meals together in a common area. Then some women began to complain about the cooking and cleanup, and the United Order stopped eating together and ate in their separate homes. In my mind, that was the decline of the order. There was never the same sense of togetherness after that.

Based on that experience, I knew that, if I was going to hold the family together, we would need to still eat a common dinner together as one family. No matter how inconvenient, I resolved to abide by this rule.

Little did I know that my resolve would be tested...

Already, I was seeing the results of this division in my family. There is a tradition in my extended family that we have a potluck at my mother's house every Sunday. Every family is supposed to bring a dish. One Sunday, Martha made a casserole for the potluck. When Temple showed up for the potluck, one of Martha's preteen sons noticed that Temple arrived without a dish, he made a snide remark, "Where is YOUR dish?"

What this statement showed me was that - even though I was working hard to maintain our identity as ONE family - there were some in my family that were viewing us as separate.

To keep that identity, I was finding that I had to work constantly. For instance, on my nights with Temple, some of my kids with Martha would walk the 2.34 minutes between houses to come up to Temple's place to either see me or visit with Temple's kids. Temple would always get annoyed when they showed up and order them to go back to their house.

Now, I understood Temple's reasons. She is fastidious. She is squeaky-clean. She maintains order in the house in almost an OCD fashion. (Many of our arguments involve where I put my dirty clothes or discard my shoes.) Temple didn't want the kids to come into her clean house and dirty it up. That's understandable. But it started to feel like Temple never wanted the other kids over at her house.

I had to put my foot down. If I was going to be living in two separate houses, if I was going to be away from my kids 50% of the time, I needed to have an open-door policy. My kids should be able to see their dad whenever they want, no matter which house he is in. So I put my foot down with Temple about my kids coming to see me. In fact, for a while, I had to put my foot down every time the kids came over. It has improved lately. But Temple will still emit a snort whenever one of Martha's kids walks in the door.

So, dinners.... Martha would cook the dinners, and bring the food over to Temple's much larger dining room. That's where we would eat dinners together. But Temple would complain about the mess. Kids spilling food and not cleaning up after themselves. People using her dishes and then not washing them. Or if they did wash them, not washing them to her standards. And Martha started complaining about cooking food at her house, and then having to make arrangements to have that food transported to Temple's house.

So I had BOTH wives not liking the arrangement. BOTH wives wanting to have meals separate from each other. And there I am, knowing what the result will be. It makes me tremendously sad and heavy-hearted.

Yes, there are benefits to having two houses. More space. Not as much chaos. But at what price? I have to honestly say that I DO NOT LIKE having my family in two, separate houses. I dream about having the means to obtain one, large house that can accommodate all of my family.

As of this date, we still eat together. I would like to say that there is a happy ending, but plural marriage is a daily struggle. It is not all sweetness and light. It is a constant, uphill battle. Some days you win, some days you lose. I am a man who loves his family with all of his heart and only wants us to be together.

Anyway, there is much more to discuss - including more TV experiences, which I will discuss later. Have a great day!

A Tale of Two Houses, Part 2

So our neighbors sold their land. They were a polygamist family that had a lot with three houses, one for each wife. The new owner - not really an active Mormon - was there often making improvements. But - as he lived out of state - he wasn't there often enough. During his absence, he had discovered tire tracks coming down Cinder Mountain, right up to his house, and his property ransacked. Several other secondary homes had been robbed, also. So he asked us if we would consider moving into one of the homes in exchange for keeping an eye on the place.

The benefit was that the house he was referring to was very close to my house. (I timed it. It takes exactly 2.34 minutes to walk between houses.) The solution was to move one of my wives (with her respective kids) into the new house, and keep the other wife in our existing trailer. But the question was - which one?

Individually, my wives approached me, expressing a desire to be the one to move into the new home.

Martha pointed out that the house was bigger, and that she had more children. She also pointed out that she had lived longer in our beat-up, old trailer than anyone else.

Temple pointed out that - unlike Martha - she had never been able to move into her own place. She had been the one to move into Martha's house. She didn't even have her own bedroom when she first married me. We had hung up sheets, partitioning off the living room just so thatshe could have her own space. (Eventually the curtains became walls.)

No pressure....

To make matters worse, my extended family started to get themselves involved. Some family members actually went to Martha and told her that SHE deserved to have the new house. Some of them went to my CHILDREN and planted in their ears that they should have the chance to move into the new house. I couldn't believe that people were interfering this way! Like it was any of their business.

But that is something I have learned - when you live plural marriage, everyone becomes an armchair judge on how you handle your marriages. You fall under a kind of scrutiny, and everyone is a critic.

So I set out trying to make a careful decision.

I examined each house. The house we lived in had smaller living room, but larger bedrooms. The new house had smaller bedrooms, but a larger living area. Where would the space be better used?

Again, it was housekeeping that made my decision for me.

I don't mean to speak indelicately or to say anything negative about my wives. But I have one wife who is fastidious and clean (when it comes to keeping house). And I have another wife who is more messy and very prone to let cleaning chores accumulate, a bit of a pack rat, as it were. One wife keeps her bedroom immaculate. The other wife - let's just say that I have to clear the bed off in order to get in and sleep.

That doesn't mean that I love any wife less. It's just that every woman is different, every woman has her own idea on how things should be done. Luckily, the common areas - the kitchen, dining room, living room and bathroom - were kept clean by both wives.

But I had to consider - this new house did not belong to us. It belonged to someone else. I had to consider that it was expected that there would be some upkeep involved in living there. Whoever lived there would have to keep it clean and not trash the place. I had to pick the wife who was most likely to keep it clean.

And so I picked Temple.

Martha was upset at first. We had a few heated discussions in private, and then I took both wives aside and had it out. I told them, "This is a win/ win situation for everyone. We get exactly what we prayed for - more space. And we don't even have to pay for it! Temple gets to move into the new place, and Martha gets to expand in the old house."

Each wife would get something they had not had in a while - a room to themselves. And I could finally provide to my teenage daughter Sophie something she had never had - a room without her brothers. I was excited about this.

And as we started to make arrangements, Martha started to get excited, too.

But immediately people started to judge us. My extended family and other in our community started to talk about me behind my back, that I was favoring Temple over Martha. It was very frustrating for me to have these rumors float back to me. They didn't understand the reason or the logic behind my decision.

And my logic has proved sound. Temple keeps the new place spotless. And the messiness of Martha's room has expanded into the common areas. But I'm jumping ahead of myself...

As we prepared to make the move, some of the kids expressed disfavor about the whole situation. Some of Martha's kids expressed resentment that it was Temple - not their mother - moving into the new place. And my son with Temple, Aidan, who is 8 years-old, burst into tears when we broke the news to him.

He insisted that it was going to be his MOTHER that be would be moving, NOT him. He would stay with his other brothers and sisters and live with Martha.

Even though she had earlier expressed a desire to move, Temple came to me in private.

"I'm no longer in favor of splitting up the family," she said. "I'm afraid of what's going to happen to the family."

I brought up these concerns to Martha, but she was already determined and anticipating the new space.

It was around this time last year that I had to leave for the summer on the fair circuit. It was also around this time that Temple's seasonal job at the school gave her the summer off. I wasn't there, but Temple put all her time into getting the new place ready. She deep-cleaned, sanded, painted. She put a lot of work into it.

Around the end of August, I came home for a few days. It had already been several weeks since Temple had moved up to the new house on the hill. In my absence, my family had already split up and were living apart. It was weird coming home.

The new house was still in the process of being renovated, so all of the bedrooms were empty. She had a mattress on the living room floor, and that's where she and I and the kids slept. It was a strange feeling.

Then I went back on the road until October. When I came back, Temple had finished the renovation. She had done all that work by herself, with no help from anybody else. What I found was a home. Temple and I had something that we had never had in our married life - a place to ourselves.

But it came with its challenges.

I have always said that the hardest part of plural marriage was the first year, getting used to it. I found that adjusting to having two families in two separate homes was just as bad as adjusting to living the Principle.

But I am going to save that for Part 3...

A Tale of Two Houses, Part 1

One of the greatest changes that occurred in our family was that we split up into two houses. After eleven years of living in the same house, we divided up the family. I still have mixed feelings about it.

This is how it went down:

Most plural families we know live in separate houses. But this is something that we were always against. I can't tell you how many families I know where the children barely consider their siblings from a different mother their actual brother or sister.

Imagine that you are a man with five wives. Each one lives in a separate house on different ends of town. Your twenty children are interspersed between these five houses. Your children barely see each other, so they don't develop that bond between each other that family should have. When they see their siblings, it's more like seeing their cousins.

On top of that, the husband must divide his time between these households. That means that the wives don't see him every day. That means that the children are raised without their father, for the most part.

This scenario is typical in Mormon plural marriage. And it was not something that I wanted for my family.

I wanted the children from both wives to grow up together as brothers and sisters. Moreover, I wanted to see my children every night and spend time with them.

I was fortunate enough that Martha and Temple both felt the same way. So we have lived in the same dwelling for eleven years.

Sadly, that dwelling is a trailer (as has been shown on TV). We have made do the best that we can with what we have. With only three bedrooms, the wives each had their own room with the children interspersed in between.

For years, this worked for us - especially since we only had a few, small children when we entered the Principle. But small children soon become teenagers, and teens definitely take up more room. I began to receive complaints from my wives about the cramped space - mainly in the cooking and cleaning area. The kitchen and dining room were too small to accommodate all of us. And I had two wives with very different ideas of keeping house.

My father once advised me that - to keep fairness - I should be the one to create cleaning schedules. But I always felt that my wives are big girls and can arrange their own schedule. They don't need me to monitor them, to become their taskmaster, and treat them like children. No, not for me!

And yet, the housekeeping was a big source of tension. In fact, it was THE biggest source of contention in my family.

Martha and Temple had always got along. They still do. But for the first time in my marriage, their relationship was becoming strained. They argued more. They complained more about who was supposed to do cooking or cleanup, whose kids got into what snacks, which kid made which mess. It was becoming bothersome.

So we prayed for larger space. Literally. We offered a prayer to God, and asked Him to grant us larger and better living arrangements. We were amazed at how quickly we were answered.

If any of you saw the show we did on History Channel, you might remember that we did part of the filming up on the hill next to our house, and our neighbor came up and started shouting at us, demanding that we leave?

Well, those neighbors left. They vacated their homes and sold their property. They sold the property and moved out of state.

Meanwhile, we got to know the new property owners - a very nice couple, who also live out of state. Because they live out of state, they are not always on their property to take care of things. As a result, they experienced a series of burglaries.

We live in a very rural part of Arizona. There are plenty of meth labs, and, along with that, plenty of meth addicts who raid empty houses. (The largest real estate market in our region are secondary homes.)

Our neighbors had several houses on their property, and someone kicked in the door and stole virtually everything, including a brand new washer and dryer. They became concerned about more burglaries, and so they asked if we would actually move into one of their houses in exchange for keeping an eye on the place, watering the trees, etc.

It was obviously a very good deal. We went up to look at the house. It was kind of a wreck, and needed alot of work. There were three bedrooms - not very big, just like in our trailer. But there was a large living space. Fairly big kitchen and dining room, and a big living room.

BOTH wives immediately started to campaign to move into the house. Not only that, my extended family started politicing about which wife should move into the house.

My father taught me something about plural marriage a long time ago. He said, "At some point, you will have to make a decision that will make one, or both, wives mad at you. In this case, you must make the choice that is fair."

Tune in tomorrow, and I will tell you what I did. In the meantime, ask yourself: what would you do??

I'M BAAAAAAACK (This time, it's for real)

My biggest handicap in having a blog last year was that I had no computer. My laptop had descended to computer hell, and any computer time I was able to get was devoted to that great sucker of time – Facebook.

Upon receiving my tax return this year, I made it a priority to get a new laptop. In fact, we made this momentous occasion an excuse for a mini family vacation. We braved a harrowing drive through blizzard conditions in a fifteen-passenger van down to Phoenix, where my kids played in the pool for a couple of days (even though it was February). I was able to walk out of Best Buy with a shiny new laptop (and my bank was calling me minutes later in the parking lot, making sure that it was indeed the frugal me making the purchase.)

So anyway, I got the computer. My blog should have been immediately forthcoming, but it wasn’t. Apathy set in. It’s not that I don’t have anything to talk about. I have TONS to talk about, as anyone who knows me can testify. There has been a lot that has happened in my family. I will take each day to get everyone up to speed.

I will start first with my health…

HEALTH UPDATE:

The main reason I have had a hard time keeping up with my blog is my health. It is hard time writing when you never feel good.

I came back from the fair circuit last October with swollen legs and a diabetic ulcer on my foot. I thought that once I got off my feet, it would heal. I waited and waited. It didn’t heal. I changed the bandages on my foot a couple of times a day. It bled frequently and started to smell in a way that bothered me.

During this time, I did go to the doctor often. He prescribed me a silver/ sulfur compound that burn patients put on their wounds. It seemed to help a little, but not much. He also put me on several rounds of antibiotics. In fact, I have been on antibiotics consistently for the last ten months, none of it helping.

Finally, I consulted a different doctor. Upon inspecting my sore, he immediately set to cutting away the dead tissue with a scalpel. (I didn’t feel a thing.) He also gave me a special shoe that takes weight off of the foot. My foot started healing within days, until it is now nothing more than a callous on the bottom of my foot.

Two weeks ago, I had laser surgery on the varicose veins of my right foot.

They didn’t put me under, they just gave me a valium, and made me watch as they inserted a tube into my vein. What an unusual experience that was – to feel a tube sliding up your leg, from your ankle all the way to your groin. Then they inserted a wire into my veins with a laser at the end. As they pulled the wire out of my leg, it collapsed the veins. It only took an hour, and I walked out of the clinic. I just felt a little sore. But three days later, I became incredibly sore, with ugly purple bruises on my leg. I am really sore and still recovering from this, but I am also hoping that this procedure improves the quality of my life.

Next month, I see a specialist, an endocrinologist. It turns out that I am insulin resistant, and hopefully these visits will be for the better.

I am doing all this for my family. My health has took a few serious turns in the last couple of the years. I am not stupid. I know how my body feels, and I can see the writing on the wall. If I don’t do something about it now, I will be dead in ten years. Probably less. I look at my children and my wives. It would be a sore burden to not have me around.

I have two wives and eleven children. I can think of nothing worse than to leave them alone to fend for themselves.

I don’t do much around the house. I kind of sit around, nursing my pain like an invalid. Lately, I feel kind of useless. But at least I am alive and present for my children. I hope to keep it that way.

Anyway, more news tomorrow…