The Link to My NPR Interview...

So yesterday, my segment on "Faith Matters" aired on NPR. You can read the transcript or listen to the broadcast here. I am pleased with how it turned out.

NPR: Tell Me More

I have not been blogging lately. Mainly because issues have come up in my life that have made me question how I do my blog, why I do my blog, if I should do my blog, etc. I will be talking about some of these matters later.

I will start my story here:

Last week, I was in Missoula, Montana. Even though every year, I have health issues, I had tried - FOR MYSELF - to see if I could do the fair circuit again. I took every precaution and preparation that I could to prevent health issues from cropping up. After a few weeks in Montana, the sore opened up on the bottom of my foot.

One evening, after taking my shoe off, and finding my sock soaked in my own blood, and seeing the tiny hole that was tunneling into my foot, I threw in the towel. I have to admit that I am now limited in what I can do. I decided to fly home in order to heal.

The next morning, I got an email from Sarah at NPR in Washington DC. They were doing a segment on their program "Tell Me More". The segment is called "Faith Matters". The whole purpose of the show is to address minority groups that are commonly misrepresented in society. "Faith Matters" takes it a step further and addresses religious groups. My segment would - of course - deal with polygamy in America.

I set up a pre-interview on the phone with Sarah, and, early one morning from our campground, we spoke. I found her to be very respectful and polite.

I posted Facebook about it that day. I got a positive response. Some people joked that I am not boring enough to be on NPR. I beg to differ.

Sarah also called and spoke briefly to my wives about it. But I basically decided to do it. I was booking my flight home due to health reasons anyway.

When they called to confirm the interview, they said that it would be me and a plural wife that would also be interviewed.

"This isn't going to be like a point-counterpoint interview is it?" I asked. "Kind of like Nancy Grace?"

She assured me that it was not. They wanted to give polygamists a chance to speak for themselves, especially in light of "Sister Wives" and the notorious Warren Jeffs trial.

"Well, who is the wife being interviewed?" I asked. "It really is a small community, so I might actually know who it is."

"For confidentiality issues, I really can't say," Sarah told me.

That night, I got an email from Julie, from Wisconsin.

"I am the other person being interviewed!" she said.

I was relieved. At least it was someone I know. Well, (I know her online, at least. She is on many of the forums that I belong to, including being one of my Facebook friends.

So yesterday, she booked me into a local radio station in Show Low, AZ (KQAZ). I walked into the radio station at the appointed time. All the employees at the station looked up at me as the "NPR guest" walked in. Andrew, the engineer, got me set up in one of the booths. He is a recent transplant, just having moved from Kansas City. I have no clue if he knew who or what I am. But he sure got an earful very soon.

They linked us up through the interview - me in Show Low, Arizona. Julie in Milwaukee. And the host, Tony Cox, in Washington, DC. After walking us through some technical issues. (For my part, all I had to do was say, "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" twice while they adjusted my mic volume.)

Then without much preamble, Tony Cox launched into our interview. It was a little daunting. I think I prefer having a camera in my face. Wearing the headphones, you can hear every little nuance and flaw of your voice, repeated right back in your ear. I didn't like it. Listening to yourself swallow nervously for millions of people.

Julie did beautifully. She truly did represent. She was eloquent, pleasant and confident. I think I came across as nervous and stupid.

I was only asked three questions:

1) Are there any negative aspects to plural marriages?

2) How many children do you have?

3) Do you want your children to follow in your foot steps?

Listen tomorrow to "Tell Me More" on NPR to find out how I answered! As soon as I have the online link, I will post it.

I think all in all, the NPR staff were very friendly, professional and respectful. They treated us and the topic with dignity.

After it was all over, Tony Cox was concerned. "Did we treat this topic in a way your were comfortable with?" he asked me.

It is nice to have people actually concerned with how they treat you...

The Blues Polygamist: Feedback about "Enquete Exclusive: Polygamie"

So it has been interesting reading the feedback from last week's "Enquete Exclusive".

Before I had a chance to see the show, I looked at some of the forums about the program. They were heated discussions about the Muslim problem in France. They scarcely even talked about the Mormon issue. In fact, any mention of Mormons was cursory. It got to the point where I thought that perhaps my family didn't have any significant part in the program.

Then I found all the tweets...

I just have to say - what do people do in this world? I live off grid, so I really don't know. Do people sit in front of the TV with laptops and talk about what they are watching? It sounds like many people need to get out of the house more.

The discussion forums - whereas they were argumentative - at least had some substance. The tweets were much baser. Not intelligent. Off the cuff remarks. And very mean-spirited. Which shows me that the French are not that much different from Americans. The comments were the same.

Every now and then, I get a perverse desire to punish myself by going to my YouTube clip. People still comment on it often all these years later. After tens of thousands of views and several hundred comments, I can still count on one hand the positive comments. There is the inevitable Christian who pontificates on how wrong polygamy is and that God hates it, even though the Bible is replete with God's prophets who were polygamous. But mostly it is the people who say how fat, ugly and creepy I am. And how did I ever get two women to marry me? Poor women! They must be brainwashed to marry such a fat, ugly person...

LOL! Well, guess what? I have to look in the mirror every day. I see how fat I am. I'm no Brad Pitt. And I have NO CLUE why my wives would want to be with me, much less stay with me. It mystifies me. And it frustrates me that - whatever message that I am trying to get across - is drowned by the fat. No one can hear what I am saying, because all they see is blubber.

It reminds me of that scene from "The Producers": "FAAAAT!!!!! FAAAAAT!!!! FAT, FAT, FATTY!" lol!

Anyway, the French comments were not much different. I won't even talk about the vulgar comments. But they seemed to clue in on everything. Many people commented on Martha's glasses, they made fun of the cooking - they even wondered if the cat that they showed was polygamous, too!

There were several comments about how I live with no electricity, and yet how is it that I have a Blackberry? Come on! I'm not Amish! There were people that criticized me for wanting to read before I go to bed. Okay, I get that one. I thought that was a stupid thing for me to talk about.

The funniest comment was, "How is it that this man has two wives when George Clooney doesn't even have one?"

Then several people started calling me "The Blues Polygamist". I didn't really understand that. Maybe it was the soul patch. But I like it. Maybe I should keep that moniker. "Moroni Jessop the Blues Polygamist."

A French scholar named Chrystal Vanel blogged a very interesting review of the show. He mentioned my family a bit. Keep in mind that it is translated from French:

"Besides the fundamentalist Mormon members of theU.S. fundamentalist church, the report mentions the "Mormons independent." No doubt the journalists, who already at the beginning of the story could not tell the full name of the U.S. Mormon church majority did they speak of "fundamentalist Mormons independents" who live their religion out of any group, any institution.

"Journalists we have therefore Moroni, who lives with his two wives and his children in Arizona, and we say it is the "first time an independent fundamentalist opens the door of his house." Well no, this is not the first time that Moroni opens its doors to television cameras, as evidenced by his blog:Moroni & Family's TV Experience ( http://moroni-family.blogspot.com/ ). In addition, the television channel France 2 we had already shown an independent fundamentalist Mormon family (with whom I spent a month in Utah / Arizona) during a report of Special Envoy in the late 1990s. And the M6 itself had presented an independent fundamentalist Mormon family in the exclusive investigative report on the Mormons (November 28, 2010).

"Moroni's second wife testified that polygamy is for her lifestyle choice freely without any constraint, since it is not from a polygamous family."

There was an excellent blog written by a French Mormon that I suggest you read here.

All in all, I am pleased with the results of the program. If I can reach one or two - and change their opinion about Mormon polygamy - then they can talk about how fat I am all they want! I hope you will all keep reading!

Enquête Exclusive : Polygamie – Au coeur de l’interdit - MY REVIEW!!

So the TV program that featured our family - "Enquete Exclusive" - aired on M6 in France last Sunday, on May 29th.

I didn't think that I would have a chance to watch it. I found it on M6's website, but there were permission issues. You can't watch it unless you are actually in France. But the other night, I actually found a couple of websites that actually aired the entire program. My heart started beating when I clinked on the link and saw the view from the top of our hill. Then I saw myself on TV, speaking (in English) to my kids with a French voice overdubbing me.

The show starts out with a man in Quebec, and his two wives. It showed them posing in bed, wearing cutesy pajamas. There wasn't much substance to their segment beyond, "Hey, look at us! We are polygamists, wearing matching pajamas, in the same bed! Woo hoo!"

Then they showed traveled back to France (with a small segment in Morocco) to discuss the polygamy problem among the Muslim population. It wasn't very positive, overshadowed with ominous music that sounded like something out of Dexter. They discussed Muslim men taking wives without telling the other wife, Muslim men abandoning other wives, Muslim men having wives in two different countries, Muslims taking advantage of welfare and public housing, etc. It was very negative. They showed many crying Muslim wives with their faces blurred out, telling of the difficulties of living polygamy. They had a couple of angry relatives, talking about how wrong polygamy is.

While I'm watching this, I understand that these women are suffering. I think that abuse is likely to be present in any culture where women become chattel, become property, where they have little to no say in their domestic lives. However, it was evident that the tone of this TV show was negative. I was wondering how they were going to tie in our family to this tragedy.

The show then moved over to Colorado City, Arizona. (So they DID visit another location!) They talked about the FLDS, about the raid of the YFZ Ranch in Texas, about Warren Jeffs and his imprisonment, about arranged marriages, etc. They showed Ted driving through the town, filming cars filled with local goon squad members following them through the streets (like they would do to any car with a camera in it.) Their visit included visiting a disaffected, former member by the name of Holmes who took them on a bus tour through the city. They stopped and talked to some random people and asked them if they loved their prophet, or some such question, to which they answered that they did. An old man in his garage was accosted, and he threatened to call the police.

I admit. I am not a huge fan of the FLDS. But this segment was a little sensationalized, and obviously it did not promote plural marriage in an encouraging light, either. I was starting to worry about whether this was going to be a hatchet job.

Then I saw some different scenery shots that I recognized as close to my house. Fortunately, the music changed, sounding less like "Twin Peaks" and more like "7th Heaven". Then the camera shows me walking between houses. My first thought was, "OMG, am I really that fat?" Ha ha. The second thought, they showed trailers and a big barn that I recognize, but that are NOT part of our religious community. They needed some good stock footage, I guess.

They introduced me as an independent Mormon fundamentalist (true) who doesn't recognize Warren Jeffs as his prophet (very true), and doesn't believe in arranged and/ or underage marriages (very, VERY true). They mention that I have studied in Europe, and then they have me introduce both of my wives, and their respective children (minus Sophie) - in very basic French.

The narrator says that we live the way we do as fugitives, as pariahs, and that is why we live the way we do without electricity. I guess maybe we do, but I never really considered myself a fugitive.

It is mentioned that this is the first time that an independent Mormon fundamentalist has opened his doors to the media. LOL! Well, that is not exactly true. I am certainly not the first polygamist who has had cameras in his home. This is not even the first time that I have had the media in my home. BUT... It is the first time that I have had the French media in my home, so that is what they must have meant!

They talk a little bit about how hard it is to find jobs in such a desert region, but that Temple - an "assistante maternelle" - provides the salary that sustains the family. Temple is interviewed and talks about how no one forced her into this relationship, that she consented to it. She comes from a family that does not practice polygamy, and that she is happy.

Martha talked a little bit about the theology of plural marriage, but it was kind of hard to focus on anything but her glasses. At that time, her glasses had broken, and we hadn't had the chance to do anything about it yet. Her glasses were dangling from her face. Poor Martha...

Oh, and they did feature Christian chopping wood - just as I hoped he would!

I have to say, I was really proud of my kids. They did an interview with them as they walked between houses. They were exuberant and happy, all of them trying to answer Ted's questions about growing up in such a large family at once. They were truly the centerpiece of this segment. They even showed me having a staged class with the kids about plural marriage. They all answered beautifully. Sara talked about a wife having more than one husband as cheating. I laughed at that. Aidan gave a beautiful answer about the purpose of plural marriage. I can't say enough how proud I was.

After the "class", they show the kids running out to play on the swings. The next part made me laugh so hard. My six year-old son Alex can't read yet. He just graduated from kindergarten. He found a copy of a tiny New Testament. He carried this book around with him everywhere. They filmed him on the playset, reading from this book while on the swing. And the narrator says something like, "And even while they play, Moroni's kids find time to study from the Book of Mormon."

Alex probably was doing it this as an affectation, trying to show the cameras that he can read, when in fact he cannot. But it was so funny that this is the way that they interpreted it. I loved it.

While I am pushing my kids on the swing, I talk - very tongue-in-cheek - about Mormons taking over the world, not by the sword, but by procreation, thus making the whole world Mormon. Even though I was joking, I am sure that some took this very seriously.

The next scene shows Martha and Temple making dinner while I sit at the table, looking at my Blackberry. They something about me supervising. Not true. I know nothing about cooking, so how could I supervise? But I am wearing this impatient look on my face. Probably because I am hungry! After Aidan offers a prayer, we have dinner, and they conduct interviews with the three of us.

After dinner, they film me walking between houses, talking about the challenges of living plural marriage. I don't like this part, mainly because I think I sound stupid while I talk.

The next day they interviewed us while we were standing by our car. I talk a little bit about the differences in each relationship. Martha talks about the need to sacrifice in order to make it work. Then the program ends.

I'm not sure how my segment was congruous when juxtaposed with the Muslim problem. I don't see how they are similar, except that we have polygamy in common. I don't even see how we can be compared to the FLDS. But I must say that - in spite of it being a negative show about polygamy - our segment was very positive. I am very pleased how it turned out. Ted Anspach and M6 treated us with dignity and respect, and I want to thank them for their honest portrayal of our family..

Our Show in France!!!

Watch it while you can here!

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?