Returning and reporting on the Southern Utah PostMo lecture by William Wilson (Grape Nephi). Hope enough of you are old enough to recognize the play on words for the old soft drink Grape Nehi.

Anyway, I flew out to SLC and then drove down to St. George with my TBM friend John who has provided me with many non sequiturs and priceless Mormoron statements which I have provided for your entertainment.

There was a nice turnout on the beautiful St. George day and William Wilson was in fine shape, beginning his lecture with "why believe prophets" (squirming and restlessness). When he got down to brass tacks, he knew his business since he is a "real world" anthropologist and personally participated in digs in the New York area around Palmyra. It was nice to hear some of the TBMs present as in depth questions like, "What exactly do you mean by 'no' evidence?" and "Could you tell us about the Jewish haplogroup found among the Iroquois Indians?

To Wilson's credit, he kept his sense of humor and was very charming and engaging to the TBMs and the exmos (usual assortment-soup to nuts) present. When one person asked "Why aren't we talking about the Masons? Why waste our time on this geography garbage, Wilson answered disarmingly, "It's key, it's key--you're right--and it deserves it's own presentation, just on that alone."

There was nothing new that I had never heard. To me it was still like arguing the location of Narnia (we have analyzed the forest and found that it was predominantly cedar trees, which supports the theory that they were originally in he form of a closet, which was typical for the area and time period).

Probably the three most outstanding issues discussed were (1) the fact that so many of the names/places in the Palmyra area are identical to the names/places in the Book of Mormon, and (2) The X2 haplogroup which contains a twice branched-off surviving possibly Middle Eastern/Asian/Mongolian signature branched off from x1 (ie, came across the Bering Strait) around 30,000 years ago. He mentioned that science is able to pinpoint with great accuracy WHEN a group has branched off and there is NO, repeat, NO distinctive Jewish contribution to the DNA in Book of Mormon times. (3) Last but not least, the reason David O. McKay gave Thomas Ferguson $250K to dig in Central and South America: NO EVIDENCE OF ANY LARGE ARMY PERISHING NEAR HILL CUMORAH. In fact, no evidence of any of the people, stories, animals, metal, battles, individuals or groups, settlements, cities, etc. NO EVIDENCE.

Great meeting, lots of questions.

ANagrammy