Silent Notes Taken is comprised of fifteen new personal essays by a group of writers living in New York City who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Interspersed between the essays is a series of original etchings. Together, the texts and images comprise a latter-day sampling of contemporary urban Mormon life. Some of works weave elaborate tales; others are autobiographical, philosophical, humorous, or political. Some of the essays react to the recent events in New York City and are eye-witness accounts of shock, loss, and recovery. The book sprang from an ongoing relationship of the writers, as the essay by Glen Nelson entitled "A Mormon Montmartre" describes:

"Every few months, a group gathers in my apartment. The group is not very large, and the apartment is not very large. If you were to join us, your first impression might be that we have little in common at all. In the room, a poet sits next to a screenwriter who is alongside a fantasy novelist who chats to a mystery book author. Each is waiting to read aloud. A magazine writer listens to a new essay by a historian to be followed by a playwright's new scenes, a songwriter's new songs, a diarist's new confessions, and so on. When we meet, we read to each other. We eat together. We encourage each other. We talk about our battles to find time to write and to find something worth the time it takes to write it."

Among the essays are tales of personal discovery and bereavement. Astrid S. Tuminez, author of Russian Nationalism Since 1856. Ideology and the Making of Foreign Policy (Rowman and Littlefield), writes an intercontinental account of the clash of world cultures she experienced upon the death of her father. From "Coming Home":

"All night we sat on one of the bamboo benches. I set up photos on my father's coffin so that the growing number of visitors could see a glimpse of his life, especially his visit to the United States and times spent with his children and grandchildren. Slowly, the visitors drifted away. Only one or two relatives stayed behind to keep me and my husband company. I kept looking at my father's face inside the coffin. I do not recognize him. The morticians had fattened his face and painted his lips. I do not think my father should be in this hut by the roadside. This is not how it should be. I noticed that insects had entered the coffin. A moth, a fly, a mosquito, and one bug I did not recognize. They were on my father's face, sometimes circling around his eyes, and then they would fly to the side or bottom of the coffin where I could not see them."

In a triptych of essays, Joanne Rowland describes the influence of a friend no longer near her but nevertheless present. From the essay, "Coney Island," she imagines what her friend Paul would have thought of the landmark sea-side amusement park, had he lived.

"If Paul had been alive and in New York City that hottest afternoon in August, he would have paid his subway token and gone all the way to the end of the line on the N train just to see if the waves from Hurricane Felix really were spectacular. He would have taken his shoes off and got his feet wet. He would have liked watching all the bathers—the old men with sunken bottoms and the old women who ordered their bathing suits from catalogues without upper ends of XL sizing and the young beautiful couples who dressed and kissed as if Coney Island were their own private beach."

Given the tragic episodes of New York in the last year, it comes as no surprise that several authors grapple with the meaning of the event. James W. Lucas, co-author of the text, Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World (Aspen Books), has provided for the volume a treatise that justifies the ways of God to man through science, entitled "On Believing in Nothing or Something."

"The events of September 11, 2001 present sharply the challenge of evil and suffering to a belief in a benevolent, all-powerful God who designed this universe, for the terrorists claimed to be acting on his behalf, and almost certainly died with his name on their lips. A common answer to this dilemma is to appeal to free will. God wished to create truly free beings. It follows that such beings could freely will to make evil choices. Weinberg's reaction to this view was to note that it seemed "a bit unfair" that his relatives died in the Holocaust "in order to provide an opportunity for free will for Germans," a light comment which could only have been made half a century after the events. Could one imagine explaining now to the widows and widowers, to the children deprived of a mother or father, to the friends, relatives, countrymen, that thousands died in the World Trade Center so that Mohammed Atta would have an opportunity for free will?"

Just as it is difficult for the non-New Yorker to imagine what effect the suicide bombings had on city life, we are divided, even as New York residents, between those who live or work near the former Trade Center towers, and those who don't. In "Mile 13," Raquel Cook provides a visceral account of the days after the attacks as she confronted the events she witnessed that day.

"So what did I see? I saw fire. I saw bodies and debris and ash. In my hair and on my clothes. Layers of ash and gray. When I got off the train there was chaos. How to describe this? I was there on the platform like I am every morning. Like I have been every morning for the past two years. I'm standing there and suddenly people come screaming down the stairs in my direction. I don't know why they're running but my heart is pounding and I'm afraid, so I run with them. And people are screaming bomb, bomb and fire. So I run. And I run past a blind man. I run past him and I don't stop. But there is no where to run so I run up. Up into what?

"The first tower's already burning. Flames pouring out and thick black smoke covering the sky. And people are jumping. From the 70th, 80th floors people jump. Men and women, holding hands, holding each other, fall to the earth. And then, while we're watching, the next tower is hit. Not like on TV where you can see the plane coming from miles away. But just suddenly it's there. From between the buildings it appears and flies straight in—a huge gaping hole coughing out flames. What's going on? At first maybe this is an accident. A small plane. A horrible accident. But then, no, this is on purpose. So people are running and bodies are dropping and paper and desks and debris. An airplane seat. A chair. And as I'm running the man in front of me is knocked to the ground by a falling torso. Not even a whole body but just part of one. And he doesn't get up. And we run down one street to get away from the debris but a wall of it is coming from the other direction. Like a flood. Like a wall."

A recurring theme of Silent Notes Taken is the modern family. What does it mean to be a parent today? What is a good father? What is a woman to be? What is the legacy of childhood? Claudia L. Bushman, whose books include Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (with co-author Richard L. Bushman, Oxford University Press) among many volumes, and whose latest book is entitled, In Old Virginia: Slavery, Farming, and Society in the Journal of John Walker (Johns Hopkins University Press), has penned an essay regarding what one generation passes—or fails to pass—to another, "Things My Mother Never Taught Me."

"My mother has been gone for twenty years. She has achieved a serious sanctity to me. For several years now I have been transcribing her almost daily diary, from 1930 when she was married until the day of her fatal stroke in 1977. In those pages, I have vicariously relived much of the past. I am sorry to see myself there as the haughty, aloof, bad-tempered, insensitive child.

"As I grow older in her diaries, I see her picture of me as a thoughtless daughter, a slovenly house-wife, living too grim and joyless a life in my rickety old Victorian mansion in Belmont, Massachusetts, forgetting Father's Day, too busy to write often enough. I exaggerate, but the clues are there. I see her coming to visit me and not having a very good time. I see her preferring the beautifully ordered house of my sister Georgia, the efficiency and thoughtfulness of my sister Paulie, the exquisite and precocious children of my sister Bonnie. I could have done better. I should have done better."

Luisa Perkins, author of the novel, Shannon's Mirror (Grandin Books), writes of lessons learned in childhood, not from parents and siblings, but from cruel peers. From her autobiographical episode, "If You Are Lucky":

'"You will never be one of us,' Mary Beth hissed into my face, poking me in the chest with a hard forefinger. Then she gave me a big shove. I flopped backwards, bottom—first, into a big patch of mud. 'C'mon, Susie,' she called over her shoulder, 'Get her other leg.' They grabbed me by the ankles and began running, dragging me along the sodden ground behind them. I was paralyzed with embarrassment and fear, not knowing how to begin to fight back. I could hear the shocked laughter of all the other fifth-graders, who stood watching this bizarre display. Finally the bell rang. Mary Beth and Susie let go of me and ran to the school building without a backward glance. I assume Cynthia—and all the other children—did the same. I was too numb to notice.

"I lay in the cold mud and looked up at the troubled March sky. I felt chilly water seep into my socks, my underwear, the back of my dress, my hair. My skirt and slip were rucked up around my underarms, but none of that mattered. Scraps of poetry flitted through my mind as I watched gray clouds scudding towards the horizon. I closed my eyes and prayed for death to come."

In the essay, "Chocolate Habit," Adriana Velez describes problems and solutions of a more delicious nature: chocolate as a respite from a workplace gone mad.

"The only thing that made me happier than this vicarious chocolate experience was going home at the end of each day. Unfortunately, I neglected to do the things that would make my boss happy: shield him from bad news, impose flawless order over the office, pretend to be deaf while he called his mother to borrow money, and flirt with him. To make matters worse, he hired a panting, tail-wagging, go-getter of a sales rep. Our Napoleon would love it if I could round up Dixie Chicks tickets for him, she'd tell me. His ideas are awesome, she'd squeal. Why sure, she'd be willing to break up with her tall, time-consuming boyfriend to dedicate herself to her job. She made surly, apathetic me look bad. And so I was fired after three months."

Kent S. Larsen II, the founder of the internet news service, Mormons Today, has created a virtual community of Saints. The following is from "Why Mormons News Matters."

"Mormon News is committed to presenting all the news, regardless of how it might be interpreted. Although any given story may cast the church in a favorable or unfavorable light, I think there is value in presenting the most complete picture of life in the church today as possible. Of course, that it is not necessarily the picture that others want to be painted. It is painful to read that nearly a dozen missionaries died in the field last year, or that prominent church members were involved in scandals, or for that matter, that the BYU basketball team is a mess. But the facts in these stories are truth and I believe truth matters."

In March 2000, many of the authors of this volume participated in an LDS Arts Festival held in New York City. Richard Lyman Bushman delivered the keynote address on that occasion, and his introduction to Silent Notes Taken is based on those remarks.

Richard Lyman Bushman is one of the nation's distinguished historians and authors. His books, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (Vintage Books), Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (University of Illinois Press), and many others volumes, reveal a merged dual life: a career of academic excellence at the highest level—he is Gouveneur Morris Professor of History Emeritis at Columbia University—and an unblinking quest for spiritual truth. In his essay, "Would Joseph Smith Attend the New York Stake Arts Festival?" he is both historian and gospel scholar. First, he hypothetically argues whether Joseph Smith liked art. Bushman puts the prophet Joseph Smith in historical context:

"In Joseph's own day, the Hudson River painters were men of acknowledged belief who struggled to capture divinity in their paintings. They pointed toward God, for example, not by bringing the perspective lines together in their landscapes but by focusing on a bright point that leads through the picture into infinite space beyond. The sincerity of this art is surely a recommendation for art in the service of religion. Would not Joseph Smith have reacted favorably to these efforts and added them to his own faith?

"Joseph was eclectic by nature. He spoke repeatedly against having a creed that sets bounds to religion. He wanted his religion to be open to every form of truth, to be accepting and seeking. That is the spirit of the thirteenth article of faith. The statement supports art not because that the word 'lovely' appears there, but because the entire article implies a search for the worthy, an openness to all forms of goodness. True religious art seems to fall into that category."

But for Bushman, the initial question of Joseph Smith liking or disliking art is a parlor game; a probing debate of larger truths awaits—what is the relationship of the beautiful to the eternal?

"For Joseph Smith, the key word was not 'beauty' but 'glory.' Moses chose God over Satan in the first book of Moses because God is glorious and Satan is not. 'Where is thy glory,' he asked Satan in the confrontation, 'that I should worship thee.' Satan was darkness; God was glory. God's works, Moses is told when he first sees God, reveal his glory. 'No man can behold all my works, except he behold all my glory.'"