E81: The True Mission of Captain Cutler

**Stephen Carter** (0:01)
Hi, I'm Stephen Carter, the host of the Sunstone Podcast. As I've looked through the names of people who have donated so generously to Sunstone during the past years, I've noticed something unique about them.
They tend to use Mormonism as a gin spike, which I know sounds like an alcoholic drink, but it's actually more interesting than that. See, one day, probably 20 years ago, I was out in rural Wyoming helping my father-in-law, Ross, do some surveying. Being the strong hunk of man I am, I was assigned to hold the reflector while Ross handled the theodolite. We were surveying near a county road, and at one point, we had to put down a marker in the middle of that road. So Ross takes out a five inch metal spike and pounds it into the asphalt with a hammer. Pretty tough spike, I said. They tend to be, Ross told me. They have to live two lives. He pulled another spike out of his truck and he handed it to me. I looked at it closely and I saw that it, it wasn't just a spike. It's head tapered toward the middle, like a flat top pyramid.
And it looked like a gear. The spike itself had a kind of saw tooth on both sides. It's called a gin spike, Ross said. They start out as part of a cotton picker, but eventually they wear out. But surveyors found a use for them. You can pound them into asphalt and those teeth on the side will keep it in. The tapered head makes sure that nothing like a snow plow gets hung up on it. And the fact that it's magnetic makes it really easy to find.
It's the perfect semi-permanent surveying marker. Most people at Sunstone have gone through a faith crisis where either Mormonism doesn't seem to fit them anymore or they don't seem to fit Mormonism.
It's like the gin spike that wears out. But a lot of Sunstoners have found creative ways to make use of that gin spike, even if it was on the junk pile for a while. They claim Mormonism in their own way, doing something unique and useful with it.
I'm grateful that I've been able to interact with these people so much during the past years. They were there when I needed someone to help me work through my own faith crisis. I love to meet back up with them at Sunstone conferences. I love to read their words in the magazine and online.
And each year, they're also the ones who donate to Sunstone. See, Sunstone only covers its event and publication costs with registration fees and subscriptions. Everything else, the rent, the electricity, insurance, salaries, internet hosting fees, and on and on, are funded exclusively by donations. It's a testament to the goodness of this community that we've had enough funding for more than four decades to reach out to Mormons at their most difficult times. Thanks for being such an essential part of that work. As we head into the next year, we'd love to hear from you. We're interested in your thoughts on how we can better serve this generation of seekers. And your donation will go a long way toward helping that vision come to fruition. Get things rolling at sunstone.org. Flash donate.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:55)
Okay, Bryan, a few weeks ago, Lachlan Mackay unleashed Into the World, a new daguerreotype reportedly said to be the only known image of Joseph Smith Jr. founder of Mormonism. What say you?
Is this new handsome man with a frontier face and moonlighting as one of the Pontipi brothers, the real Joseph Smith, or are you in the Hiram camp or somewhere else?

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:17)
Here's the thing with this, photos are so tough. I'm used to books because we have a very clear way of determining their authenticity. Even documents are much easier. We don't think to write identifications on photos because everybody knows who they are. At the time at least. Then you fast forward a generation or two. So I finally read the article by Locke and Ron Roeming, both very smart dudes who have researched this topic for decades.
After that, I'm probably leaning towards it being authentic. I definitely didn't see anything in it that was a red flag that would require throwing it out.
The provenance is a little iffy in places, but I think it works. And you know, all of their facial identification things, photos are deaf. I think they do as good a job with it as you can.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:00)
When Bryan falls asleep at night looking at the death masking over his bed, he says-

**Bryan Buchanan** (5:06)
That's the hard thing because that's the image I have in my mind.