Episode 162: Madam Pattirini Built Utah

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:16)
Pop quiz hotshot, two architects and a man who dabbled in cross dressing walked into a podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:23)
Is this as bad of a joke as it sounds like?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:26)
Better. What if I told you that Brigham Young is the connecting thread of all their stories?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:31)
How does that possibly make it better?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:34)
What if I told you it involves my kid's elementary school?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:37)
Hold on, I know Mormonism is a small pond, but this is getting ridiculous and possibly illegal.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:43)
And my junior high and the Huntsman Center?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:47)
Go Utes.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:48)
What if I told you it involves the most delicious local gin?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:51)
Okay, you've jumped the shark at this point.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:54)
Stay with me. The tapestry will come together like?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:57)
Carole King's song?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:58)
Exactly.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:15)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:17)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:18)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:46)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day. Saddle up.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:51)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:59)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast. Hey, Lindsay. I had something to ask you.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:24)
Yes?

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:25)
Well, it's just, no, I don't think you'd be interested.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:29)
What is it?

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:30)
Well, there's this new book from my friends at the University of Utah Press. It's about a midwife, has her interactions with fundamentalists, her shifting views on her Mormon upbringing, and I don't think it's for you.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:42)
It sounds like it's exactly for me.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:44)
All right. Well, maybe you're the demographic. Laurie Rankle was 16 when she helped deliver her first baby. I witnessed the entire universe unfold at my feet, she writes in Desert Birthright. Later, working as a hospital doula, Rankle observed firsthand the suffering inflicted upon birthing women by male-dominated Western childbirth practices, from casual racism to unnecessary and non-consensual procedures, including the dreaded husband stitch. After a traumatic labor and delivery of her own, she decided to take back woman-centered childbirth and start a home birth midwifery practice. Desert Birthright traverses 25 years of midwifery, often in fundamentalist polygamous circles, weaving together birth stories with childhood memories as Wrinkle grapples with her shifting Mormon faith. Her poetic voice shines. A placenta becomes the tree of life. The folds in a baby's arm, layers of sand in the desert. Desert Birthright is a deeply personal story of life, death, and modern womanhood in the rural southwest and of one midwife's journey of faith, self-discovery, and liberation in the face of adversity. Desert Birthright, a midwife's memoir by Lori Wrinkle, new from the University of Utah Press. Check them out at U of U Press. And because they're solid people, use code SUNSTONE35 to get 35 percent off everything on their site. Tell them Lindsay sent you.
Let this episode start. Like every good episode does, with a late night message from Lindsay, hey, did you know, blah, blah, blah? I was hooked. It's not hard to peak my interest. It started with a question about elementary schools, which is not how these rabbit holes start normally, but here we are.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:48)
If you saw what was in mine and Bryan's chats, there's like three people on earth that could follow most of it. But yeah, we were talking about, I remember this exact conversation, because I don't even know how it started for me. What was I working on at the time?

**Bryan Buchanan** (5:04)
That's a good question, Ashley. You found the history of being, and I think there was like some...

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:12)
I'm just trying to think of how I got in this rabbit hole. This is what will happen. We both are working on a project that is getting us actually paid, right? So Bryan and I are working on those, and then we see something on those projects, and we're like, huh, I wonder what that is. We chase that rabbit hole down till we're in Alice in Wonderland, La La Land, and next thing I know, I'm like, hey, Bryan, do you know the origins of elementary schools in Utah and the architect behind them? Yeah, okay, here we are. But we talked about the school, so let's step back a generation and talk about one of the more legendary characters involved, particularly in the post-Mormon world.