Schoolmarm Wood Publications
is a non-profit operation. In essence that means that we offer our materials as free downloads from this page with our video products being available on YouTube. We intend to continue developing new materials and will post them here or on our YouTube channel, “Stephen D. Dighton”. All we ask is that these materials not be distributed by those who download them. Rather, refer people to this website so they can peruse the entire library of materials. Thank you for visiting this page. Hope you find the materials informative and useful.
ARCHIVE
Sadly, ARCHIVE, our long time search engine for Macs, is no longer viable since the introduction of the 64 bit Mac OS Catalina. All is not lost however as there is now a more sophisticated, multi-platform search system: BahaiPrayers.net
FREE BOOKS
Below are two novels about Bahá’ís in contemporary settings written by Stephen D. Dighton. Locked In is a medical mystery. Breathe Not the Sins of Others is a suspense novel. The books are available in iBook format for use on iPad and iPhone or any other device that uses the ePub format, and as PDF files for use on any computer. Just click on the book title listed below in the format you prefer.
His New Name, A Biblical Examination of the Claims of Bahá’u’lláh by Stephen D. Dighton, is a monograph that went out of print more than 20 years ago. It was the first work published by Schoolmarm Wood Publications. Due to recent requests for copies, it was resurrected from an archived computer file of the manuscript and is now offered here as a PDF download.
These are copyrighted works, not in the public domain, so all copyright restrictions still apply. The author has made them available without charge only from this site as a thank you to those who visit this site. Please do not copy and/or distribute them yourself, even if you do not receive remuneration for doing so. Instead, please refer people to this site so they can download a copy them themselves. Thank you.
Breathe Not the Sins of Others PDF Format
Locked In PDF Format
Breathe Not the Sins of Others iBook (ePub) Format
Locked In iBook (ePub) Format
His New Name PDF Format
ART PRINTS AND CARDS
The ArtPrintCards are in two sizes: full page standard Greeting Card, and half page Note Card. They are in PDF format. We recommend using two sided Matte Finish paper. The paper is comparable to greeting card paper and produces a professional finish.
The Hubble and Nature Art Prints are all 8x10. They are in two formats: TIF and PDF. The TIF format produces the highest definition print. We recommend using gloss photo paper or semi-gloss photo paper for the best finish.
As these are large files, those with slower internet access speeds will need to allow several minutes for each to download.
ArtPrintCards.zip (469 MB)
Hubble ArtPrints.zip (525 MB)
Nature ArtPrints.zip (702 MB)
Schoolmarm Wood Publications’ History
Initially, Schoolmarm Wood Publications (SWP) was just a name author Stephen D. Dighton created to put on the cover of a monograph he had written to help Bahá’ís answer questions by Christians who asked about the Faith from their understanding of the Holy Bible. He is forever indebted to Dr. David Young for his pioneering work and seminars on the subject and the inspiration and encouragement to write His New Name with which he was very pleased. Steve didn’t want to use some form of his own name as a “business” name, so he chose the name he and his wife, Kathy, had given their home that sits on ten wooded acres with a number of unusual Douglas fir trees known as schoolmarm firs.
Steve had attended a number of David Young’s seminars on teaching Christians and in consultation they agreed that there needed to be a two pronged approach if they were going to move ahead with David’s seminars. David had been working on a “manual” that went into greater depth for those who attended the seminars. What he had at the time was simply a typed version of his notes which he wanted to turn into something more professional. But he also thought that having a handout booklet that the attendees and others could use or give to the Christians they met would be a useful adjunct. With David’s encouragement, Steve began expanding His New Name to compliment the material in the seminar notebooks. At the same time both began submitting their work to the National Spiritual Assembly’s Review Office to make sure their work was accurate. Two issues arose: one was that Steve’s work was mostly based on David’s material and, from a copyright standpoint, was David’s intellectual property. Steve was in full agreement with that. The second point, which Steve also agreed with, was that having two, closely tied properties on the subject by different authors would likely be confusing when the seminar course book was published. As a result Steve immediately stopped publishing His New Name. David continued to give seminars and work on the manual, but had to stop when he was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly. Now, more than 20 years later, interest in His New Name increased enough that Steve decided to offer it on this website since David had never been able to complete his work and there was still a need for something that addressed the concerns of Christians.
A Mac user since the Macintosh Plus came out, he spent a couple of years in the early 1990’s gathering electronic editions of the Bahá’í Writings and proofing them so he could search them on his Mac. One of the outcomes of this effort was a book of quotations from the Writings of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, Verses of God, organized around the themes suggested by the Badí (Baha’i) calendar which he made available individually via email each Baha’i month to anyone who requested it. In the process of doing this, he developed a primitive search system for Macs that he kept working to improve because there was nothing of the kind for Macs. Kathy said if he was going to spend that much time on this search engine project, he ought to make it available to other Mac users and ARCHIVE was born. Included in the ARCHIVE library was Lights of Guidance, a work he felt was so essential that he was willing to pay royalties for its inclusion in the ARCHIVE library. Too large for electronic (internet) distribution at that time, he put ARCHIVE on a CD, opened a primitive (by today’s standards) website, and offered it for sale to defray the costs involved. In March 2000, he had to legally establish Schoolmarm Wood Publications as a registered business in Oregon because the demand took it beyond a hobby type of enterprise.
A few years later, Stephen was put in touch with Peter Hoerster, a Baha’i in Germany who had developed a superb search engine for the Macintosh named CopyPaste. He agreed to adapt a version specifically for ARCHIVE which they called SwiftSeeker. Both agreed that this new creation should be a free program as soon as costs could be reduced to make that possible. When the royalty payments stopped due to the ascension of the copyright holders and internet speeds made large downloads practical, eliminating the need to publish it on CD, ARCHIVE became a free download. He also then added a select group of his written works in ePub and PDF formats, including that first monograph, to his website. The introduction of Apple’s 64 bit Catalina OS spelled the end of the ARCHIVE SwiftSeeker search engine because it would take too much time and effort to upgrade it and more sophisticated applications, BahaiPrayers.net in particular, had become available.
Once ARCHIVE became firmly set, SWP began to consider new products, all still rooted in the Writings, that made use of other advances in computer technology. Prints of Baha’i inspired art works and greeting cards, combining Steve and Kathy’s photography with quotations from the Writings, were shortly followed by the addition of calligraphic renderings of passages from the Writings over NASA photos of the cosmos by his brother Randall Dighton. When high quality home printers became common, all the art works and cards were put on a DVD disc in easy to print formats, replacing the individual prints that had been offered.
In 2006 SWP offered its first video DVD, The Light of Unity, An Introduction to the Bahá’í Faith priced low enough to be given away. The production of a series of devotional video DVDs developed and produced by Steve with Kathy’s essential photography, advice, and assistance followed and continues to this day.
In 2017, SWP began the process of making the videos on its DVDs available on YouTube. With the completion of that process, the longterm goal of Schoolmarm Wood Publications—to make all its materials available without charge—became a reality and SWP became a non-profit operation on January 1, 2018 offering all its non-video materials on this website as free downloads.