Category Archives: Only in Utah…

Buttars: Possibly The Stupidest Legislator in America

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State Sen. Chris Butters, R-SomeBraindeadConstituency, UT, has said some stupid things before, but this takes the cake:

Salt Lake Tribune – Buttars’ racial slur leads to rebuke, apology

It’s a good thing Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, isn’t running for president of the United States. He had a macaca moment on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon.”This baby is black It’s a dark ugly thing,” Buttars remarked during vigorous debate about SB48, legislation aimed at equalizing school capital outlay funding when school districts split.

Buttars’ blunder outlasted debate on the bill. After senators returned from a 10-minute break, Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said there had been a breach of decorum and gave Buttars the floor.

“I made a comment that a lot of people could take racist. I didn’t mean it that way,” Buttars said. “I apologize to anyone who took offense. I got my mouth ahead of my brain.”

Racist, AND stupid, AND uneducated: the Utah State Legislature’s triple threat.

[tags]Buttars[/tags]

Group Homes for the Socially Backward

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Utah has its own Lost Boys, and needs to address the problem before it gets even worse than it is now. Fortunately, there’s some group homes that help them with life-skills, because some of these kids have never thought for themselves, never had a bank account, never owned a car, never worked at a job for anyone where they got paid a normal wage, never voted, never thought about going to collage or having a career.  The programs need more funding, of course, something that Utah’s not very good at unless it’s shamed into it by one of its not-that-rare progressive legislators. Wish this guy luck.

Salt Lake Tribune – Lost Boys: State needs to help FLDS refugees

They call them the “Lost Boys,” the mostly male refugees from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They grow up in the twin polygamist towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., where young girls often have been married off to older men, and many young males reportedly are deemed expendable.
    Some are turned out by their parents, with encouragement from the church, for violating the sect’s strict rules regarding dress, movies, music, substance abuse and fraternizing with girls. Others are turned off by their religion, and leave voluntarily.
    Either way, they’re alone in a world they find difficult to navigate, or even comprehend. Undereducated, unsupervised and ill-prepared, many of the Lost Boys become delinquent, or turn to drugs and alcohol. They need all the help they can get.

Michigan Republican Women Read This

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The Salt Lake Tribune has an article about Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s days as an LDS bishop. It’s an interesting sidelight on an aspect of the man that many people are curious about – his faith and where he stands.

You might admire his stand on abortion, except for running as a pro-choice candidate in order to get elected in Massachusetts. It’s interesting that people still remember an incident that took place in a hospital room.

Salt Lake Tribune – Mitt and his faith: Remembering when candidate Romney was Bishop Romney
Not everyone shared that positive view of Romney. Though somewhat progressive in his approach, Romney was still a product of LDS male culture of the time. He didn’t initially believe, for example, that there were any cases of physical or sexual abuse of women in the stake, though plenty of evidence pointed to it.
“He’s not a people person,” says Nancy Dredge, “he’s so much an organization man.”
Yet, Dredge says, she’s seen him learn from his mistakes. “He’s in a much better place than he was 20 years ago.”
While a young bishop, for example, Romney got word that a woman in his ward was considering an abortion. This was the sixth pregnancy for the woman in her 40s, who had four teenage children, and she developed some medical complications.
Romney arrived at the hospital and forcefully counseled her against the procedure. She felt Romney misunderstood and mistreated her. The woman later wrote about the experience in Exponent II, a national newspaper for Mormon women that was published in Romney’s Boston stake. Though she didn’t use her name, many church members knew who she was.
The episode came back to haunt Romney when he ran for Massachusetts governor in 1994 as a “pro-choice” candidate. It also reflected some of the ongoing tensions he had with some Exponent II writers during his tenure.

Some context might be necessary to explain some of the issues described in the next few paragraphs:

Regardless, Mormon women in Boston still talk about an extraordinary 1993 meeting Romney called to address the women of the stake.
More than 250 members poured into the Belmont chapel. One by one they called out their issues while he stood at the front with three pads labeled: policies we can’t change, practices we can change, and things we can consider.
Nearly 100 proposals were made that day, including having female leaders give talks in various wards as the men on the high council do; letting women speak last in church; turning the chapels into day-care centers during the week; letting women stand in the circle while blessing newborn babies; recognizing the accomplishment of young women as the church does of Boy Scout advancements; and putting changing tables in the men’s rooms.
Many women left with a new appreciation of Romney’s openness.
He was “so brave,” says Robin Baker, who has worked on Exponent II.
Sievers, who worked with Romney to set up the meeting, was ecstatic.
“I was really surprised,” she says. “He implemented every single suggestion that I would have.”

The LDS church has a lot of proscriptions about the roles women can and can’t fulfill. Some of them are directly based on their sacred texts (in addition to the Bible, the LDS church relies on at least two other texts that have equal or greater weight in their thinking than what we think of as the word of God). These are some the ones that can’t be changed.

There are some rules that are always observed, but they’re more traditions than sacred obligations. Some of them might be negotiable, and some might not. These were the ones that might be changed, or could at least be discussed without risking eternal hell and damnation.

Putting changing tables in the men’s restrooms might not seem a matter of doctrine, but the LDS take gender roles very, very seriously. I don’t know if that one was subject to change, or only for discussion.

The only item on the agenda I can discuss from personal experience is the rather obscure one about the blessing of newborn babies. And I’ve realized that I’m in a position to offer extra perspective on that.

When my youngest great-nephew was born, his health was extremely fragile, and when he was brought home from the hospital, his parents decided they’d better hold the blessing for him at the home of his paternal grandparents rather than at the LDS ward they attend. The rest of the family – all us “nots” and “nons,” were included. But we also felt excluded, because when the blessing was done, all the men in the room (including a lot of rather high-status church leaders) gathered around the baby, who was held by his father. They formed a tight knot, each with their hands on the baby, chest to chest and forming a solid wall around him.

His mother and the other women in the room looked on, passive participants in one of the most important events in her son’s life.

The rest of us watched from the margins, not really understanding the implications, but wondering if the believing women would have liked to be part of the blessing. It seemed the rest of the room was symbolically being shouldered aside as irrelevant.

I guess this is an issue for thinking LDS women, something that I find heartening.

Mitt Romney is a complicated guy. He’s willing to listen to other viewpoints, but he’s a little accommodating in some of his positions for the most conservative, and a little too rigid for the most liberal. He might appeal to the center, but there’s no telling what he’ll think of as “policies we can’t change, practice we can change, and things we can consider.”
[tags]Mitt Romney, Michigan primary, Utah, vote[/tags]

Christmas memories about to go up in smoke

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Salt Lake Tribune – As Cottonwood Mall is demolished, firefighters will train in the crumbling buildings

As shoppers flood stores in search of last-minute gifts, firefighters already have bagged the perfect present: They got a mall.
Through the end of January, the Unified Fire Authority will conduct extensive training exercises in Holladay’s now-nearly-empty Cottonwood Mall at 4835 S. Highland Drive.
“It’s a once-in-a-career opportunity to go there and do drills and practices,” UFA Capt. Troy Prows said Friday. “We use structures that are ready to be destroyed for practice.”
But rarely do those buildings come so super-sized – with 700,000 square feet of prime proving ground.
“We’ve never had a structure like this,” said Prows, 13 years into his career. “We once acquired a Wal-Mart, and it felt like Christmas.”

This little item may seem like an unimportant trifle, but it’s just one more hammerblow to me; it’s yet another place that’s connected with childhood memories of my mom and dad that will soon be gone forever. One more reason not to visit Salt Lake any time soon, now that Mom’s gone, the house is long sold, the many Christmas presents and shopping bags full of school clothes bought “at Cottonwood” lost in the intervening years.

What’s a shopping mall? A big place where a lot of shops come together, but to a little kid in the early Sixties, at least one was a fairly magical place that contained wonders, in different seasonal array. “Going to Cottonwood” contained a measure of glamour and mystery that going any other place to shop (downtown, for example) just didn’t have. Only Trolley Square was more fun, more quaint, more entertaining, but it was designed to be that way. Cottonwood was an ordinary 60’s era shopping mall, with large stores anchoring the ends and smaller, but much more interesting stores along both sides. There weren’t even any fancy fountains or seating areas, at least in the early years, but it didn’t need it – it had a prestige or cachet all its own (at least to my young and naive self).

In the spring, after a long cold winter, that was where we went to get Easter dresses and shoes, shiny pairs of Mary Janes in the colors of dyed eggs. Mom spent a lot of time checking out the specialty candy stores, looking for a particular kind of chocolate fudge egg she called “Penouche” or “panoosh” that apparently only came out at Eastertime. This was somehow connected with her own childhood. She was always tickled if she found black jellybeans, which were a special favorite of her best friend, and another comforting memory for her.

In the summer, especially after my sisters moved out in that direction, we often drove past the mall on our way somewhere, but often turned in to check out the sales at Penney’s or ZCMI’s as summer waned into “BackToSchool Season.”

In fall, when I was very small, we were most often there at night, with the sharp scent of burning oak and maple leaves drifting down the mountainside as we arrived for interminable bowling league games that both my parents played in. Thus we were often there a couple of times a week, until Pop died and Mom joined a different “grandma’s league.” Sometimes we’d stop in if the stores had “late opening” for the pre-Christmas shoppers, and there was at least one time when they had a Halloween costume contest that I competed in as an awkward 12-year-old. Mom made my costume out of an old raincoat, a lot of old stockings, and a couple of odd pieces of lumber nailed together into a T-shape. I was a headless girl, with big horn-rim glasses, which kind of spoiled the effect.

But quite often, the preparations for Christmas would be visible – Santa’s village would start to take shape in late October, in spite of my mom’s muttered imprecations, and the tension would begin to build. What did I want for Christmas? What would Santa actually bring? It was a source of great speculation, and dread, even then.

At Christmas, we’d go and see Santa, although there was a perfectly good one much closer by, in a tiny little hut in the center of Sugar House (which has also been completely remade, and will be remade again this year). Santa’s House was near a giant Christmas Tree at the ZCMI end of the mall, which proved somehow to lots of my friends that ZCMI was theologically a better bet than Penney’s.  About midway down the mall, there was always a giant wooden Christmas Tree designed for school choirs to climb up into its branches, a little like a really steep amphitheater standing upside-down and inside out. In high school, I climbed up into the narrow little shelves three times to sing at various Christmas programs. Afterwards, Mom and I would do some shopping – she always drove me to these things unless they were scheduled during her part-time job’s work hours.  If that was the case, I’d ride with other choir members.

Even as a child, it bothered me that certain treasured shops that had fascinated me as a first-grader, like the little electric race-car and train shop that had big windows and handrails so little kids could hoist themselves up and watch cars and trains endlessly zip around on tracks, was no longer there in the little lower-level hallway off to one side of the main mall. This shop closed or relocated sometime when I was still in grade school, and I missed it, because it was a magical place somehow, and it was replaced by something boring, like a shop for big and tall girls… a shop where I would purchase a couple of pairs of very 70’s jeans before shipping out for the West Coast and college a few years after that.

It bothered me that other shops disappeared, but sometimes they were replaced by shops or restaurants that I liked better. But then those, too, would disappear in some major remodeling project that redesigned the main entrance and forced them to close or move. And I’d hear about it from Mom, who kept me up to date on that kind of thing.

The last 15 years or so, I’ve rarely visited Cottonwood Mall, although it was always there on Mom’s chosen route to my sister Timmy’s house. Mom just could not be convinced to try a different, slightly faster route for years, because she was used to Highland Drive and didn’t want to go another way, especially if it went via “Confusion Corner,” which was really any major intersection that was cock-eyed or contained more than 4 incoming streets. There were several of these between our house and Timmy’s house and they had to be negotiated carefully, if not avoided altogether. The easiest and least confusing was to edge around most of them and go by way of Cottonwood, which also meant you could check out the movie marquee and see if anything good was playing.

The bowling alley was torn down years before, another event that made us both sad when we went past and saw it was gone.  Then the movie theater got torn down and rebuilt into a multiplex, and so that wasn’t the same, either.

I’m not sure what Mom would make of this latest piece of real estate to be completely transformed into something else. I’m pretty sure she’d complain loudly about yet another development dumping even more cars on the road and screwing up traffic on her preferred route to Timmy’s, if she were still driving, and if Timmy and her husband were planning to live out that way much longer (they’re not).

I’m sure Mom would feel sad about not being able to drive out to the ZCMI end of the mall one more time, wait with me in line, and then park herself on Santa’s lap and scold him, “Don’t you come to my house for at least another week, Santa, I’m not ready!” In the old days, this would always cause extreme dismay in the ranks of kids lined up for their consultation with the jolly gent in red, and always get Mom a big appreciative belly-laugh from a Santa who wouldn’t dare flirt in front of the kiddies with this cushy, middle-aged, but still cute housewife.

Romney Backpedals Again: Bike Shops Despair

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Salt Lake Tribune – Mitt’s quote about God not speaking to anyone since Moses raises more questions: What about LDS Church founder Smith?

WASHINGTON – Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says in a videotaped interview that he doesn’t know that God has spoken to anyone since the time of Moses.

Right. What about that Joe Smith guy? Wasn’t there some sort of conversation in a sacred grove thingy? If this guy is actually elected President, can he even ride the First Mountainbike without backpedaling?

The Salt Lake Tribune Obituary Notices: Scrooge

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Mom used to love reading the obits in the Salt Lake Tribune – especially the ones best described as “over the top.” I wonder what she would have made of this one? For my part, it’s a sad, even tragic story… and whoever felt they needed to mention that the subject “drifted from his standards” should be ashamed of themselves.  Because? Ew. Also, HIV and “Aids” are not two diseases, they are the virus that causes the disease, and the disease itself.

This man sounds like a lovely, talented person – how sad that he had to reject himself in order to be “happy” and acceptable in the society in which he lived.

The Salt Lake Tribune Obituary Notices

He loved music and acting and performed in theatres throughout the valley for over 30 years. His favorite role was of Ebenezer Scrooge-a role that changed his life. After graduating from Granger High School and serving an LDS mission in Paris, France, Scott drifted from his standards. During this period, he struggled with addiction and also contracted HIV and Aids, diseases which he survived for 21 years. In 1997, Scott was cast as the understudy for Scrooge in Hale Centre Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol.” During his first performance, Scott’s life profoundly changed. “I will have Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I shall live in the past, the present and the future, the Spirits of all three shall strive within me and I will not shut out the lessons they teach.” This was the beginning of an amazing transformation.

The “amazing transformation” was that he apparently decided not to be gay anymore, and made a big production of proposing to his future wife on stage before a large audience, and marrying. And thus, returning to the fold of the righteous as far as the rest of his family were concerned.

How sad.

As a commenter at City Weekly noted, “….he ‘married’ a beard, and his family [knew] it.”
The same commenter wondered if Scott had written the obit himself, the better to convince his family he really had changed. Even more so, “Ew.”

Reasons For Young People To Vote

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The below is a real letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. The writer urges her fellow young people to get off their butts and vote, because  “Yes, the people who take arthritis meds and think that gardening is a snazzy hobby are the ones who make your decisions.”

As it happens, I’m probably on track for arthritis meds in a few years, as I’m starting to notice mild pains in my fingers, and my shoulders generally ache all the time. And this year I got into growing vegetables, in a minor way. And in a few days, I stop being “fortysomething.”

“I am old, I am old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Bonnie Solberg has a point though: young adults should vote and be involved, because if the infrastructure and educational support isn’t there for them to build lives and careers, no amount of Social Security and Medicare will ensure a comfortable old age for them.

Salt Lake Tribune – Young people unite!

This is for all you 18- to 20-somethings. We need to be active voters. We need to get off our butts and outrun our grandparents to the voting booths.
Here’s the truth: Old people control everything. Yes, the people who take arthritis meds and think that gardening is a snazzy hobby are the ones who make your decisions.
It’s no secret how they do this. Grandpa and his cronies vote. That means the senior group’s opinions are taken more seriously by those in office. That’s the way it works. People who vote decide who gets in office, whether some laws are passed and how tax dollars are spent.
If we make the decision to vote then our opinions will also be heard. The laws will be more angled toward our needs and interests, like minimum wage instead of Medicare. Also, the bookoo (sic) federal and state tax dollars that are ripped out of our paychecks will be spent on parks and recreation centers, upkeep of state colleges and universities and providing scholarships.
Voting is not hard. It does not take much time. By being a registered and active voter, you are contributing not only to your own interests, but helping to make this country what it should be, a country of the people, whatever their age. Bonnie Soelberg
Age 20
Ephraim

Salt Lake Tribune – Keep a distance: Seminary, school should be in separate buildings

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Salt Lake Tribune – Keep a distance: Seminary, school should be in separate buildings

In Lindon, a new charter school – a public school that operates with taxpayer money – and a seminary operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are occupying the same building.
That doesn’t technically violate the constitutional mandate that government not support or endorse any religion, since each organization separately leases its space. The Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy and the seminary don’t even share an entrance. But the perception is there that the public school is simply too cozy with the LDS Church. And that makes a significant number of people, already sensitive to the church’s influence in Utah, uncomfortable.

Given that precisely that perception is reality to so many, either the school or the church should look for other quarters.

I was a public school student in Utah about 30-40 years ago, but it didn’t matter one bit then that the LDS seminary buildings in junior high and high school were not in the same building – I still had to listen to what everybody else was hearing about. Every day in more than one class, I’d overhear what the other kids had seen or heard in their “sem” classes – gossipy stuff about the videotaped soap opera that was the big thing in junior high, and whispered stuff about what the high school seminary classes were covering about more adult topics like dating within vs. without the faith.

People talked around me as if I had been there, or more significantly, as if I wasn’t there at all. I was invisible.

It was not a comfortable place to be a “not.” It was not a friendly and fun place to be a “non.” I spent my entire school career feeling ever-so-slightly unwelcome all the time, and sometimes I felt like there was nowhere to hide from enemies who wanted to hunt me down for being “differnt”, and nowhere to find friends who might accept me without asking what church my family attended, before deciding if it was okay to be seen with me.

Before we actually attended any church, of course, I was almost completely on my own… once we started attending a Protestant church regularly and I joined a Masonic girls’ group, I had friends, but not at school. With one exception – Mark, who went to my church, also went to my grade school. We were buddies the last couple of years there, but he went to a different junior high although we still were in youth group together. And then when we got to high school, his family had moved, and we ended up graduating together.

My 30th high school reunion was supposed to be last year, but it was cancelled or postponed due to the very sad death of Steve Tempest, who had been student body president and was one of the organizers. He was a good guy, who did good things in his life. I ran into him unexpectedly on a trip to Salt Lake years ago, and was totally surprised find out that he knew who I was in school – actually knew my name.

You could have knocked me over with a feather, as it was a revelation to me to realize that I hadn’t been as invisible as I thought I was in high school. You’d think that a big, tall, red-headed girl with a goofy laugh would find it hard to be invisible, but I was, at least as far as I could tell. So to be greeted by name by somebody who was “somebody,” after so many years, was really odd.

I did attend one reunion at about the 10-year mark and amused myself by covering up my nametag and going up to former jocks and saying “You don’t know who the hell I am, do you?” That was a fun time, but the fact that there was alcohol probably made it easier.  Utah does things like that to you, or did then, anyway. If you drink socially, you drink as conspicuously as possible in order to show everyone else you’re “not” like them. It can make for some rather colorful stories afterwords (and worse hangovers than necessary).  If you use bad language, you use it as conspicuously as possible, too. I always start swearing more when on trips to Utah – it kind of creeps my husband David out, especially if I get together with my salty oldest niece, Holly (she’s David’s age). Then: look out.

During the time I was staying at Mom’s house trying to sort stuff out after she died in 2006, somebody called me to get my mailing address and email address so that I could be contacted for whenever the reunion happened. It was supposed to have been this August, but I never heard a word. I checked with Mark, and he never got a response to his emails, either.

Oh well. I expect there was some kind of event, probably locally organized and arranged, and someone dropped the ball on contacting the “unsocial” types such as myself and Mark, who were kind of non-entities in school because of our “differnts” and didn’t stay in touch with many other people after graduation. As a hopelessly disorganized person myself, I can understand if the information didn’t get collected and organized and used effectively, but it would have been nice to be invited, even if there was no way in Hell that I’d bother to attend. I don’t know anybody anymore, Mom’s not there anymore, I don’t want to see what’s become of our old house since it was sold, and I’m not skinny and gorgeous and well-preserved enough to show up with a glint in my eye at the classic reunion dance, in a kind of “wallflower’s revenge fantasy.”

As far as I know, seminary classes are still conducted across the street from my old high school; Salt Lake has gotten more culturally diverse since my school days, but I bet the “nons” and “nots” still have a pretty good idea of what’s being taught and discussed in the building across the street. It’s probably still inescapable.

Union Rescue Crews Turned Away

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Deseret Morning News | Were union miners kicked out of the rescue effort?
Murray said there had been 12 rescue teams on site, but seven were told their services wouldnt be needed because most of the work needing to be done can be done best by personnel who work at the mine. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has said the other rescue teams are still available to go underground.