Salt City Sinner

posted on 8/12/2015 by the Salt City Sinner I moved from Utah to the American South as a teenager, and pretty quickly learned that if you hail from the Beehive State, there are a series of extremely dumb questions you will be asked when people first meet you that would not be asked of someone from, say, South Dakota or Maine.  “Are you Mormon?” is obviously the first one – and a pretty reasonable question, all things considered. That is usually followed up with some sort of question about polygamy, however, which is lazy and ignorant and gets old remarkably quickly. Sometimes I would be asked if one can buy alcohol in Utah. This is, again, a not entirely unreasonable thing to ask, especially since many of these interactions took place back in the days of private clubs and membership cards – but it did strike me as a little silly given that I was often asked about Utah and booze while going to college in Conway, Arkansas, which is a town located in a dry county where sales ...

posted by ViewFinder, 5/6/2012  March 23, 2012 my baby sister took me on a drive to a place I had never been before.  I had driven by the old abandoned building on the shore of the Great Salt Lake many times but had never stepped inside or even near it until that day. I would have never experienced this beautiful contradiction if she hadn't taken the time to share her "spot" with me.  Old and New combined in this place that some called Ugly and others Beautiful. Where paint is sprayed upon her walls inside and out... or at least it was. Where many found an escape, an attraction, pulling them in to share her unique markings. The first and the last time I would ever see her in all her glory as she has been laid to rest.  An "eye sore" removed from the shore of the "Great" Salt Lake.  If only some could have looked deeper and seen her beauty.  She gave them a place to express their talents and emotions- tearing her ...

5400 South, the heart of Kearns Township has been lined with the same houses for several decades.  Having grown up in this area I recall driving down the hill and looking at these tiny old houses thinking how beautiful and simple they were, someday I would have enjoyed owning one.    Standing alone... this one house remains, covered with no trespassing signs and legal notices, broken windows and a boarded up door.  This home was once one of the most lovely in the area, now it is to be torn down and moved to the landfill with the other houses that have been demolished.   Maybe I am a little less educated with the practice of demolition but could the doors, cabinets, windows, other portions of the home not have been removed and used with habitat for humanity?  Many of these homes had been updated with newer window and door fixtures which may have been very useful for the non profit organization in building new homes for less fortunate.  Again, I...

A funny thing happened on my way home from my dad's birthday party yesterday. As I was creeping through downtown, I had my radio tuned to the LDS Church's General Relief Society Meeting (specifically, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's remarks on “Roses vs. Forget-Me-Nots,” which had a pretty lovely message, whether you're a Mormon or worship no gods at all – although the section about the “most majestic and powerful Creature in the Universe knowing your name” obviously didn't apply). I hit the intersection of State and S. Temple, and traffic immediately slammed to a stop. After a few minutes, it became apparent what was going on – there was a truly remarkable procession underway. I mistook it for a gay pride event, maybe even one thrown to promote solidarity after three recent incidents of downtown anti-gay violence. As traffic got worse and I crept to the front of a line of cars meticulously performing U-turns under the mirror-glassed gaze of State Highway Pa...

It's Labor Day! From the "Doomed to Repeat It" desk, we have this bulletin. California, 1911 : In 1912, [Joe] Hill apparently was active in a "Free Speech" coalition of Wobblies, socialists, single taxers, suffragists and AFL members in San Diego that protested a police decision to close the downtown area to street meetings. He also put in an appearance at a railroad construction crew strike in British Columbia, writing several songs before returning to San Pedro, where he lent musical support to a strike of Italian dockworkers. California, one hundred years later : A protest of recent fatal shootings by BART police had been planned for Thursday, but failed to materialize when BART officials — hoping to prevent protesters from communicating about police locations — shut down cellphone service in stations for about three hours. That action has been criticized by politicians and free-speech advocates. Joe Hill was executed by firing squad right here in Utah. His f...

This is a step in the right direction. Calling this a " stunner " is pretty questionable, even given the Church*'s recent meddling in California. The Church has always been a few years behind the curve, but they always seem to sense where the wind is blowing one way or another. From the Salt Lake Tribune : Hours after the LDS Church announced its support Tuesday night of proposed Salt Lake City ordinances aimed at protecting gay and transgender residents from discrimination in housing and employment, the City Council unanimously approved the measures. "The church supports these ordinances," spokesman Michael Otterson told the council, "because they are fair and reasonable and do not do violence to the institution of marriage." They also are consistent with Mormon teachings, he said. "I believe in a church that believes in human dignity, in treating people with respect even when we disagree -- in fact, especially when we disagree." Of course...

I fully intend to stop using Glenn Beck as a punching bag, but damn it, there are a few things that I just can’t let slip past me without comment. In a previous post, I linked to a video of a weepy Beck flogging his latest project/marketing vehicle, the so-called 9/12 project (the intent is to bring us all back to that kumbaya, trans-partisan state of nationalism that followed the greatest American tragedy in recent history). As I stated in said previous post, I’m a big believer in giving people a fair shake, and so I have been giving the 9/12 Project’s website a thorough going-over. One thing I will admit that I like about the project is that it encourages people to read – and, unlike Michael Savage or Bill O’Reilly or any of the other pontificators of the right, Beck actually wants his followers to read *real* books, stuff like the Federalist Papers and Tom Paine’s “Common Sense.” There are some unfortunate right-wing revisionist biographies of various founding fathers tucked i...