POSTED // Aug 29,2012 - For Utahns, Mormons specifically, the weeks-long debate over Mitt Romney’s taxes had a back story. Because Mormons have a love-hate relationship with wealth.

POSTED // Aug 15,2012 - Built 12 years ago by a consortium of local interest groups, Bend-in-the-River was once an attractive destination for students and nature lovers. Or so the residual evidence suggests.

POSTED // Aug 8,2012 - Over the years, I have come to admire the people who produce newspapers, especially reporters who are able to write coherently and gracefully on deadline—a skill I never mastered. I did learn to write a tolerable lead paragraph, but my favorite journalistic convention was “the reporter’s notebook.” It is typically the residue of a published story.

POSTED // Aug 1,2012 - We had biked a few miles on a dirt track north of Dead Horse Point before stopping to take in the distant rock-and-river spectacle from a cliff-top promontory.

POSTED // Jul 25,2012 - Lost any keys lately? I lost a spare set about a year ago in my home. I was sure they were under something or had fallen behind something. I was equally convinced they’d turn up during some deep cleaning of my dresser or coat closet.

POSTED // Jul 11,2012 - While walking in my neighborhood recently, I crossed paths with a large, regal dog whose coat of blond curls evoked Shirley Temple. A middle-age woman was on the other end of its leash. I stopped to greet the dog. “Is it a Standard Poodle?” I asked his owner admiringly. She stiffened. “No,” she replied archly, “he is a Labradoodle.”

POSTED // Jul 5,2012 - Just before the housing bubble burst, a Gen-X couple I know re-negotiated the terms of their mortgage. The wife told me that they got an “awesome deal” because the loan officer took a shine to them. “He said we were a cool couple,” she confided.

POSTED // Jun 20,2012 - There are more than 400 places in the United States where Pickle-Ball is played. Ogden is one. Brigham, Hurricane, St. George and Cedar City are also on the list.

POSTED // May 30,2012 - If you were going to make a movie of your life story, it would be a challenge to select the right scenes, but it would be much harder to choose songs for the soundtrack.

POSTED // May 23,2012 - The genesis of this column was a report of fixed-gear bikes—fixies—becoming the favored accessory of hip urbanites in Paris.