POSTED // Dec 17,2008 - nSOS, and calling Chris Buttars, please: In all but declaring a regular jihad on Christmas, the Salina and Richfield city councils have officially decided to 86 nativity scenes on city property this holiday season. nThe Associated Press reports that both councils took their city attorney’s legal advice to—imagine—keep church and state separate and to take a pass on the crè...

POSTED // Dec 11,2008 - First, a promise: This is not a column about the politics of Sarah Palin. Still, about that Tina Fey-does-Palin send up on Saturday Night Live last week: It was hysterical. Speaking of hysteria, I think I finally get whats going on with all the shero worship of the GOP veep candidate.

POSTED // Dec 10,2008 - Last week, I was driving through a Salt Lake City neighborhood, trying to wrap my brain around the reality of being relatively new to this country, of knowing only a short string of English words, of trying to feed and clothe a family of nine on $900 a month and of desperately needing a box of diapers for a baby and two toddlers. nMy stepdaughter was on the cell phone, giving directions to the hom...

POSTED // Dec 3,2008 - The trip from Salt Lake City to southern Utah’s red-rock playground—thousands of us make the drive to Moab during a typical year—will never be the same. There, where U.S. Highway 6 starts its cut through Spanish Fork Canyon, stand nine breathtaking, milk-white giants—the busily whirring turbines of the Spanish Fork Wind Project. nThe windmills are 405 feet high, and their b...

POSTED // Nov 26,2008 - When gale-force winds blew through town last week, they uprooted the last of my neighborhood’s Barack Obama lawn signs. But the day after, when calmer weather prevailed, the neighbor across the street had driven her sign back into the soft ground of her front yard—right where it had been since summer. nObama yard signs and window placards are still in place all over Salt Lake City. I c...

POSTED // Nov 24,2008 - Someone close to me suffered a massive heart attack at age 42. As the clich%u982Dasters might say, the man was in the prime of life. But the day it happenedactually for a full week leading up to the coronaryhe hadnt been feeling very prime.

POSTED // Nov 19,2008 - While working at another Salt Lake City newspaper a lifetime ago, I got an e-mail from a perfect stranger that made my day. Made my whole week, actually. It was rare to receive correspondence in that writing job that didn’t drip with sarcasm or rage, so I knew I wouldn’t soon forget this e-mail. nI had written about my forthcoming marriage to a man with five grown children and a whole ...

POSTED // Nov 12,2008 - Allen and Jade Sarver-Eskelsen have found a bit of peace in a place you wouldn’t figure for a gay-friendly city in Utah: Eagle Mountain, Utah County. nCensus figures from 2007 reveal that 89.9 percent of Eagle Mountain residents define themselves as “religious.” Of those, 88.1 percent identify as LDS—members of the same church that urged congregations to actively work again...

POSTED // Nov 5,2008 - Nineteen-year-old Cole Hartley didn’t know what to make of me, this random person wrapped in rain gear who jumped him as he exited the West Jordan Public Library on Election Day. nHe was peeling off the back of his “I Voted” sticker and about to slap it on his chest when I asked him if he wanted to discuss his vote. n“Not really,” he said. I told him he didn’t n...

POSTED // Oct 29,2008 - Lauren Buchman is 26. She works in a Salt Lake City advertising firm. She helped me write this column. I talked to her recently, just after she had visited western Colorado on behalf of the Barack Obama campaign. nLike tens of thousands of others under the age of 30, Buchman had volunteered to visit a battleground state in hopes of getting out the vote for Obama. The John McCain camp has a similar...