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Dayton vs. Hellewell?
Rep. Margaret Dayton appears poised to challenge Sen. Parley Hellewell for the District 15 Orem-area State Senate seat next year. It should be an interesting battle. Dayton, who has been Utah’s lead combatant on the No Child Left Behind issue, held a highly successful fundraiser Tuesday night at the “Great Barn” on Geneva Road. My sources said more than 100 people showed up, including Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, Sen. Orrin Hatch, and a number of state representatives and senators. John Tinsley is among a number of candidates expected to run for Dayton’s House seat.
Mower is Deputy COS
Congrats to Mike Mower, who has been appointed deputy chief of staff in the Governor’s Office. He will work closely with new Chief of Staff Neil Ashdown. Anna Atwater has been appointed policy coordinate for the governor. See press release.
Utahns Love Mass Transit
An on-line survey conducted by the Lt. Governor's Office on Utah transportation issues produced some interesting results, which will be discussed at today’s Transportation Summit. Among the survey highlights: 89.9% of the more than 1,000 respondents (most of whom were Utah Policy Daily readers) support some sort of expansion of mass transit options for Utah communities; 76.7% support the partnering of local and state governments to fund critical state transportation projects; and 54.6% support partnering with private companies to help facilitate funding shortfalls. You can read the full survey results summary here.
Charter School Report
The Utah Foundation has released an evaluation of the challenges facing Utah charter schools. The top finding: "Utah charter schools face significant financial challenges, chiefly a gap in funding that leaves charter schools with about $800 less per pupil than other Utah public schools." The gap is the result of three factors: Differences in student populations; ineligibility for funds; and funding formula shortfalls.
Charter schools face funding risks because of their dependence on federal grants that are competitively offered to every state. Utah must stay in competitive or face millions of dollars in costs to compensate for lost funds. In addition, charter schools face difficulties in financing school facilities, providing adequate salaries and benefits for teachers, and covering administrative costs. The full report can be read here.
Podcast Watch
The lineup on Jennifer Napier-Pearce’s InsideUtah.com for Friday includes Real Salt Lake choosing Sandy over Rocky soil for its new stadium…Salt Lake County Peter Corroon’s (:56) thoughts, plus analysis from citizen watchdog Claire Geddes and Salt Lake Chamber CEO/President Lane Beattie (5:00). Also, BYU professor Gary Cornia (11:07) – part of the brains behind Governor Jon Huntsman’s flatter tax – on why 5 percent just makes sense; Kennecott Land V.P. Vicki Varela (16:20) on the company’s massive vision to develop Salt Lake’s West Bench; and KRCL’s Babs Delay (22:28) on the role of women in policymaking.
Reader Response
Hello From China
Dear Utah Policy: . . . “I appreciate your sending me your briefing. Currently, my husband and I are in China and will be for the next 5 months. We appreciate the update on current issues in Utah. Thank you for keeping us informed.” – Maryann Andrus
UPD Helps Out KSL
“Thanks for your help (finding an evening talk show host). I've received more than 50 submissions of nominations from your readers. The response has been terrific. There are several individuals I plan to talk with. Thanks for your help with this search for a quality talent to help KSL in our effort to further strengthen our already firm local news and talk image. With this talk show addition, we will be local at least 14 hours every day.” – Russ Hill, KSL Radio news and program director.
Link to Channel 17
Gentlemen: “What a great service you provide through Utahpolicy.com! I can only thank you for the diligent effort you put into keeping the public informed. It is my hope that you will consider adding our web site to your link listings under “Local Television,” especially since we are now webcasting 24/7. It is an exciting time for Davis Cable 17 and we look forward to a long and mutually productive relationship with you.” – J. Scott Iverson (Note: Channel 17 is now listed with other TV stations at www.utahpolicy.com.)
National Politics
Finally, spending cut fever is hitting Washington (National Journal). . . . The Republican National Committee holds its first-ever conference call for conservative bloggers to try tone down the outcry over the nomination of Harriet Miers (National Journal Blogroll).
Casual Friday
At the Utah Senate Blog, Sen. Lyle Hillyard waxes philosophical about gardening: "So much of my work as an attorney and legislator leaves me feeling like I have not accomplished anything -- but one hour in the garden quickly shows the impact of my efforts. There is also something about working in the quiet time of early morning or just as it is getting dark. There is nothing like 'new potatoes', fresh corn on the cob, tomatoes, or raspberries all freshly picked and eaten."
A Fisherman is Old . . .
An essay by the late LaVarr B. Webb
A fisherman is old… When his first fishing partner, his Dad, has been dead for 20 years or more. . . . When his old fishing partners, his sons, have sons of their own to fish with, and . . . When his sons are, generally, too busy with their careers to go fishing.
A fisherman is old… When his mind is a golden book of memories that can be read to old fishing buddies and grandchildren alike.
Like the first fishing trip after he was married in 1940, when he hooked a very large brown trout, four pounds or more, and after fighting it for several minutes, tried to lift it up out of the stream, but it was heavy, and its nose kept catching on the lip of the stream bank. He, afraid of losing it, called to his beautiful new wife, “Reach down and grab the fish,” but all she did was dance up and down, saying excitedly over and over, “You got a big one; you got a big one!” Finally, he, knowing that he had a big one, tried to gently ease it up and over the bank, but his line broke, and he watched helplessly as the fish, carrying his only Mormon Girl fly and his new tapered leader, flopped back into the stream.
Like the time he took a troop of Scouts up to Chalk Creek, and told them that he would tend camp, prepare meals and wash dishes while they fished. After fishing for several hours, the Scouts came back to camp, and complained, “There’s no fish in this creek.” So he said, “I’ll make a deal with you; I’ll go fishing, and if I catch my limit, you guys will have to tend camp, cook the meals, and wash the dishes.”
The kids “Haw, hawed.” “You can’t catch any fish because we used up all the worms.” He left them jeering, and as he walked up the stream, captured several fat, lively grasshoppers. Within two hours he caught his limit. As he approached the camp, the Scouts again began to jeer, “Didn’t catch any, did you? There’s no fish in the creek, are there?”
As he laid those fat rainbows out before them, their jeers turned to, “How did you catch them? What did you use for bait?”
He said, “Grasshoppers.” Within seconds, there were Scouts all over the hillsides catching grasshoppers as he, happily, went back to his camp chores.
Like the time he was teaching a young grandson how to fish. The boy caught one, and cried, “Grandpa, what do I do now,” and he said, “Pull it out.” So the boy gave a hefty heave, and the trout cleared the water and sailed toward his head. He dropped the pole, and ran, and as the fish flopped on the ground, Grandpa called, “Come back; where are you going?” Hesitantly he came back to his side, and asked, “Does it bite?”
Like the time the whole family managed to get together on a fishing trip. On the stream, he, lagging behind, giving his grandsons, sons, and sons-in-law first chance at the stream and its holes, ties into a fat, four-pound cutthroat trout, battles with its twisting, rolling, and leaping power in the swiftly moving stream, and brings it to the bank in front of his oldest son. As his son reaches down to pick up the fish, he hears him say, “Dad, I don’t know how you do it. At least 10 people fished that hole in the last hour, and didn’t get a thing.”
A fisherman is old… When, on a fishing trip with part of his family, he sees one of his grandsons wearing a Walkman, the headphones of that high fidelity miniature tape player clamped tight to his head, and he realizes, sadly, that his grandson’s world is not made up of camping trips, fish stories, the big one waiting in the next hole, or the singing of the wind in the pine trees, but rather, this boy’s world revolves around the all-pervading beat of hard rock bands and the “music” his grandfather cannot comprehend, let alone enjoy.
A fisherman is old…When on another fishing trip, he hears the exultant cry, “I got a big one, I got a big one,” and he looks up to see another grandson, perched on a large rock, high above the birch and wild rose lined banks of a deep hole, trying the lift a thrashing, two to three pound cutthroat up to where he is standing. Then he watches, unable to help, as the fish, with a desperate flip, throws the hook, dives back into the water, and he hears the anguished cry of the grandson, “Oh, no, I lost him.” Then he smiles as he remembers that his son, the boy’s father, perched on that same rock, lost a similar fish about 20 years before.
A fisherman is old…When the clock radio in his RV sounds off, and his wife looks at its brilliant digital numbers, and says, “It’s only six o’clock. You had better stay in bed at least another hour.” And he does. … When he hears the furnace go on, and watches his wife fix breakfast in her fancy RV kitchen, and he remembers with nostalgia the cold back and warm belly and the sooty black pans on an open campfire, … and, when he chuckles as he remembers standing as close as possible to that open fire, and then kneeling down and feeling the branding heat of the rivets on the fly of his old Levis.
A fisherman is old… When he reads that the purists, the artificial bait only clique, advocate that, “The true sportsman will return all fish into the stream or lake in which they were caught, so that other fishermen can have the experience of catching them,” and then he remembers when, during the Great Depression, fishing licenses cost more than a day’s wages, and fishing wasn’t just a sport, but a means of putting meat on the table, thereby helping to defray, not only the cost of the license, but the cost of the trip as well. … When he goes to buy a favorite reel, and is told that it will cost him $65.00, and he says, “Hell, I can remember when that little old thing only cost $2.98,” … and the clerk looks him right in the eye and says, “Mr. Webb, you have lived too long.”
A fisherman is old…When after 50 or more years, he drives by the productive, free flowing Mill Creek of his youth, and finds the old fishing holes dredged, the native wild shrubs, weeds, and grass on the banks grubbed out and replaced with sculptured lawns, neat concrete paths, and condos, hundreds of look-alike, two story, wood-brick condos, and the stream, itself, sterile, and spanned every few hundred feet by “perfect” little redwood bridges.
Or when…He returns to a stream that he, as a boy of ten, fished with his father. There he finds, not the willows, the birch, the wild rose, and the massive Ponderosa Pines that had lined the banks and patched the green meadows but, rather, he finds the meadows over grazed and dusty, the Ponderosa nothing but stumps, the stream banks barren, eroded slopes, and what had been a graveled, beaver dammed stream bed, mud bottomed, churned by countless herds of cattle, and scoured by unrestrained and relentless floods.
A fisherman is old…When he probably knows more about a much-loved stream and its fish than anyone else alive, and while his fishing companions complain about no strikes on flies and no bites on worms, he catches a few of the grasshoppers that he kicks up as he walks to his favorite holes. Then he brings back to camp, an hour or so later, a four-pound brown and several lesser fish, and he hears one of his old fishing buddies mutter, “That guy could catch fish in a bathtub.”
A fisherman is old…When he walks every morning for the sole purpose of staying in shape, so that he can wade his favorite stream without giving out. …When he finds it almost impossible to duck under brush and climb over logs, … and, When he finally finds stable footing on a rock, looks down at the fast flowing stream, and suddenly finds himself face down in the water.
A fisherman is old…When he measures time by the number of pills left in his pill bottle. Thirty days, 99 pills, and the bottle is empty. Yet, those pills are what make it possible for him to go fishing.
A fisherman is old…When he watches light, first a haze, gauze like, making a silhouette of the eastern hills, then a curtain that blots out the stars and leaves the brilliance of Venus, the red wrath of Mars, and the pin prick of Jupiter poking holes in the glowing velvet of the sky, . . .and he listens to the rustling scurry and the chattering call of a pine squirrel as it begins a new day, and notes the last crescendo of the Western Chat’s all night song, … and, because of a long stubborn struggle with heart attacks, or cancer, or leukemia, looks up and says, “Thanks, it has been a pleasure, especially because this, perhaps, is the last time,” … then he sees a young grandson crawl out of a pup tent that the boy, by himself, had pitched, and smiles as a surge of love and continuity flows through him, … and hears the grandson ask, “Is it time to go fishing, Grandpa?”
“Yes,” he answers, “Yes, it certainly is.” |
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