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Don't scoff at New Year's predictions

12/27/2017

When it comes to predicting the future, Americans long have been obsessed with transportation. It seems we don’t like to sit still, and we really want to get where we’re going faster and cheaper.

It’s a thought that has long captured imaginations on New Year’s Eve, so it may not be too jarring to read this editorial from the St. Louis Star and Times, published Jan. 2, 1917:

“Discussions at the convention of the American Association for the Advance of Science, in New

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'Yes, Virginia' keeps warming the Christmas season

12/21/2017

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You don’t have to study newspaper opinion writing long before realizing that arguably the most enduring editorial ever written was an answer to an 8-year-old girl who wrote a letter to the editor about Santa Claus.

During the years I taught the craft as an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University, I used to joke with students that nothing they could write about wars, corruption in high places or any of society’s other ills would have the impact of the The New York Sun’s defense of Santa Claus in 1897.

At least, I doubted whether anything they wrote would inspire movies or a cantata as that one did.

At first, I said this with an absurd sense of irony. But as time went on, I began to understand the brilliant wisdom Francis Pharcellus Church, the author of that piece, gave the world as his legacy. I also began to appreciate what an appropriate Christmas message it is.

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Another Pioneer Park plan? That's a good thing

12/19/2017

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The hopeful look in the eyes of Pioneer Park Coalition members I met with Tuesday afternoon was familiar. I’ve seen it so many times before on the faces of others.

When I asked the coalition’s executive director, David Garbett, whether he believes this time, really and truly, the city’s most centrally located park — once the site of a Mormon pioneer fort built in 1847, but for decades now the city’s largest open-air drug market — can be turned into a family friendly,

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Believe it or not, Utah's air is getting better

12/13/2017

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The caller was so angry she never gave the mayor a chance to respond.

“You simply must do something about the terrible smog in Salt Lake City,” she said. “I simply can’t stand it any longer.”

If nothing was done, she said, “I’m going to sell my house and move to Los Angeles.”

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Let people have mother-in-law apartments

12/12/2017

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Of all the market forces politicians like to try to change, the one labeled “affordable housing” may be the trickiest.

In Salt Lake City, the Redevelopment Agency has just allocated $17.6 million for affordable housing initiatives, ranging from a fund to help developers include more low-income housing in their apartment projects to renovating an old motel on North Temple into a project where no more than half the units would qualify as low-income.

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No, soccer stadiums don't make money

12/6/2017

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I hate to be the one to say I told you so, but …

The truth is I’d have to get in line.

And I’d have to stand somewhere behind former Salt Lake County mayor Peter Corroon, who would be first.

Eleven years ago, when the then-owners of the professional soccer team Real Salt Lake argued like

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In America, national monuments are undemocratic

12/6/2017

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“Everybody's talking at me
I don't hear a word they're saying…”
—Song lyrics by Fred Neil, popularized by Harry Nilsson, 1969

This is what happens when you don’t require a democratic, public process: People scream at each other and call each other names, politicians demonize their opponents and valid points on various sides are reduced to caricatures. Ultimately, few people are happy with the results.

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Don't scoff at New Year's predictions

'Yes, Virginia' keeps warming the Christmas season

Another Pioneer Park plan? That's a good thing

Believe it or not, Utah's air is getting better

Let people have mother-in-law apartments

No, soccer stadiums don't make money

In America, national monuments are undemocratic

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