The church I attended as a kid is being torn down, the people are now renting space from the Episcopal church down the street. As I’m now Episcopalian, but taking a break from weekly attendance, I’m feeling very off-balance about this.
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You may have heard about the Utah elementary school that took lunch trays away from kids whose lunch accounts had negative balances, after a Salt Lake “nutrition manager” came in to investigate why so many accounts were in arrears. This bean counter is now on leave, and the cafeteria manager and workers are being blamed for handling the directive badly. Yes, they let the kids build up the negative balances, so they could EAT THE SAME LUNCH as the other kids. And then they scrambled to apply what is reportedly district policy, because in Utah authority is generally not questioned,…
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Many years ago, when I was young and still stuck living in Utah, one of my guilty pleasures was reading the "Letters to the Editor" and shaking my head in wonder and disgust at some of the attitudes expressed there. Once upon a time, the minor impediment of having to write a letter, stamp and address an envelope, and mail one's important opinions to the editorial page address prevented all but the most highly motivated crackpots from weighing in. In the Internet age, the filters are off, the chocks are away. You can fly into the wild blue yonder to…
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Toole (pronounced Two-Willuh) is a community west of Salt Lake in the western mountains south of the Great Salt Lake. A lot of the area economy is based on mining, and it’s probably a heavily Mormon-majority area, although there’s been a lot of development in the last few decades. I had some relatives by marriage out that way but didn’t visit long enough to get more than a fleeting impression of dry foothills and endless miles of salt desert along the highway around the southern end of the lake. Just look at these immodest homecoming dance dresses! Um. Okay, anywhere…
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Also cross posted at Daily Kos, Glenden Brown offers a perspective on Mitt Romney from behind the Zion Curtain. In Mormon culture, hierarchical status confers respect.  Authority in Mormonism is rarely questioned.  Mormon authorities are bad at explaining why they’re doing what they’re doing because within Mormonism they have the ultimate conversation stopper – “God said so.† I think Romney is genuinely confused when his public assurances aren’t simply accepted as fact.  Why should people want to see his taxes when he’s said there’s nothing illegal in them?  His odd, robotic public persona is the political version of the Mormon…
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Originally, the headline in Google Reader was: “News Blog: Tranny in lock-up complains of abuse.” It still shows that way in Reader and on Topix.net. Now it reads “Transsexual in Salt Lake County jail complains of abuse.” Apparently it was re-written at least twice to correct the headline and typos, but there’s still a few left – it’s a news blog, after all, not a front-page story. There’s another story at City Weekly that extensively quotes a very proud performer named Princess Kennedy, who apparently went to my high school. She matter-of-factly self-refers as “tranny.” Maybe in the Utah GLBT…
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I’ve met Bishop Scott at various meetings here in the Chicago area, and I think he’ll be a great “pastor to the pastors” and leader of the Utah Episcopalians. Video of the consecration service will be at the Diocese of Utah website. The first time the Rev. Scott Hayashi served Utah’s Episcopal Church, he was puzzled by some parishioners’ tendency to define themselves by what they weren’t: Mormons. He even remembers pointing out the silliness in a sermon at Ogden’s Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, where he was rector from 1989 to 1998. “I asked, ‘Does this mean if…
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So: not messages like “love your neighbor, love the sinner” but more like “hate yourself, hate your sin.” Testing Express, an app for iPhone that is supposed to work n conjunction with the WooTumblog app. UPDATE: Works! Still not the link-grabber bookmarklet Press This used to be before a recent “security” update, but it’s not difficult to set up a lightly edited post from the iPhone now. It’s not that easy to do links with the official WordPress app, and blockquote? Fageddaboudit, you have to go through hell just to get angle brackets. All in all, a modified “w00t!”
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…they claim to have infiltrated Utah undocumented aliens’ social networks. So don’t Tweet, poor downtrodden brown Utahns! Change your Facebook status to “In Hiding!” #fb #immigration Honestly, when I first shared this story from the Trib, I didn’t realize it’d have such legs, but I’ve been hearing it on NPR, and seeing it everywhere in my feed. And I’m glad it’s getting wide coverage, because it’s a very troubling and disturbing story indeed. Mystery group lists 1,300 in Utah it claims are undocumented immigrants | The Salt Lake Tribune “We then spend the time and effort needed to gather information…
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Hope my Utah friends and family take an interest in politics this fall and VOTE; even in ultra-mega-infra-Red Utah, there are Democrats worth electin. One of them is NOT worth re-electing: Jim Matheson, Blue Dog incumbent from the second Congressional district was thrown into a primary because his opponent, progressive liberal Claudia Wright, galvanized yesterday’s Democratic convention delegates. Howie Klein: Can Brigham Young’s Great Great Gay Progressive Granddaughter Oust A Blue Dog & Win A House Seat In Utah? A hearty band of awesome Democrats there put their collective foot down and prevented anti-healthcare Blue Dog Jim Matheson from winning…