TIME FOR ELECTION REFORM IN UTAH AND USA

The Utah Republican Senatorial candidate, Michael Shumway Lee, lives in Alpine and was reared in Provo and McLean, VA. He will become the fourth U.S. Senator with close ties to Utah County: Senators Reed Smoot (R-Provo), George Sutherland (R-Provo, later Supreme Court associate justice, the only justice with ties to Provo), Arthur Watkins (R-Orem), and now Lee.

Lee is 39 years old, which means I have undershirts older than he. Neither Lee nor Senator Hatch were born in Utah.

The recent primary election show how much electoral reform we need both locally and nationally.

A CALL TO ACTION -- Utah should abolish the caucus and convention system and select candidates strictly by a primary vote.

On the national level, we should not hold elections on a workday almost in the middle of the week. The Constitution set up Tuesday election days, because in 1787 the framers took into consideration when outlying farmers would typically come into the local village for church and shopping.

ANOTHER CALL TO ACTION — We should change 21st century election days to Saturdays and Sundays, to encourage more people to vote.

The minimum age for federal elected office needs reforming as well. Young minimum ages for representative, senator, and president were necessary back in days when people did not live long and did not need vast experience to serve in government. Now cultural conditions are different. We live much longer. The world around us has grown more complex.


ANOTHER CALL TO ACTION — Therefore we should by Constitutional Amendment raise the minimum age

– for a representative to 40 years of age.

– for a senator to 45.

– for a President of the United States to 50.

Lee, I believe, lacks the contemplation, maturity, creativity, vision, experience, and knowledge necessary in a good senator. The campaign shows he knows the cliches cold.

THE CALL TO ACTION – Who of experience can we encourage to run for senator in 2012 and in 2016? Unfortunately, we will find politics in 2010 painful.

Ricky visits the Parade of Homes -- A COMMENTARY ABOUT THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF HOME DESIGN

Richard and I visited show homes of this year’s Utah Valley Parade of Homes Friday and Saturday afternoon / evening. We saw all but four of the homes in Northwest Utah County.


REVELATIONS ON THE ROAD

One of the most startling experiences of the Parade of Homes had nothing to do with the home show: the experience of driving through the agricultural areas of South Utah County and through a beautiful peach orchard between Payson and Elk Ridge. It serves as a reminder of how little agricultural lands remain in this county.

Another startling realization I got after two days of traveling about Utah County involves landscape. Utah County has far too much land invested in lawn. We should not be wasting millions of gallons of water on a plant that does not have sex, that does not mature, that we do not eat. We should not be wasting that much water on such a plant in the desert west.


POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS

I find some home design developments hopeful for the future of modern homes.

Of the 21 showhomes, 7 contained 2000 - 3000 square feet, 3 contained 3000 to 4000 square feet. I find the modest size of these homes a major step in the right direction. 5 contained 4000 plus square feet. President Warner’s home contains three floors and 5400 square feet. 2 other homes contained 5000 - 6000 square feet. Only 2 houses contained more than 10,000 square feet. I will state without equivocation for the record that is a step in the right direction.

For starters the homes have lots of insulation, insulated windows, and energy-wise appliances.

Unfortunately, the jack and jill bathroom with two doors to two different bedrooms have seemed to lose popularity.

This year’s show featured two homes created by the Rural Housing Development Corporation. This organization emphasizes homes in the small communities. Both had less than 3000 square feet and modest sized rooms.

My favorite modest home, located in northwest Orem at 1490 North, was a right cute bungalow with a two-car garage toward the back and a front porch along the entire south facade. The main floor contained an open upstairs with a combination parlor, dining area and kitchen, a master bedroom suite, a bedroom and bathroom, and minimal hall space. Downstairs had three bedrooms, bathroom, minimal hall space and living room. The back of the house contained an air lock with doors to the main level, the garage and the outside.

Two town home developments featured garages in the back of the house lining an alleyway. More homes have lovely deep porches and patios. Unfortunately garages still get bigger, not smaller, and mostly they take up space that could go to either porches or gardens.

This year’s parade featured two duplexes with small yards. I believe modern homes should have less front yard to plant into lawn but enough space in the back to plant in garden.

Three homes contained not only theaters but stages for live presentations by kids and grandkids.

Jan Joyce did beautiful work decorating the walls of Villa le Bigne, in a large development of three story townhouses done after the Tuscan design. Tuscan remains a popular design cliche in Utah County: never mind that this is the desert southwest with its own architectural traditions.

This year, we found a lot of wood flooring in the show homes.


WILL ARCHITECTS EVER LEARN? MAYBE NOT.

This year we found a few kitchens that architects designed for cooking food instead of impressing guests. Unfortunately, too many architects still design kitchens that are backwards to the work flow from refrigerator to dining room. It should be obvious to architects that the refrigerator should lead to the sink then to a preparation counter, then to the range, then to the plating and serving counter, then to the dining room table. Few architects seem to under that basic principle.

Speaking of kitchens, the downstairs kitchen is still a popular feature in big houses.

Many show homes featured exercise rooms. This should help curtail the widening American waistline. Unfortunately, too many of these show homes featured big open kitchens designed not as work spaces but as living spaces and featured pantries. The trouble with having a pantry in an open kitchen is that one has to fill it with stuff and then eat it.

When I put a home theater in my home’s addition back in 1992, my friends thought it was utterly revolutionary. This year, most homes have theaters; it seems to be almost a standard feature nowadays. Most have equipment packages way WAY overpriced and oversized for the space.

Architects still, in the main, do not know how to design a bathroom arranged to get the maximum number of people in to do their various businesses and then out ready for the day’s activities. Several bathrooms have toilet rooms too tight for fat people to occupy. It is obvious from the lack of home urinals and bidets that most architects do not understand that boys have different plumbing needs than girls. One architect designed a bathroom with the toilet on the same wall as the door. This means that if one walks in accidentally on a boy, one will get a full frontal view of that boy.


REMODELING THE PAST TO IMPRESS THE PRESENT

The real estate collapse gave the directors of the Utah Valley Parade of Homes a Road to Damascus experience. Before the crisis, the Parade displayed new homes only, and usually big new homes. This year’s show featured three homes remodeled instead of built from scratch.

One home at 460 East Provo contained 5500 square feet. The remodel included a new dining room, kitchen, and big sunny laundry room / craft room. Its major addition featured upstairs the most space wasting amateur connection between original upstairs hall and new addition upstairs hall. It also featured some obnoxious color combinations and a pergola terrace that Richard noted had all drawbacks – too much sun on good days and not enough shade, too little protection from rain on stormy days.

The next remodeled show home, located on 500 South in southeast Orem, I visited twice – once by myself on Friday 11 and again with Richard on Friday 19. Actually, I visited it three times total: BMA Construction built it as a showhome for the 2005 Parade of Homes. When I visited it on 11 June, I thought that I had seen it before. I remembered its location surrounded by big gardens, orchards and a pasture. I remember its main floor east wing music room / musical instrument display room. I remembered the Upstairs bedroom suites, one for girls and one for boys – with a loft play area and a tree mural. The big new feature of this home was its completed basement that featured a big exercise room instead of a big theater. One bedroom featured a private bathroom with a half-frosted window, overlooking the family room. (?!?) That window fit in the wall above the toilet, so the whole arrangement seemed somewhat voyeuristic to me.


REMODELING THE PAST BUT IS THIS THE FUTURE?

On Carterville Road stood the most starkly memorable remodeled house. The thing started as a 1960s long-low California ranch home that the designer / owner had acquired as an abandoned property. The rebuilt house had an interior fashioned after warehouses and factories – exposed wiring conduits, exposed ducts, cement countertop surfaces, industrial toilets, porcelain bulb holders with bare light bulbs illuminating bedrooms, a dining room chandelier that looked as if it might consist of those halogen arms used to light surgery slabs. The master bed and tables were in fact three slabs of concrete.

The staircase fit into a glass box and glass ceiling on the east side of the home. This means it might help heat the place in winter, but in summer it could be insufferable.

The house had a slide from the main floor bedroom hallway to the playroom in the basement.

The basement featured a family room with a cave grotto made of black Styrofoam. Many rooms had porcelain bulb holders and one bare bulb. A storage room near the back yard swimming pool had recessed spotlights. Go figure.


NO HOUSE IS A COMPLETE FAILURE. WE CAN HOLD IT UP AS A BAD EXAMPLE.

This year’s Parade featured a 15,000 square foot monstrosity that contained all the excesses of the Parade of Homes before the real estate crash. Matt McEwan has apparently learned nothing in the real estate crisis. He built the thing on Normandy Way in Highland in a development given over to French architectural pretensions. The mansion looked like an ancient French country house but bore the name of “Perthshire Manor,” which has all the Frenchness of Yorkshire Pudding.

When one invests millions of dollars into a house that features six garages, that means one has to fill the garages with six cars. When one invests in an indoor pool, one has to swim at least five days a week to justify the investment. When one invests in a weight room, one should spend at least five days a week lifting weights to get value for money. When one has a theater, one feels obligated to have people in to watch movies at least once a month at least. When one invests in a billiard room, one has to play billiards at least three times a week — if not more.

This house had a wood-burning pizza oven. This is the first wood-burning appliance in the Parade for ages. The difference between the Italian peasant women baking in those wood burning beehive ovens in the backyard and the modern suburban housewife installing a wood burning pizza oven in her basement kitchen is that the Italian peasant women used those ovens seriously and not to impress people.

The master suite defined pretentious in this show. It had two doors, and suits of armor stood on either side of the main door. I do not find the symbolism of suits of armor as fitting a master bedroom. Nothing quite as romantic as armor – in a kinky sort of way. The doors provided one entrance and one exit. The tub resembled a roman temple; the bathroom featured two toilets in separate rooms, the shower had both an entrance and an exit into the master closet.


A MEMORABLE TRIUMPH

In stark contrast to this monstrosity in Highland was another large home in Elk Ridge. I have seen many mansions in the Parade of Homes over the years, but this one I will remember as one of the best designed, ever.

It sat on 3 and a half acres of rolling foothills surrounding by small neighborhoods and agriculture. It contained three floors and a little over 10000 square feet. From the looks of the photos in the house, it will house a big extended family.

with a huge basketball court in the basement

a movie theater, downstairs kitchen, game rooms, exercise room, and live entertainment stage.

A beautiful home office with a door off the front porch on the main floor, which also featured a family room, a gathering room, a huge gorgeous well-designed logically-arranged kitchen, a beautiful, sunny, big laundry room with big windows and generous counter space. The northeast corner of the house featured an eight-sided gazebo patio terrace with gorgeous views of the mountains in all direction and Utah Valley to the north. The southwest corner of the main floor is a separate apartment with great room, kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom.

The upstairs had five bedrooms and three bathrooms and all the rooms were in the shape of rectangles or squares.


DECOR

Among the more memorable decorating triumphs at this year’s Parade of Homes:

Very few homes had really neon colored paint jobs in any of the rooms. Only one room stands out this year as exhibiting the decorator’s truly bad taste – a bedroom with brown walls and a big accent wall of neon teal. Be still my lunch.

The downstairs kitchen in the Elk Ridge mansion sat to the right of the home theater featured a decor resembling a 1950s malt shoppe.

A show home at 475 South Orem just off the eighth hole of the Sleepy Hollow Golf Course featured golf decor touches throughout the place. Actually, I do not think I would want a home close to a golf course. Golf balls could come raining down on the yard at irregular intervals and the bad language of unhappy golfers would waft over the children and women of the household.

Thank heaven the shows homes contained less of stenciling profound phrases on walls. The last thing I want is a house that lectures me on how I should live and thinking.

a boy’s bedroom decorated with Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, including the famous one with Calvin resorting to peeing out a bed room window because he has monsters under the bed. “The plants don’t seem to grow very well on this side of the house,” Father observes.

A Chinese bedroom and a two-story den decorated a 18th century ship cabin in that French chateau

For Father's Day -- AN EDITORIAL ABOUT DEFINING FATHERS

Happy Fathers Day to my Father friends.

Mormon Kulchur displays hypocritical attitudes about Fatherhood. I suppose I could state the situation this way: some of the Saints have hypocritical attitudes about Fatherhood. However, I prefer to believe this problem starts at the Kulchural level and not so much in the mind.

Consider this ---

On a fairly regular basis, we hear priesthood and Relief Society leaders inform single women they too have and exhibit The True Spirit of Motherhood when they help teach and nurture the children of others.

However, in all my life, I have heard one, maybe two leaders, or three, observe publicly roughly the same thing about The Single Male and the True Spirit of Fatherhood.

In this Kulchur, Fatherhood belongs strictly to guys (married -- or not) who have gone through the act of procreation.

Plenty of evidence exists to illustrate that Fatherhood really starts as an attitude, not as an act.

Obviously, my own father provided me with a father figure in youth and adulthood. Interestingly enough, so did some of my friends who were in physical age not much older than I.

I have no fewer than five friends who had sound Fatherhood instincts and exhibited the True Spirit of Fatherhood even before they reproduced.

A friend who of mine, 19 years my junior, has in some basic way functioned as a father figure to me as well. I suspect he may be an old spirit to start.

"Father" should be more than just a title on a birth certificate and a duty to pay bills.

Happy Fathers Day.

ETHAN STACEY, DIANE LINKLETTER: MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS

On 28 May, authorities finally indicted the mother and step father of Ethan Stacey for capitol murder. Outside some people carried banners calling for their deaths. One sign spelled the step father’s name with nooses where the Os should be. Ironic that so many people think it is all right for the state to take life as a punishment for taking life. It clearly sends mixed messages – and of course one can avoid the punishment if one is persuasive enough to a jury.

When I read about the outpouring of support for Ethan Stacy and his family, I wonder where were these people when the four-year-old boy really needed them?

Deseret News articles indicate many people believed both the mother and the boy friend possessed unstable if not just outright mentally ill personalities. The stepfather supposedly has multiple personalities, one of which gets violent when criticized. Apparently one of his personalities broke up a jail cell, and so the authorities will charge him with destruction of public property.

The point, though, is this: Somehow the boy wound up unsupervised with both of them.

American culture has since 1946 supported funding military adventurism abroad and atomic weapons system, which incidentally our government used only on our local downwinders. We would be better if a major chunk of that money had funded mental health hospitals, the study of mental illness, their solutions, and cures.

In Utah, mental health receives from uninterested legislators even less lip-service and mediocre funding than does our underfunded public education. Since 1946, these same legislators always managed to find maximum funding for roads.


ANOTHER VIEW OF THE SAME SUBJECT:

Art Linkletter died on 26 May , age 97. I remember his programs House Party and People are Funny which our family used to watch fairly religiously. In the 1960s he was maybe the great commercial spokesman in the days after the decline of the great commercial spokesman of the 1940 and 1950s Arthur Godfrey. The careers of Godfrey and Linkletter bore some resemblances to each other in that their folksy charm translated into advertising power, though Linkletter’s talents as an interviewer were more obvious on the TV screen than whatever Godfrey contributed to his programs. Godfrey mostly exuded folksy charm and a tendency to controversy. Linkletter interviewed and wrote books.

Linkletter’s personal life tended toward tragedy and unhappiness. 3 of his 5 children died before he did. His youngest daughter Diane Linkletter died in a hugely sensational 1969 suicide when she jumped out of her 6th floor apartment window in the presence of her boyfriend. It is now quite clear that the girl did not have drugs in her body when she leaped; the coroners made that point clear enough in the official reports. The evidence seems compelling that she suffered severe clinical depression and offed herself deliberately.

Linkletter, however, insisted practically from the first day that she had an LSD habit that contributed to her hurling herself out of a window on some sort of acid trip or acid flashback. She might have done illicit drugs, but those habits might have also been her attempt to self medicate the depression problem. Anyway, Linkletter put his considerable public relations skills into that tale and became a spokesman for tougher stricter laws against the illicit drugs used recreationally. He can take some credit for convincing President Nixon to declare war on drugs in 1971, but that achievement remains something of a dubious achievement considering how little the war on drugs has actually worked to reduce illicit drug use in the USA. Americans have hypocritical attitudes about drug use then and now.

I sometimes wonder what might have happened if Linkletter had been honest about his daughter’s death and used his public relations power to be a spokesman for better mental health treatment and more funding for mental illness treatments and cures. Instead he went into denial about her illness and her suicide, and the war on drugs got a major boost from a faked premise. Anyway it is yet another example of a family that refused to discuss publicly the issue of mental health problems in their family when the discussion might have helped others with mental health crises in their families move in more positive directions.


THE CALL TO ACTION

People in our culture talk a good talk about protecting children. That protection is mostly just words. Ethan Stacey is only the latest victim

Our legislators should have framed photos of Ethan on their desks. During the next session, he will remind them what happens when we ignore mental health.

Congress should always do more to fund mental health research, treatments, and cures.

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND? GUTHRIE'S UNCUT, UNCENSORED LYRICS

Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America" in the form of a non denominational patriotic prayer

--- note introduction lyrics "as we raise our voices, in a solemn prayer" for God's blessing and peace for the nation "stand beside her and guide her through the night" --- Berlin originally wrote the song in 1918 while serving in the U.S. Army but decided that it did not fit in his revue Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside. His lyrics included the line, "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America..." as well as "Stand beside her and guide her, to the right with the light from above."

Music critic Jody Rosen discovered a 1906 Jewish dialect novelty song, "When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band", contains a six-note fragment that is "instantly recognizable as the opening strains of "God Bless America." He interprets this as an example of Berlin's "habit of interpolating bits of half-remembered songs into his own numbers." Berlin, born Israel Baline, had himself written several Jewish-themed novelty tunes.

In 1938, as Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich became more militaristic and belligerent, Berlin, a first-generation Jewish European immigrant, decided to revive the song as a "peace song." Kate Smith premiered it on the 1938 Armistice Day broadcast of her radio show. Berlin made some minor changes: people might have interpreted "to the right" as a call to the political right, so he substituted "through the night" instead. He also provided an introduction that is now rarely heard but which Kate Smith always used:

"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea /

Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free /

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair /

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer."

Meanwhile, folk singer compose Woody Guthrie disliked the song because it lacked detail of the real America. So he wrote his own patriotic song. Some of the verses rarely get sung in public though, even though those particular versus seem starkly modern.

This Land is Your Land
Woody Guthrie
Original 1944 Lyrics

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?


Confirmation of two other verses

A March 1944 recording in the possession of the Smithsonian, the earliest known recording of the song, has the "private property" verse included. This version was recorded the same day as 75 other songs. This was confirmed by several archivists for Smithsonian interviewed as part of the History Channel program Save Our History - Save our Sounds. The 1944 recording with this fourth verse can be found on Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Volume 1, where it is track 14.


This Land Is Your Land
Woody Guthrie
1956 Lyrics

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

MY FREE VERSE POEM IN HONOR OF THE CENSUS COMPUTER SYSTEM ENTITLED

PBOCS

P is for the pains that you give me. You give some a pain in the neck, but I have a lower opinion.

B is for boxes of binders which we cannot ship when you do not work.

O resembles the number you are worth. On a good day even.

C is for the innocent computers you infected. C is also for the cramps you gIve us in our craniums.

S is for the sniveling sinister programmers that invented you and inflicted you on an unsuspecting sensus - - ur . . . census.

Put them all together they spell PBOCS -- a name that our posterity will wonder why we scream out at night for years into the future.

MODERNIZING THE SUPREME COURT

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to The Supreme Court nomination illustrates the narrow band of Supreme Court experience. The United States has a population of well over three hundred million, but the Supreme Court looks as if it judges a nation the size of Spain.

3 of the justices will be Jews and 6 Catholics. No Protestants, Buddhists, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians.

When we consider America’s variety of towns and cities – contemplate that before their appointments, our Supreme Court justices lived in:

Metro Boston (2);
Buffalo;
Chicago (2);
metro District of Columbia (5);
Jefferson City, MO;
Long Beach, IN;
Italy somewhere to write a thesis;
New York City (4);
New Jersey towns (5);
Pin Point Georgia;
Sacramento; '
San Francisco (2).

Kagan lived in upper Manhattan, Sotomayor in the Bronx and Greenwich Village, Ginsberg in Brooklyn, and Scalia in Queens.

4 of the 9 with connections to one city. I might try humor and say an associate justice has not lived in Provo, Utah since 1922, and that certainly illustrates the court’s lack of regional diversity.

America has more than 200 law schools. The justices studied at three: Columbia Law School (1); Harvard Law School (6); Yale Law School (3). The professors and students of these 200 plus law schools teach and study the same law.

Thousands of colleges dot America from sea to shining sea. The justices earned university degrees at --

College of the Holy Cross;
Cornell;
Georgetown;
Harvard;
London School of Economics;
Oxford (2);
Princeton (3);
Stanford (2).


THE CALL TO ACTION

The Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court illustrates the need to modernize the Supreme Court. A country of 300 million needs more than 9 justices.

A constitutional amendment should require one justice from each of the 13 judicial districts, plus 3 at-large justices and a chief justice for a total of 17 justices.

8 should be men; 8 women, and a toss of a coin should determine in the beginning which seats will start with men justices and which will start with women justices and then alternate back and forth through the years. This means more men or more women justices might serve on the court at any given moment; however, in the long view of time the gender composition numbers will add up roughly equal.

An appointment to the Supreme Court should not last a lifetime. It should last to the age of 86 at most.

The chief justice's gender should alternate through the years as well.