This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
I'm passing along a story that ran Thursday in a Colorado weekly, The Durango Telegraph, to help Utah readers understand why people outside our pretty, great state wonder about us from time to time.
The story, by Will Sands, is about a Durango-based environmental group dubbed Great Old Broads for Wilderness. Members of the group recently felt threatened by posters scattered throughout Utah's San Juan County saying they are "wanted dead or alive."
The posters go on to say the Great Old Broads are not allowed in San Juan County's canyon country by order of the Bureau of Land Management and the Sheriff's Office. Both agencies, according to the Telegraph story, deny any involvement.
The group, which monitors off-highway vehicle abuse in the wash at Recapture Canyon, was on a fact-finding trip to the area when they noticed the posters.
The Great Old Broads were instrumental in getting the BLM to temporarily close an illegal ATV trail in the canyon in 2007.
Perhaps somebody thought they were just being funny. But when you include the "dead or alive" posters with other southern Utah peculiarities, like La Verkin's ban on the U.N. or Virgin's requirement that everyone own a gun, it makes you wonder about the drinking water in those areas.
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Public-private partnership? •I wrote in Wednesday's column about a reader who had noticed a man in a wheelchair scraping off the sidewalk in the 4800 block of State Street in Murray during the last snowstorm.
Here is the rest of the story:
The man, 60-year-old Scott Williams, is in a wheelchair because of injuries sustained in a mountain-climbing accident several years ago. The former owner of a landscaping business says he still wants to do physical work.
Whenever snow blankets the sidewalk, he takes his shovel and gloves with him when he leaves his apartment on State between 4800 and 4900 South. He also wears knee pads so he can get on his knees with his shovel, clean enough of the walkway to scoot his wheelchair a few feet, then repeat the process until he gets to the end of the block. He also repairs and maintains his wheelchair himself.
Williams is paid a few dollars by a business owner in the area. When Murray Mayor Dan Snarr heard about Williams' commitment, he told the volunteer snow scraper he would pay him $10 an hour out of his own pocket to clean the public walkway.
Williams and Snarr have become friends and Williams, who lives on disability payments and can't afford to buy Christmas cards, gives the mayor a handmade card at Yule time. He also gives the mayor his résumé periodically, hoping to land a job "where I actually do something, not just sit there and greet people."
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Troops to the rescue? •I wrote recently about a 7th-grader at a Davis County middle school who says he continues to be harassed by classmates and some teachers because in his 5th-grade class two years ago, the teacher asked each student who they liked in the presidential race and he said he liked Barack Obama.
The teacher gave him grief over that for the rest of the year and the teasing has continued into middle school.
After I wrote about the young man and his ordeal, I was contacted by Pat Shea, former state Democratic chairman and national committeeman. Shea arranged for a breakfast meeting with several Democratic leaders, the boy and his mother.
The young man met with Shea, House Minority Leader David Litvack, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and former Democratic State Sen. Karen Hale, who shared their experiences being political minorities in Utah. Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder couldn't make the meeting, but promised to soon take the lad on a ride-along in a Unified Police Department car.
Said Shea after the meeting, "I think we have found our party's gubernatorial candidate for 2032."