Counting Us

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It seems a bit early to be writing about the 2020 national Census but there’s a lot of jabber going around about the goods and bads that are about to come down upon our heads next year.           

You are probably not old enough to have ever filled out a Census form or been queried by Census taker knocking on your front door. The U.S. Census Bureau had only 6 questions in the very first poll of those living in America: 1) Name of the head of household; 2) number of free white males 16 and older; 3) number of free white males under 16; 4) number of free white females; 5: number of all other free persons living on/in the property; and 6) number of slaves owned. The first count was taken by 650 U.S. marshals who went house to house (unannounced) on horseback to anywhere they could find people (white people). The Washington Post reported this first count cost $45,000, but our government (GAO) is predicting the 2020 census will cost $15.6 billion or about $100 per household.           

WTF do we need a census? There are at least nine censuses mentioned in the Bible. They were taken to figure out how to, and how much to tax people to run cities, governments and empires. We have a count every 10 years in our country. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2010 74% of households returned their forms by mail. Those who didn’t send in the form were tracked down by an arm of paid census workers to get the data. This information is collected and then released to our government and any of us who want to see it and is used for a bazillion reasons, to wit:  allocating federal funds for community and education programs, education, housing, health care services for the elderly and job training; determining where state, local and tribal funds will be distributed for new schools, roads, bridges, law enforcement, and fire departments. Our 911 systems are based on maps from the last census and it helps rescuers plan ahead for disasters. Census data can help you qualify for a pension and help establish your citizenship. That last one is what’s all a buzz in the media.           

The question whether the statement ‘ARE YOU A U.S. CITIZEN’ is in the courts. The Trump Administration wants that question asked of all people within our borders. Opponents fear illegals will not answer the census at all, which could mean less data in some areas. Less numbers means that an area would lose Electoral Votes during a presidential election, federal funding coming in, and the number of political representatives that area would have in Congress. The Census is coming, and the final questions haven’t yet been decided. Will there be queries into the number of wives live in a household? If married LGBT people will be recognized as legally wed? How will transpeople be counted if their birth certificate is different than how they present?  We’ll know these answers very, very soon.

What’s Moving Us

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First there were horse-drawn buggies to transport those without horses to and for cities and towns in Utah. There were barns and carriage houses dotted all over the Capitol and along the Wasatch Front (and there are few still left). Then came cabs that picked folks up from trains and later the airport and passenger buses traveling throughout and across the state to borders beyond. Yellow cab touts that they are the only approved taxi company allowed to pick up passengers at the Salt Lake Airport. In the last decade, modern transportation has manifested bike-taxi’s around the Salt Palace and Vivint during good weather, Uber and Lyft ride shares and Lime/Bird scooters.          

Now, there’s going to be FlixBus. I’m unclear on how this company makes money but hey, let’s try it! This European firm came to the U.S. last year and has now entered the Utah people moving market by offering super cheap fares to SLC, Provo, Cedar City and St. George. From now until May 3rd you can get a ride on their buses for $4.99 plus a $2 fee and roundtrip under $10. If you wanna go debauch in Vegas, the bus drops you off in front of Caesars and then downtown Vegas. Bonus is that the sits are bigger and there’s free Wi-Fi, TV and movies during the whole trip. These are entry ‘get you hooked’ fares and they will go up to just under $20 after May 3rd.          

When I went to Wasatch Academy during high school down ‘ta Mount Pleasant’, the only way in and out without a car was by Greyhound Bus. I hated those bus trips. They were long, and often the vehicle was smelly inside and full of Chester the Molester riders. The bus always seemed to go out of its way to find towns to stop in during the middle of the night to pick up one or two riders. But I know my friends who were forced to go to ‘Indian School’ in Brigham City could only get there from the Reservation(s) by bus when their parents didn’t own cars or trucks.          

One last transportation update-The ‘behemoth to be’ International Center @North Temple and 5600 West will soon be the main UTA bus stop heading south to hookup with the existing TRAX station at the Old Bingham Highway and soon the extension of TRAX to Herriman’s Town Center. UTA and UDOT are asking for public comments on the replacing of an Express Bus service in place of Bus Rapid Transit for Phase 1 of the growing westside Mountain View Corridor. You can see the route at udot.utah.gov/mountainview and make comments at mountainview@utah.gov or call 800—596-2556. Trust me, with the new mega-airport near completion next year, the new state prison and the inland port coming our way, 5600 West is going to be a transportation hub like Utah has never seen before.

Pando and Beetles

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What’s the world’s largest living organism? A whale? An Elephant? Nope, it’s an aspen clone in central Utah that covers just over 100 acres. The thing has a name, too: Pando, which is Latin for ‘I spread’.  Do you have an aspen in your yard? You know they are pretty trees but really annoying ones because they send out shoots from their roots and make your yard look like you don’t keep up with the weeds. According to the USDA Forest Service, an aspen reproduces by sending out shoots from its roots that grow into ‘many genetically identical trees, resulting in a clone.’               

Sadly, Pando is dying as the older trees are reaching the end of their 150-year life, and it may be losing its first place ribbon in biology to a fungus in Oregon. This decline in size is natural but scientists and ecologists are warning that there are very few younger trees emerging in Pando to replace the older ones. Some say it’s the mule deer eating the young, nutritious aspen sprouts. When the old trees die, they lose leaves and leaves are needed for photosynthesis. Without it, there’s no energy to produce new sprouts. We actually are helping ol’ Pando die, too, because the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t allow roads or hunting in the area. Thus, the hungry deer have found a sweet refuge full of yummy sprouts. They have been trying to put up fences to keep the deer out, but the animals jump high and figure out how to get around. If we killed off these deer and kept killing them, Pando might have a chance.             

Near Pando, in the Manti-La Sal National Forest, there’s been a massive death of trees. In the last two decades bark beetles have killed off almost ALL of the spruce trees in a huge area of the mountains above Mt. Pleasant to south of Ephraim. The Forest Service is about to embark on one of the largest logging projects in modern history to get that dead wood out of there and replant with conifer seedlings and planning better space in the forest. The wood will be used to build log homes, chopped to size for firewood/fireplaces and then chipped for bedding used by local turkey growers.  The USDA reported in 2018 that Utah had an inventory of 2.9 million turkeys and 815,000 pullets (baby turkeys).             

It’s warm outside now and we all love to head up to the mountains to hike and bike or simply enjoy the views. When you’re in forested areas you can see the dead trees almost everywhere now. Scientists tell us that bark beetles are on the rise due to climate change. What’s super scary about their never-ending destruction is that forests of dead trees are fodder for wildfires. Remember last falls fires in the Western half of our country? Given the massive rains we’ve had this year the underbrush is double, no, triple the normal size we usually get. Those grasses and brush will dry out and we could be headed for another bad fire season fueled again by massive acres of dead trees. As Smokey the Bear says, “Please be careful!” when you’re out in our forests this summer and don’t help start a fire.

Dark Sky Watching

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Spring has sprung, Fall has fell, and damn it’s nice as hell (outside)! Just as the tulips start to bloom people look up from their screens, walk outside, blink profusely and look at the big blazing orange ball in the sky and yell HUZZAH! Or ask WTF IS THAT? Then, without any rhyme or reason, they run to big open spaces (generally south) by bike, car or plane and attempt to avoid the crowds at the ‘Big Five’ parks to get a good weekend dose of Vitamin D, exercise and hopefully fun. We Utahns love our parks and backwoods and it’s one of the many reasons some of us stay in this politically odd state. Oh, to sit by a campfire after river run or day hike among a red rock canyon and look up at the night sky and see the stars we miss viewing whilst living along the Wasatch Front. The bigger the city, the less likely stars can be seen at dark because there is too much night light pollution from street lights, buildings, signs, and thousands of exterior lights on homes.

My Navajo friend from high school once told me that they look at the night sky and see the stars as just ‘holes in the blanket’. I remember watching Halley’s Comet slowly cross the sky in 1986 from the top of a houseboat at Lake Powell. Wow. That sight, with the bazillions of stars/planets and the Milky Way was an image and memory I will never forget. On a clear night in a dark sky you can see star clusters, over 80 constellations, spiral galaxies and the International Space Station circling the earth. Finding dark skies though is getting harder and harder as cities grow. This isn’t just a Utah problem, it’s an international issue. As a result, concerned citizens have lobbied for, and helped create ‘Dark Sky Parks’ and subsequently an industry called ‘astro-tourism’ has become a real thing. 

Utah just got it’s lucky 13th park designation right by Dinosaur National Monument by the Utah-Colorado border. We actually lead the world in Sky Parks!  To date, our parks are all over the state from north to south and east to west and include Antelope Island State Park/Antelope Island, Natural Bridges National Monument, Weber County North Fork Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Dead Horse Point State Park, Dimple Dell Regional Park, Goblin Valley State Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Deer Creek State Park, Flight Park State Recreation Area, Canyonlands National Park.

According to visitutah.com there are more than 60 certified or in-process International Dark Sky Parks and Communities that are part of a catalog of the finest dark skies in the world, adding that eighty percent of Americans live where they can’t see the Milky Way due to light pollution. This means we are really lucky to have so many insane opportunities for stargazing (when Mother Nature isn’t dumping record rains or snows on our heads). You can get more information on all of this at the Utah Office of Tourism at 300 N. State Street, at the top of Capitol Hill just below the Capitol Building.  800-200-1160