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Show A-10 The Park Record Meetings and agendas Wed/Thurs/Fri, August 15-17, 2018 Core saMples By Jay Meehan TO PUBLISH YOUR PUBLIC NOTICES AND AGENDAS, PLEASE EMAIL CLASSIFIEDS@PARKRECORD.COM ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL BOARD MEETING NOTICE Public notice is hereby given that the Administrative Control Board of the Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District will hold its regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday, August 16, 2018, at the time and location specified below. All times listed are general in nature and are subject to change by the Board Chair. AMENDED AGENDA DATE: Thursday, August 16, 2018 7:15 PM LOCATION:Trailside Park, 5715 Trailside Drive, Park City, UT 84098 7:30 PM Updates and discussion on roles of each District committee 6:00 PM Call to Order and Public Input 8:00 PM Director comments 6:10 PM Review of the history of recreation in Park City and Snyderville Basin and discussion on the ice arena agreement update; Ken Fisher, Park City Recreation Manager 8:15 PM Board member questions and comments 8:30 PM quisition Closed Session: Personnel and Property Ac- 6:40 PM Consent Agenda 1. Request to approve minutes 7/19/18 2. Request to approve the prior month’s expenditures 9:15 PM Adjourn 6:45 PM Review of 2018 2nd quarter financial report 6:50 PM Review of 2019 budget process Questions on department updates One or more members of the Board may attend by electronic means. Such members may fully participate in the proceedings as if physically present. The anchor location for purposes of the electronic meeting is the Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District Administrative Offices, 5715 Trailside Drive, Park City, Utah. Venezuelans find new home in Utah as nation declines Immigrants share views of optimism and pessimism TIM VANDENAK Standard-Examiner NORTH OGDEN (AP) — There have been times, especially early on after he left Venezuela, that Daniel Hernandez felt overwhelmed, lost, out of place. “I’ve gone through a lot,” said Hernandez, who migrated here in 2015 given the increasing political and economic unrest in Venezuela and now lives in North Ogden. “I felt depressed. I cried like a child. I missed my home, my people.” His mother died back in Venezuela and he was unable to return for her burial. He was diagnosed with glaucoma and lost partial sight in one eye. He had to scrap for work early on, taking landscaping and other odd jobs. Things are better now. He and wife Leanniz Chavez have steady work, their applications with U.S. immigration officials for political asylum are pending, and their daughter has left the instability of Venezuela for Argentina, tempering the cause for a lot of concern. Still, it can be heartbreaking, watching as his native country — governed by an increasingly authoritarian, socialist government and characterized by runaway inflation and scarce food supplies — seemingly slips further into chaos. “It makes me sad to say — people look in the trash for food to eat,” said Hernandez, who ran a small company that serviced medical and exercise equipment in Venezuela. He now lives in a newly built North Ogden townhouse and, finances permitting, sends powdered milk, soap, aspirin, deodorant and other scarcities to family still living in Venezuela. Venezuelans are stampeding from the country in increasing numbers because of rising crime, limited medical supplies and blackouts. Many, like Hernandez and his wife, are coming to Utah and the rest of the United States, seeking refuge and relief. An estimated 2,935 people with Venezuelan roots lived in Utah in 2015, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Thomas Reams with the Venezuelan-American Association of Utah estimates the figure has increased to at least 7,000 since then, bolstered overwhelmingly by Venezuelans fleeing their country. In a recent report, the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit immigration think tank in Washington, D.C., called the movement of Venezuelans “the fastest-escalating displacement of people across borders in Latin American history.” The group estimates that 1.6 million to 4 million Venezuelans were living outside their home country as of early 2018. “I call them refugees, personally, because they’re fleeing from a tyrannical government,” said Reams, likening the Venezuelan exodus to the movement of Cubans to Florida to escape the socialist government of the Ca- ribbean island nation. “They’re fleeing from a dictatorship and tyranny to survive.” An Organization of American States report last May found “reasonable grounds” to suspect crimes against humanity had been committed in Venezuela. It cited 8,292 extrajudicial executions since 2015, the arbitrary detention of more than 12,000 Venezuelans since 2013 presidential elections and the continued detention of 1,300 political prisoners. Indeed, the Migration Policy Institute said 280,000 Venezuelans around the world had formally applied for asylum, like Hernandez and Chavez. ‘Worse than Zimbabwe’ Edgardo Tenreiro left Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, late last year at the prodding of his son Alfonso Tenreiro, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Ogden, and other family members. Edgardo’s wife, Isabel Tenreiro, moved to Ogden in 2014. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to come,” said Edgardo Tenreiro, 77, who retired as a civil engineer in Venezuela. “I didn’t want to see the reality.” But the threat of street crime, the scarcity of food and medicine, and worries that Venezuelan leaders would shut the nation’s borders convinced him it was time to leave. He moved to his son’s home in Ogden. He pines for his country and speaks sadly of what it’s become. “It’s really a mess. It’s worse than Zimbabwe,” he said, alluding to the volatile African nation ruled by dictator Robert Mugabe until he was ousted in a military coup last year. “Now the example is Venezuela and, really, I’m sorry for that.” Alfonso Tenreiro, who came to the United States in 1981 when he was 16 to study and stayed after marrying an American woman he met later in college, last visited Venezuela in the early 2000s. He’s a classical composer. An incident during the premiere of one of his works in Caracas prompted the hard decision to steer clear of the nation, at least while instability reigns. The Caracas mayor gave a speech at the intermission of the program, touting the successes of the socialist government, sparking a tense shouting match in the audience among regime foes and supporters. “For the first time, I felt like I didn’t belong,” said Tenreiro, on hand for the performance. “Just yelling at each other.” In light of such turmoil, he doesn’t want to visit and put himself in harm’s way given his wife and son here in Ogden, though he misses the South American country. He notes three extended family members who were kidnapped, one by leftist Colombian rebels, the others by Venezuelan criminals. Though they survived, the incidents underscore the dangers of being in Venezuela. “Anything can happen, anytime,” said Isabel Tenreiro, his mother, seated in the Ogden home she now shares with her son, near the grand piano where he writes his music. Another piece written by Al- fonso Tenreiro, also a music teacher at St. Joseph Catholic High School, was performed last May at the Latin American Music Festival in Caracas. He didn’t dare travel to see it. Fidel Castro, Communism Venezuela’s decline, critics of the socialist regime say, date to the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998. He instituted Marxist ideology — influenced by Cuba — and it persists under his successor, President Nicolas Maduro, who took office after Chavez died of cancer in 2013. Chavez “was going to take from the rich and give to the poor,” Hernandez said, recalling his rise to power in the 1998 elections. “There were a lot of people who believed in him.” Corruption resulted, Hernandez said. Chavez — an elementary school instructor in Venezuela (no relation to the former president) — remembers the pressure teachers faced to spread communist ideology to students. “I was forced to talk about Che Guevara. I had to talk about Fidel Castro, things about communism,” she said, alluding to two heroes of Cuba’s communist revolution. As a teacher and, by extension, an employee of Venezuela’s Education Ministry, she had to attend pro-government rallies and don red clothing, the color of Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Quietly, she and other teachers questioned the requirements, rebelled, and after she and Hernandez faced seeming harassment from police, they decided it was time to leave. The couple’s daughter now lives with her husband in Argentina, and Chavez says she has other family members who fled to Colombia, Peru, and Atlanta and Miami here in the United States. Those who remain in Venezuela “are there because they have no way to leave,” Hernandez said. These days, things are so scarce, Chavez said, that fights sometimes break out at stores for the limited supplies on the shelves. The wait for gasoline in the oil-rich nation can last five to six hours, with those in line potentially facing muggings from criminals. Hernandez — drawn to Utah by friends here and now working at an area trailer manufacturer — doesn’t foresee political change in Venezuela anytime soon. Even if it happens, he doesn’t envision moving back, though he’d like to visit. That said, Chavez doesn’t stop feeling Venezuelan, however grateful she is for the chance to start anew in the United States. “You carry it in your heart. You never forget,” she said. Over at the Tenreiro household, Edgardo Tenreiro holds out hope that things will change, that he’ll be able to safely return to Venezuala. “As soon as Maduro is finished, he’s gone, and a democratic government steps in, we will be able to go,” he said. Isabel Tenreiro, though, is less optimistic and doesn’t foresee any thaw. “It’s suicidal to be there,” she said. Rude dude “If you must keep talking, please try to make it rhyme Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is working overtime.” ~ Mose Allison I’ve pretty much, over time, become an unsocial sort. It’s a mantra I repeat often when I’m lobbied by friends and acquaintances to attend gatherings of most any stripe. I just don’t recall the last time I had anything interesting to add to the group conversation. For the most part, they don’t buy it. Their objections often include examples from back in my self-medicating years (not that they’ve totally lost momentum) when, no doubt, I cajoled and carried-on ad nauseam, insufferably so even. Notwithstanding the inherent logic in their cross-examinations, I’m usually drawn to the Queen Gertrude line from Act 3 Scene 2 of “Hamlet,” wherein she observes: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” In other words, I think the concerned individual(s) actually agree with my assessment but, for whatever reason, wish to cover it with smoke. Not to say I’ve withdrawn completely from the social contract. It’s just that I have come to find the art of “listening” much more captivating than “returning serve,” as it were. This is really nothing new. I’ve always been the solitary sort. Me and a book and a glass of whiskey, now there’s a conversation. A sounding board, I am not. An acquaintance will formulate an opinion and present it with flourish (or garnish). Don’t get me wrong. I will listen intently and soak it in, adding it to the mulligan that stews continually in the cognitive centers. My reaction, however, is usually nothing more than, in a manner as pleasant as I can muster in the moment, maintaining eye contact with a slight grin. I hardly ever smile. Often they find this reaction to harbor most all the attributes of rudeness, and they’re probably right. When the stars align, I can be a rude dude. Not insulting, I hope, just not in compliance with the normal attributes of polite behavior. The intervening variables that actually nudged my ornery side into taking up residence at the keyboard while giving my stream-of-consciousness free reign are no doubt the usual suspects. It’s just that I have come to find the art of ‘listening’ much more captivating than ‘returning serve,’ as it were.” Take, for instance, awaking each morning to yet another assault on the rule of law. Such repeated offenses do erode the communal attraction, I suppose, while at the same time, calling for its revolutionary rejuvenation. In other words, we all should be returning serve with more fervor than appears prevalent at this time. First of all, allow me to accept full responsibility for such a curmudgeonly outlook. Of course, anger with the current state of our democracy in Trump’s dystopia plays a prominent role but the boring discourse it has provoked hasn’t helped much either. I’ve heard it all before. It’s all reminiscent of the Dylan line from “Brownsville Girl,” the song co-written by Sam Shepherd off the LP “Knocked Out Loaded”: “If there’s an original thought out there, I could use it right now!” I doubt that anything less than the words Mario Savio spoke from the steps of Sproul Hall at Berkeley back in ’64 during the Free Speech Movement could entice me to engage: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” If the Russians could so easily manipulate Facebook and the NRA to aid in their quest to set up a puppet regime in America, impeding the apparatus in order to stop the machine from functioning during the midterms will more than likely require a solution that both embraces and excites the “left.” The challenge is to convince us unsocial sorts to get off our duffs and once again return to the fray. Is there a plan in place to send this bunch packing? Anyone out there got an original thought? Please try to make it rhyme. See you at the polls! Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years. red Card roberts By Amy Roberts Mindfulness on the move By nature, I tend to be wound up tighter than a two-dollar watch. I often go about my day with an unrealistic, if not unnecessary, sense of urgency. For the most part, it’s not anxiety or stress-related. I’m just in constant “get stuff done” mode. For a long time, I was convinced there was something inherently wrong with being an intense, deadline-driven person. I’ve been told, “You’re so Type A” enough to know this disguised suggestion to relax is really a thinly veiled insult that falls just short of calling me a neurotic heart attack waiting to happen. To overcome this perceived personality disorder, I’ve tried things like yoga and meditation. Both of which left me even more anxious — willing the clock to move faster so I could be released from such a useless, time-sucking exercise. Massages, flotation therapy, self-help books, podcasts, retreats — I’ve tried them all in an attempt to ‘OM’ my way into a more peaceful state. Because I had been made to believe those were the only successful methods of chilling out, and being super chill was the ultimate goal. Tranquility and enlightenment, I assumed, could almost exclusively be found wearing Lululemon. I understand that for many people, all of these approaches to being present are incredibly effective. I have many friends who, if not for their daily yoga class, might very well be in a court-ordered anger manage- ment course. I’ve seen it work for others, but I couldn’t make it work for me. Which turned me into a Type A-Plus personality — determined to force the outcome I wanted. And that’s when I began to realize that the road to inner peace and self-care has a number of dirt path turnoffs. And for me, the best way to be happy and healthy at home is to go away. Planning a trip somewhere new brings me a sense of joy and wonderment nothing else can replicate. Traveling, especially internationally, is my For me, the best way to be happy and healthy at home is to go away.” therapy. It recalibrates my soul, energizes my spirit, and yes, helps me live in the moment. For me, traveling is not a luxury, it’s a mandatory part of my well-being. Just like yoga or a solid night of sleep is for others. I realize I am very fortunate to be in a place where I can align my disposable income with what is important to me, though that doesn’t mean I don’t make sacrifices and save. I don’t drive a new or fancy car, I don’t treat myself to spa days or shopping sprees, and I made a conscious choice not to have kids, because a well-used passport is far more appealing to me than a wellused diaper bag. Luckily though, my sister did make the conscious choice to reproduce, and as a result, a whole new ‘must-see’ world has opened up to me. My niece is almost four. When she was born, I decided every year I would take at least one trip with her. It didn’t have to be fancy — we could go camping Moab — but we were going somewhere together. In part, this is because I want her to experience the same joy and wonderment I feel each time I travel. But also, this kid will one day put me in a nursing home, and I want her to remember how much I spoiled her when she’s making that decision. In a couple months, Addison and I are off to Finland. I’m taking her to Santa Claus Village at the North Pole, complete with reindeer-pulled sleigh rides, toy-making elves, and igloo hotels. Because seeing Santa at the mall is so 2017. Santa Claus Village is also home to the border of the Arctic Circle in Lapland, considered by many to be the last line of hurry and stress. Legend has it, neither exist north of this boundary. Which only reaffirms my belief: Traveling promotes mental health. Amy Roberts is a freelance writer, longtime Park City resident and the proud owner of two rescued Dalmatians, Stanley and Willis. 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