| Show X 1 8A Tuesday November 23 1999 Standard-Examin- Standard-Examin- Opinion tj er SERVING THE TOP OF UTAH SINCE 1888 Scott Trundle Publisher Don Porter Editorial Page Editor Ron Thornburg Managing Editor OUR VIEW Act now to preserve the views in 2020 we continue our current practices the rural atmosphere of our counties will be plowed under by urban sprawl Editor’s note: This is the third cate of planned and higher-densit- y editoinstallment of our five-pa- rt housing Along this line if the average residential rial series on Envision Utah’s lot size were reduced from 35 Quality Growth Strategy acre to 29 acres the total land consumed by the million-plu- s Utahns know views That’s people expected to arrive here the price of real in the next 20 years would estate on the Wasatch Front’s drop from 325 square miles to 126 square miles That’s a east benches climbs to match bunch of fields And it’s also a the elevation That’s why bunch less expensive infrathousands of tourists descend structure of asphalt pipes and on our state each year Utahns understand that the cable ideal view is not another subThe Quality Growth Act division They’ve confirmed the ’99 Legislature passed that in for instance polls that was a by first step heartening show a good majority of our seeks to exEnvision Utah citizens want the state’s repand upon its goals of offering maining open areas protected incentives for communities to But unless we change our habpreserve space Its recommenits of haphazard zoning and dations include for instance unplanned sprawl the primary promoting reuse of currently x iews in the Top of Utah will developed land - recycling e of rooftops or fences abandoned properties instead 1: ich of us could figure that of building on new ground It cut merely by driving through would also make land trades our communities All boast easier - whether it be by federthe familiar sight of plywood-and-truor owners of sensial construction But it’s tiveagencies land who want an extaken Envision Utah to kick for more easily us in our complacent seat and change developable land say: Look at what you’re losEnvision Utah also suggests ing by carrying on business in the same old fashion that governments work more What is that exactly? It does closely with private conservation groups such as The Nainclude the vulnerable wetture Conservancy which has lands along the Great Salt Lake But think first of all of already purchased significant lake-shothat grain field down the acreage And it adthe use of conservavocates Envision to street According subdieasements tion that allow a Utah projections if our continue visions and businesses continfamily to farming without being forced to sell ue to expand at the current out to developers rate the only green in such communities as West Haven The Utah we once knew West Point and Syracuse will we want our children to that be in developers’ pockets is fast receding into hisknow Goodbye rural atmosphere cities and counWhether tory We must act now to preties follow Envision Utah’s serve agricultural and other path or create one of their open land Most Utahns unown the important thing is to derstand that but don’t know act how to proceed Envision Utah provides some thoughtWednesday: Part four of our ful ways editorial series will discuss water and the need for more conservaThis public-privat- e organition zation has long been an advo If We 1 ss ho-hu- m re COLUMNS Pendulum swings toward discipline Parents can spank without fear of abuse charges Ruling: The nice thing about pendulums is they eventually swing back Several unrelated events in recent weeks prove the rule and suggest that Americans are fed up with 20th century victimology and its illegitimate offspring the government worker Dribbling for dollars Having just lost the rights to NASCAR CBS muscled aside Fox and Disney’s ABC and ESPN in the bidding for NCAA The NCAA has signed a billion deal with CBS broadcast March Madness its single elimination tournament that decides the national college basketball championship 64-tea- m i p A deal this large this lucrative has got to change what is supposed to be after all an amateur sport Certainly there will be renewed demands for colleges to pay their top players to cut the marquee athletes in on all the revenue they’re generating I average of the 1 contract $563 million launches the National Colle The per-ye- ar i giate Athletic Association into the upper reaches of professional sports The deal which runs from 2002 to 2013 is unprecedented in that CBS also locked up all the rights to cable radio licensing corporate sponsorship merchandising Web sites and The rival networks will be watching closely if and how well those rights pay off The per-yeaverage of the new contract is more than two and a half times the value of the existing one Big time basketball is indeed bigger Whether better is a judgment for another time - Scripps Howard News Service ar t well-place- self-estee- m A state Supreme Court for example says that children may be spanked without parents’ fear of being charged with abuse a local school board says violent hoodlums won’t be tolerated regardless of how many celebrities and TV cameras show up a state board of education resolves that children should be disciplined rather than drugged into appropriate behavior Ask teachers what’s wrong with education these days and most will tell you: No discipline No consequences No “guts” among administrators emasculated by civil rights agitators litigators and Bless my stars and stripes but common sense seems to be making a comeback As you give thanks this week consider these glad tidings: In Colorado a few days ago the State Board of Education passed a resolution recognizing that many discipline problems are just that rather than biological disorders requiring psychotropic remedy The board resolved to encourage school personnel to use “proven academic andor classroom management solutions to resolve behavior attention and learning difficulties” The board also resolved “to encourage greater communication and education among parents educators and medical professionals about the effect of psychotropic drugs on student achievement and our ability to provide a safe and civil learning environment” self-estee- m par- ents too busy to notice that Johnny’s well just a little monster frankly School board members in Decatur 111 tried to say as much when they reexpulsions to six cently issued two-yestudents who rioted at a football game Was the expulsion deserved? Surely Excessive? Probably About time? You bet czar Jesse Predictably civil-righ“The Reverend” Jackson appeared on the scene and demanded that the boys be readmitted to school These “children” - three of whom are freshmen for the third time - are being deprived of their right to an education and need help not punishment Jackson says The reverend may be right that the ar boys need help but that fact doesn’t preclude the need for punishment as well Our failure to endorse punishment as an option both to parents and teachers is surely responsible for the escalation in disrespect violence and other social pathologies common among youth as never before In a compromise the school board has reduced the boys’ expulsion to one year and offered placement in an alternative school where the students can continue “learning” A fair enough compromise though Jackson who leminds me of one of those old vets who never got word that the war ended plans to persevere The boys meanwhile might have benefited long ago from a visit with another man of the cloth the Rev Donald Cobble who wound up in court on child abuse charges for spanking his son with a leather strap A few days ago the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court threw out the case ruling that Cobble had a right to discipline his son absent “substantial risk” of injury Individually we may disagree with the draconian measures both of Cobble and the Decatur school board We may even take issue with the Colorado Board of Education’s implication that some misbehavior can’t be excused with a doctor’s note ts But collectively we might enjoy a sigh of relief as the pendulum begins its journey back toward personal responsibility accountability and consequences Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel She welcomes at Kparkerfa Kparkercom hut cannot respond to all messages individually The treasured Thanksgiving book This family’s journey through the holiday has been chronicled BOSTON - We are on countdown to The paper and pen those basic kitchen utensils with which we map out this feast are set upon the table Lists must be made post-it- s must be posted attention must be paid I reach up to the kitchen shelf for the duly designated Thanksgiving book in search of guidance to family feasts past A small navy notebook with gravy stains and mysterious cranberry-colore- d splotches has been stashed away since last November It sits somewhere between “The Joy of Cooking” and a book stuffed with yellowing recipes that someone someday surely will make I brush the cover and open the pages in search of tips: which pies were eaten last year how many pans of stuffing and pounds of turkey were devoured did we run out of white wine or red? This small book has become my family’s archeological record of Thanksgiv-ir- g Along with entries about potatoes sweet and not there are seating lists culinary hits and flops portion control and portions out of control It’s as close as we come to a family bible On Thursday it will be exactly 10 years since this book and this holiday moved one door and one generation down the street and into our home The tradition was delivered into our ambivalent hands an unmistakable rite of passage incontrovertible proof that we had come of age My aunt handed it over with pleasure and reservations Could we be trusted with the stuff and stuffing of this inheritance? In fact over a decade our original vow to be culinary conservatives has T-D- ay ANOTHER VIEW In other words some “children” might benefit more from consequences than from drugs when it comes to discipline and learning Such as perhaps being expelled for rioting? Or getting a d exclamation point on the behind rather than been stretched if not broken Chestnuts have crept into the stuffing Sauteed apples and onions now sit beside the dreaded green bean casserole Pecan pie has appeared along with a next to the lemon chiffon Even the book has changed My aunt's fine hand managed to fit a whole year’s worth of information on a single page She saved paper and empty pages for posterity as if we would all live to celebrate a hundred holidays between these covers Her profligate heirs scrawl across the white space passing the book around for comments and updates We demand after-dinnnotes as payment for dessert But for all our modem postmodern ways we have taken our inheritance seriously Around our dining room with its mongrel collection of chairs dishes generations and eating prejudices we assemble the people we collectively call familyi We have become the home that our family goes to when they go “home for the holidays” Our house was 8 years old in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed this “day of Thanksgiving and Praise” The force behind that Civil War declaration was Josepha Hale editor of the powerful Godey’s Lady’s Book She crusaded for the union for “the renewed pledge of love and loyalty to the Constitution of son-in-la- w er the United States” The Pilgrims had given thanks for bountiful harvest Lincoln declared thanks for the union But today’s feast is less about national union than family reunion Americans don’t worry about a fractured nation we worry about splintered families We take the United States for granted and give thanks for each other In the years since I became the keep- er of the Thanksgiving book I have learned just how fragile family connection can be How easily it can break off Most of our grown children have left home they are exports from their native Pilgrim state The cousins connect by phone and talking across borders oceans and time zones keeping in touch without touching Now my generation provides their roots We are not just a sandwich gener- ation stuffed between growing kids and aging parents We are also the link the open line the cord We stay in place and in so doing keep their place Today I am much more conscious of how much work - not hard work but daily work - my elders did to keep fami- ly together This is the message given to us between the binders of a small blue book: It’s our turn So on Thursday we’ll be up by dawn chopping onions and stuffing turkey by breakfast Sometime between the pota- toes and the pie I will insist that every-on- e write in the Thanksgiving "bible” There are only a few pages left for this millennium Next year we will be-gin a new book We promise Pulitzer columnist Ellen Prize-winni- Goodman is associate editor Globe Her column runs on of The Boston Tuesdays and ' I I ' ’ ' -- ‘ Z ‘ ’ I I |
