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Show Wed/Thurs/Fri, December 7-9, 2005 The Park Record A-18 CORE SAMPLES Life. Organized. By Jay Meehan Complete home-storage solutions with a lifetime guarantee Save $100 with $1000 or more purchase Save $200 with $2000 or more purchase Call for a complimentary in-home design & estimate 800.755.8882 12216 Lone Peak Pkwy, Draper CLASSYCLOSETS' offer expires 12-31-05 | www.classyclosets.com | UT Lic# 5579200-5501 Please Help Us This C h r i s t m a s ! You can give a delicious Christmas dinner to a hungry and homeless , person for $1.57. Salt Lake City Mission will serve turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn, a roll and a big piece of pumpkin pie. Your help will also provide clean clothes, spiritual encouragement and so much more to each person. We expect to serve 8,000 meals this Christmas season. O $15.70 for 10 hungry and homeless people C3 $31.40 for 20 hungry and homeless people C3 $47.10 for 30 hungry and homeless people C3 $62.80 for 40 hungry and homeless people G $157.00 for 100 hungry and homeless people H Other $ Coy aie apprfxinwie, inclodc operation expenses and may be used to for programs lt> help ihe homeless throughout |hc year. Noi affiliated wilh the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake Name __ Address City/State/Zip_ I Salt Lake City Mission P.O. Box 142 A good meal is often the first step to a new life! You will receive a tax-deductible receipt. Please mail your gift today! | i __ _Apt._ Salt Lake City. UT 84110-0142 for more info visit our web site at www.saltlakecitymission.org. • SPECIAL HOILDAY ".""' OFFERS!" V.":'•'""••• l/2 O F F A SINGLE . MlCRODERMABRASION OR First MlCRODERMABRASION FREE WITH PURCHASE OF • 6 TREATMENTS ••••• ' • FREE Gift with Your Purchase! (Expires 0 1 / 3 1 / 0 6 ) . INSTITUTE O F ; : FACIAL & COSMETIC SURGERY 5929 Fashion Blvd. (300 E Behind Fashion Place Ma 801.261.3637 w w w . i f c s u t a h . c o m • The hostess with the mostest Not that anyone's counting, but 30 years ago By nature she's Sagittarian, so, naturally, she is, and always has been, the center of the known uni- she and Texas Joe "streaked" the very same verse. You know it from the first time you lay eyes friend's radio show down in Salt Lake. To put a on her. Not that she ever flaunts this aura, it just Ginsberg spin on it, they were starving for fun and kind of radiates. It is just soooo... obvious. Others, hysterically naked. Few announcers were ever of course, have the same affliction. But her? She's presented with a more challenging opportunity to hone play-by-play skills. the poster child! She has long worn her Bay Area pedigree When first encountering her back in the day, she had the look and swagger of a Berkeley co-ed wrapped around her shoulders like a biker jacket. just beginning to take on mountain-girl status. Her She was of "Sproul Plaza" and "Peoples's Park" bearing was that of the quintessential "outside agi- and "The Haight" and continues to carry a torch tator." She was a walkin' talkin' personification of for the communal ethics of Mario Savio and the "free speech movement." She has kept the Emmett Grogan and Peter Coyote. But, unless you've got a good bit of time on your hands, don't faith. She practices speech freely to this day. With her, searching for the meaning of life can get her going on it. be a full contact sport. She can be talkin' to one She has also cut a wide swath across the enterperson, and just by the level of her voice, you tainment industry - most notably the film biz. know she's actually talkin* to someone else. She Scuttlebutt has it that she got her start as location caroms random manager for Charlie Chaplin on "City thoughts and Lights." Now, with unpremeditated •• She's as honest as the day is her on set, how they propositions off one to call it a target and onto anothlong. Sometimes to a fault. Oftentimes came "silent movie" ifc anyer. They are usually to your face. If challenged, she can be body's guess. just glancing blows - nothing more than You would have a bit argumentative. Not that you'd to say flesh wounds. that she's notice. Her subtlety is renown - as always been an She's as honest as "insider." Over the the day is long. was Katrina's/' years she has hung Sometimes to a fault. Oftentimes to your ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ out everywhere from face. If challenged, she Waylon Jennings tour can be a bit argumenbus to where rivers tative. Not that you'd notice. Her subtlety is run and horses whisper. Luminaries from Joe Ely renown - as was Katrina's. If you find yourself to Seima Hayek have partied at her house. But trying to break the ice, politics and religion are then again, who hasn't? It's never been that tough always good jumping-off points. of a ticket. It's the kind of place where, on the Gathering friends for often-obscure rituals has morning after, the term "body count" comes into long been her calling. Somewhere along the line play. she got appointed de facto spokesperson for nearThat's because she's "the hostess with the ly every organically-social and eccentrically-out- mostest." You might even call her a "social anilandish organizing committee to have held session mal." When she gets to jonesin' for a group grope, near a bar-rag in these parts since Kid Curry it's a difficult proposition to hold her back. And knocked over the Oak. whoa! Can she lay out a spread! And vise versa! One prime example would be that relatively As obnoxious as she is, an invite to her table is one hazy, yet considerably creative, evening when she of the .true homespun pleasures still available in and a few other locals, while celebrating their this town. good fortune to be born under the very same bad And, from the very beginning, she has been a sign, concocted the "Sagittarian Drag Ball." large part of Park City's rugby culture. Dealing Although it ran but a few years, this wild and sassy with her was often a mandatory component of soiree became easily the most anticipated event on "rookie orientation." Newly arrived ruggers Main Street's annual social calendar. would have to listen to her post-match analyses as They were pleasure thieves in need of absolu- part of their initiation ritual. A few admitted that tion. They were bluesy hot-doggers and streakers getting run over by Bill Hart gave rise to less and grandstanders in need of a stage. As Albert agony. King might have said (and as Booker T. Jones and Her camping nickname, bestowed upon her by William Bell did say), they'd been down since they children of lesser gods, was "Sarge." Not that she began to craw!, and if it hadn't been for bad luck, ever ordered people around, or anything. It's just they wouldn't have had any luck at all. that she usually beheld larger truths than most - With each passing year, the "Sagittarian Drag axioms she felt duty bound to pass on. Ball" became a bit more kinky and a bit more Now, there is certainly no reason to panic but, magical. It morphed from being just another out- with our sun once again in Sagittarius, storm warnof-the-box bash into a communal celebration of ings might be prudent. And not just because the oddbal! and offbeat. It was far out, man! And Carole Fontana and her flock a_'e loose upon the it was just one more footprint she left on our town. local tundra with raging hormones and psychotic One year she returned from the indigenous dispositions. It's like St. Paddy's Day or Cinco de Huichol landscape of Nayarit in Mexico with a gift Mayo. Everyone feels the urge. to a friend of "Damiana" nectar, the mythical And, if the truth were known, over the past 30aphrodisiac born where mountain jungles caress some-"oddM years, no one has been more spot-on the sea near the Tropic of Cancer. The recipient, to the essence, of what Park City is really all about also of the Sagittarian persuasion, offered it up as than has this Carole Fontana girl. From her digs sacrifice during the next Ball. The ritual jug spent overlooking Swede Alley, she continues to provide its final hours where it was probably least needed a rudder, a perspective, a bit of noise and a lot of -- upon the dance floor at the Handlebar. love, to those of us adrift in the sea below. WRITERS ON THE RANCE By Charles Finn When hungry bears drop in for lunch t was a few falls ago when I came home one late I afternoon, only to find the floor covered in broken glass and pieces of pottery. It looked like a seri- jump down. In order to reach the butter in my cabin, momma bear had found it necessary to hop up onto the still ous and not untalented artist had been at work. The tacky counter. She would have stood there like an pieces lay arranged in grotesque fashion, jutting up immense and curious bee, her four feet bunched like mountaintops above a valley floor of olive oil, under her like a single pillar supporting her zeppelin eggs, flour and oats; the oats in particular discon- of fur. Then with a sweep of a paw, she raked the certing, suspended in the oil like the slit eyes of shelves Western-style, clearing them of everything, goats. Taken together, the collage was disturbing including the whiskey. Mission accomplished - I can and beautiful enough to warrant a picture; some imagine her delight when the honey pot came down might even have called it art if it hadn't covered the - she turned and put a wet nose to the window. "Just checking." floor. More beautiful still were the bear prints pressed The coast being clear, the three dragged the spoils into the counter. of my pantry out onto That morning, I'd the front lawn where painted the kitchen high cumulus clouds, counter top in my • • The coast being clear, the three temperatures in the backwoods cabin a and a touch- of dragged the spoils of my pantry out 80s, fire-truck red. It breeze provided the matched the trim on onto the front lawn where high cumulus perfect excuse for a picthe windows and gave nic. "Here, have some clouds, temperatures in the 80s, and a jam the cabin a genial air. I with that." It was a don't actually believe touch of breeze provided the perfect glorious day. Tiger lilies my improvements nodded their extravaexcuse for a picnic." attracted the bears, gant heads. My cat, but you can never be ^ • • • ^ ^ ^ • ^ ^ ^ M M M ^ ^ m^^^mmm^^^^m^^^ having donated 20 sure. Bears spend a pounds of his food, good part of their time watched from the top hanging out in alpine meadows with the flowers. It of a woodpile. He apparently stayed there until I can be argued they have a sense of aesthetics. When came home. marking off territory, males will reach up to scrape With such inviting surroundings, such tasty and bark off trees in vertical strips, the claw marks they varied food, the bears must have been in no hurry to leave behind in no way inferior to the patterns of leave. raked stones you'll see in Japanese Zen gardens. In Eventually, a neighbor happened by, and with the fall, bears become gardeners themselves, prun- classic nonchalance, mom lifted herself off her ing apple and plum trees with, if not delicacy, a cer- haunches and called to her children. My neighbor tain amateur gusto. describes their departure, the three wandering away, Even so, the bears that visited me were not what the cubs gamboling,1 high on molasses, mom saunyou would call amateurs. I found out that for two tering, savoring the last of the honey. weeks, a sow and her two medicine-ball cubs had Sadly, I no longer have the counter with the red been mauling cabins and prying doorjambs off root bear prints. Somewhere along the line it was shifted cellars, feasting on everything from expensive wheat to the tool shed, and from there, eventually, to a berries to Purina Dog Chow. burn pile. It doesn't matter. They must have thought they'd hit the jackpot. Just knowing I had been visited by such distinFor the record, I'd cleaned up my site of any bear guished guests gives me deep pleasure, and, ironiattractants because I know it's all too true that a fed cally, a sense of safety. I fee] the proximity of bears bear is a dead bear. tethers me more securely to the land, to something Unknown to me, half a dozen homes in the cabin we so casually call nature. Fear, of course, is a hot community had already been raided, and one of commodity these days. It sells well. But if ever the them, an unoccupied rental home, had been turned mountains and valleys around my home are empty into a semi-permanent base camp. A friend with an of bears, that's when I'll become truly afraid. outbuilding that housed his freezer told me that he Charles Finn is a contributor to Writers on the had to physically push one plump cub out an open Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.oro). window.- He said the little fellow was scared to He lives and writes in Stevensville, Mont. ° info £1 C P m i . n f l f m ^n^nfr n o c a /**o m r\ A fr*c*r+s\ m i l k r* M j-ir r**a it-^ frint'o m k A n l ' l l U a n n m rt 4-^n I n *«£«» ! -J |