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Show r Saturday, July 15, 2000 A-10 The Park Record More Dogs on Main Street "-s..i By Tom Clyde p i t. K 9 I PLAY SYSTEMS, INC.' Large Selection to choose . from Professional Installation Available JT S' jr 1 ... . 1 1-800-RAINBOW Come and visit our spectacular In-door showroom o DRAPER 57 EAST 1 2675 SO. (801 ) 523-2277 M-T: 10-8 F-Sat: 10-6 rainbowplay.com TjT f V" s , 4 1 - . V.-. - " :v . ' " Retired Service Loaner Sale Below Invoice Stock V0003 Ken Garff UOLUO 525 South State (801)257-3500 www.keri9arffvolvo.coiT) 2000 Volvo Cars of North America, Inc. Shown with optional equipment. "Volvo, for life" is a registered trademark of Volvo. Always remember to wear your seat belt, www.volvocart.com 0 The brown badge of courage It ni.i have Ivcn a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, but tliiims are getting a little noisy around here. The drought, which we all saw coming during a pretty weak ski season, is beginning to take control. Wells have failed in several of the area water systems, leaving people at some of the higher elevations with doubts about the availability of lue Hows. Meanwhile, their neighbors ate watering then lawns like rice paddies. I'e a!was had my doubts about the great American lawn fetish. It seems like a lot of time and effort that could be put into something more important. People apply more fertilizer per acre on their lawns than farmers farm-ers do on serious cash crops. Insecticides are lathered on the lawns so the chil- fit People with the brownest lawns should be flowed to bathe first this winter. We ought to look around at who has the greenest lawn, and vote them off the island. " Tom Clyde dren can play barehxit on the gras without fear ol mosiuitics. Of course nobody thinks much about the fact that the back lawn is becoming a toxic waste dump from all the chemicals added. The m m mm typical lawn mower produces more air pollution per hour than a well-tuned car running at highway speeds. But nothing will come between an American suburbanite and his or her lawn. The condition 01 the lawn has become a measure of one's standing in the community. Neighbors interviewed on 1 V alter the guy down the street was arrested for serial ser-ial murder will always express great surprise because "he alw ays kept his law n nice. " So as e go into a season that will be a real test of our ability to deal with extraordinary conditions, we have the absurd situation where homes are without fire protection pro-tection because the tanks have been sucked dry by people peo-ple watering their lawns. The city has asked for the simplest sim-plest kind ot self-regulation by going to the even-odd vy v,em lor irrigation. Some people are unwilling to comply com-ply with tlv.t. so the water police have been brought out of storage. Frankly, given the number of wells that have failed aireadv. and the continuing dry season, even-odd hardly seems restrictive enough. We'll all be pretty upset it. come September or October, there isn't water available avail-able to take a shower. You may not have clean underwear, under-wear, but golK gee. the lawn sure looks nice. I don't know how bad the drought condition will get. The problem is that nobody dtvs. None of us have lived here with a population this size, with this many wells in the ground, when it has been this dry. W hen you throw mi all the hillside yards that used to be dry grazing land, we are probabh irrigating a lot more land here than they did 5(1 yea:s ago. The drought condition is hardly new. We have periods of abnormal weather so often that it s hard to imagine what "normal weather" would look like. But when it comes to getting a population the size of Park Oty and Snyderville through the drought, we're breaking new ground. It probaNy wouldn't hurt to err on the side ot caution. Who knows if it is going to be another lame winter? We need to change our thinking a little. Brown lawns should be considered chic and stylish, rather than branding brand-ing the homeowner as a derelict wino. The competition to see who can raise the thickest carpel of Kentucky bluegrass in the desert ought to he called off. Instead, we ought to be looking at who can keep a yard more or less alive with the least water. This year, a brown lawn should be a siun of honor and responsibility, a sort of brown badge of courage. People with the brownest lawns should be allowed to bathe first this winter. We ought to look around at who has the greenest lawn, and vote them off the island. Out on the ranch, we have been put on water rationing already. It happens every year, but usually so late nobody really cares. This year, in early July we are cut back to minimal Hows w ith three day s on and II) days turned oil. The hav crop is toast. It kind of sticks in my craw that the agricultural litigation litiga-tion is regulated to the point ot total crop failure, fail-ure, while people in town are raising rice with water iichts that are otten inferior to the larmers' rights. Not that I make any money laismg hav anyway. explaining the whole concept of water turns to a couple cou-ple of new neighbors has been interesting. " This is your schedule, and you can't lake water out of schedule." "What happens if we do?" Well, olficially. you might cet a citation from the Slate Engineer and have to pay a fine. Unofficially, you might get shot. That doi'sn't happen hap-pen quite as often as it used to. but it's something to keep in the back of yout mind when you ctack open your headgale on somebody else's turn. II there is anything that will keep the peace among irrigators this year, it's that there isn't really enough water m the river to bother both-er fighting over. I go! a call this week from the people who run an oil pipeline that crosses through our property. The man said he needed to get access through a gate to monitor his smart pig. He wanted to get all set up now so when the smart pig came through next month, he was ready. At first I thought of the great juke about the larmer who owned a three-legged pig that ate with the family at the dinner table. A stranger asked about it. and the l.umei said the pig had rescued his child ironi a burning barn. "Is that how he lost his leg?" the stranger asked. "No." .replied the farmer, "it's just that when you get a pig like that, you hate to eat it all at once." But that was not the smart pig in question. This is a football-sized thing they stick in the oil pipe. It gets pushed through the pipeline, and looks for leaks, corrosion, corro-sion, and other problems inside the line. I guess there is a v ideo system on it so they can see the condition of the pipeline without digging it up. it must make for great television. M) or 41 1 hours ol the inside of an oil pipeline. It's available on your satellite dish on a pay-per-view. The farmers advice isnt bad. It would be a shame to use all the water up at once. 7iii Chile (i lnriiH r at tiitoi;:. ii ttiahor of "Mi'ic f (z.s in Mtiin Slice!. " He has been a iclmniiist for The Park Record for more ilum i ilemtle. Don't get me started By Gary Weiss A sick, sad world K Seep, iiiu ieni hinds, your storied pomp!" cries she Does ANYONE reading this column actually know someone who's been put out of work by an undocumented immigrant? I surely don't" Gary Weiss . W ish tlciu hps. "Give me oiir ured. vour poor. Vow huddled musses warning lo breathe free. I he u rchhed refine ol oiir teeming shore. Send then: the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift m lump beside the golden door. " T hat magnificent inscription appears on the Statue of Liberty. Called "The New Colossus." it was written by an American poet. Emma Lazarus in 1SS3. a few years before her death. After Congress refused the funds for that inscription. Joseph Pulitzer's V York World raised the necessary $100.0(m. and in lsMI3 it was added to Lady Liberty. Though not part of the statue, the poem goes on: "Here tit our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame h the imprisoned bghtning. and her name Mother of e sites." Like much of our country 's freedom-sy mbolism, that message illuminates both America's difference from all the nations that came before, and that we were once, proudly, joy fully, a nation of immigrants. And it wasnt a tluke that the inscrip tion was facilitated by a newspaper: our astoundingly free press was and is yet another, critical thing that's made us so different, from Pulitzer's Sew Yoik World, all the way to our own Park tmmim Record. There are lots of reasons that I enjoy writing for this paper. Primary among them is probably that its truly local. That means, not only is it generated by people w ho live here, and not only is it stuffed full of local content, but like many enterprises in resort towns, it's produced by people who might well be called "over-qualified." That means people w ho. in other places, would probably Ik- on some fast track to mover-and-shaker-hood. But does that mean that these jobs are being taken from other, somehow more "deserving" people? Which brings me. finally, to the point. List week, we printed a guest editorial by someone called Corine Flores. self-described as a "native-born. New Mexico Hispanic." The piece, which originally came from the High Country News, was titled "Illegal immigrants lake jobs from Americans," and though, by now. I should know better. I was nonetheless fairly star-tied star-tied by its content. As the title suggests, Ms. Flores is less than delighted by the flood of human beings who continue to pour across our southern border. She establishes her "right" to trash her racial brethern by virtue of her name, and the Hispanic heritage it references, Of course, the difference dif-ference between her and them is that she happens to have been born here. She uses those facts as justification for the following statements, among others: "this nation's immigration pulicy, begun in 1965. is disaster It hurts minorities, the pour, the environment. and immigrants themselves" "Put another way, when many workers ask for a raise, they are often reminded that there are many others who will do the same work for less, including far below minimum mini-mum wages", "Do advtKaies of high immigration belies our own slums are empty and thai we no longer have citizens need ing a fair chance at dtx ent pasmg jobs''" And perhaps most amazing of all. "Amernans. through a ncur-rephii email -level birth rate, have shots n support for a stable population. " As it such broad-band sixcial policy concerns actually make up the calculus for couples deciding whether or not to have children. The thrust of Ms. I lores" argument seems to be that "real" Americans are being kept off the upwardly mobile career track because many of those gxxl jobs are being filled by undocumented workers. I found this of particular interest because of the large numbers of Hispanic men and women who've come to Park City in the last few years, and what those numbers actually mean. While Ms. riores would like to see this phenomenon halted by state and federal statutes. 1 see it as governed by a higher law. perhaps the prime fundamental of American capitalism. ITiat being, of course, the law of supply and demand. It's a simple fact that people any people wouldn't go through the difficult, and otten terrifying ordeal of leaving their natural homes and families, fam-ilies, if there weren't plenty of unfilled jobs here. Jobs that "real" Americans iust won't do anymore. The vast, vast majority of those new arrivals here, most often do the most menial, unpleasant, labor- "" intensive, lowest-paying lowest-paying joK Willing to work long days, without weekends or holidavs. digging, dig-ging, cleaning, cooking, lifting and whatever else they can find. Always worried about deportation, not understanding under-standing what rights they do or donl have. In short, doing those things that native-born, middle-class Americans just wont do anymore. I wonder how many of these people who so offend Ms. Flores sneak across our borders to slide into jobs like architects, engineers, doctors, law yers and chemical engineers? And how many "real" Americans cant find work as maids, gardeners, garbagemen and ditch-diggers? Does ANYONE reading 'this column actually know someone w ho's been put out of work by an undocumented undoc-umented immigrant? I surely donV As a real American. Ms. Flores certainly has a right to her opinion, no matter how small-minded and uninformed unin-formed I might think it is. And thanks lo the labors of those immigrants who came before, she can even see that opinion printed in our newspaper. I just wish she'd keep in mind the following, written in ls14 by one of America's great journalists; Walter Lippmann. w ho said: "Tlie great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of rite wilderness but the absorption of M) different dif-ferent peoples." And w hile bemoaning the fate of all those native New Mexicans who can no longer find work cleaning the toilets toi-lets of other native New Mexicans because of the onslaught of the Old Mexican barbarian hordes, she might consider the words of the trailblaing African-American African-American writer; James Baldwin, who wrote, 50 years ago: "The making of an American begins at the point where he himself refects all other lies, any other hisiorx and himself adopts riie vesture of his adopted land. " ' Gary Weiss is the former owner of Dolly s Bookstore and has serv ed on the Summit Co Planning Commission. 4 inTiiir-. njt WuWUi.iri.n..iin XsrMMb.fi..iJsx Poor Si ...Tiil-.r'.-rr. |