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Show Lone Peak PressPleasant Grove Review - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - Page 2 Opinion est Measuring integrity a must i Not-so-sizzling summer ch m Uta The Hacking case is just the latest of a series of highly-publicized events in Utah over the past couple of years that have put residents on edge about the sftfety and sanity of our society. While most of the very local cases did not involve murder, as this one apparently does, all of them have one glaring thing in common with ' the Hacking, Smart and similar situations -deceit. No one is born to become an embezzler, drug dealer or murderer. mur-derer. No one becomes capable of these or any other crimes overnight either. The path is faster for some than others, but it's always long and usually begins with a seemingly small falsehood or behavior failure. Left uncorrected, such indiscretions indis-cretions will often mushroom and lead to bigger and bigger mistakes until an individual entirely loses all sense of personal per-sonal restraint. At that point, a person becomes capable of anything any-thing if faced with sufficient temptation. Being imperfect, every human being has walked down this road at least a little way. The true test, of character is what we do once we find ourselves our-selves on it. Persons with integrity will avoid most mistakes, but they will also accept responsibility for the ones they do make, rectify recti-fy them in any way they can, and learn from them so they do not repeat them. With a crucial election season upon us, it would be wise for all of us to carefully evaluate the track record of every candidate for public office, at whatever level. Be especially wary of anyone who attempts to excuse or cover mistakes by an appeal to patriotism patri-otism or piety. Both are sacred in American civic life, but no legitimate government or religion reli-gion condones lying. It has been fashionable for years to claim that what a person per-son does in his or her private life has no bearing on fitness for public office or position. However, Howev-er, a person who can't discipline his or her private behavior is likely to violate the public trust as well, sooner or later. Private foibles, if not properly handled, do indeed have an impact on both the perception and realities of a person's leadership. lead-ership. Voters have a responsibility responsi-bility to choose only those who can measure up to the highest ideals of our society. Trading places 0 I wouldn't want to trade places with Great-great-grandfather Henson for anything. And not just because he's . . . well, you know . . . dead. It's just that the stuff he had to do is not stuff I would want to do. Take traveling, for example. I've never been a good traveler. You know the phrase, "Don't make me stop this car"? My father invented it in 1964 in the middle of the Nevada desert after the 5,298th time I asked him "Are we there yet?" I can't imagine making the 3,000-mile cross-country trip Henson made - four times! - without the benefit ben-efit of shock absorbers, paved roads, Burger King, public rest rooms, books on tape, red licorice, Cracker Barrel or Motel 6. If it had been up to me, the Walkers would have stayed in Illinois and dodged bullets until we could get hooked up with a good tour package on Traveloci-ty.com. Traveloci-ty.com. One of Henson's jobs on these pioneering journeys was to provide pro-vide fresh meat for the members of the respective pioneer companies compa-nies with which he traveled. Evidently, he was quite a hunter, and a fairly accomplished accom-plished marksman with his black powder rifle. I would have done great at, preparing a little buffalo brisket barbecue, and I can flip antelope burgers with the best of them. But if you're asking me to stalk, shoot, butcher butch-er and dress wild game from prairie dogs to elk to rabbit to the occasional travel-weary oxen . . . well, let's just say we'd probably eat a lot of cactus and sagebrush rooti : With a nice little parsley and rosemary vinaigrette, of course. And then, there's the whole house-building thing. As near as I can tell, Henson built with his own hands at least five full-size homes, not to mention a variety of cabins, huts ,and lean-tos. A couple of his homes are still standing, a testament to his skill and hard work. On the other hand, I'm still anguishing over having to replace 24 shingles shin-gles that blew off our roof during dur-ing a windstorm a few months back. I'm sure Henson would have had the roof patched by now. Of course, then he would have missed the fun we had last lip -- ) night when a mid-summer rainstorm rain-storm sent rivulets of water down through the unshingled portions of our roof and into our living room. So, OK. I admit it. I wouldn't have been much of a pioneer. Henson would have taken one look at me and sent me out to gather buffalo chips - or traded me to the Indians (or maybe the Braves) for a blanket, some beads and a left-handed papoose to be named later. But I'm not sure how well Henson would have done in my world, either. Sure, he would have loved our minivan, beat up and noisy as it is. But how would he have handled han-dled road construction, rush hour traffic and ever-escalating gasoline prices? He probably would have appreciated the extraordinary possibilities of modern technology, but was he prepared to deal with the multiple multi-ple frustrations of computer spam, online viruses and Internet Inter-net pornography? And while I'm sure he would have enjoyed the ease and convenience of modern housing (especially dishwashers, dishwash-ers, central air and indoor plumbing), how would he1 have dealt with modern issues relating relat-ing to privacy, security and crime? Oh, that's right. The crime thing wouldn't be an issue as " long as he still had that black powder rifle, would it? Times change. And so do the people who live in them. Henson and his contemporaries were perfect for their times - tough, brave, independent and self-reliant. self-reliant. I admire them and their pioneering courage, and I celebrate cele-brate their significant accomplishments accom-plishments in building the world in which we live today. They faced their challenges squarely, and we are all better off as a result. I am profoundly grateful for them even though I wouldn't want to trade places with any of them. But I don't think they'd want to trade places with us, either. I hate the heat. I'll never live in Nevada, or Arizona, or Southern California or even Southern Utah, for that matter. My best friend from college got married in Arizona, smack dab in the middle of summer, and after the wedding, which made my bridesmaid dress need a double dose of dry cleaning, I told her, "When you have children, make sure they are born in the winter. I will not come back here in the summer, ever!" Well, she had her first, a girl, last June. Did I go there to see her? No way. But, I have to say this year's Utah summer has been a mild one. Not necessarily within my home - mild is not the word you attach to a toddler - but outside. It hasn't been the sweltering summer sum-mer of heat I feared it would be. Last summer was so nasty compared com-pared to this one, with temperatures tempera-tures regularly in the high 90s, as I remember. This one has been more the high 80s and low 90s, much more tolerable as far as I'm V rvf T - where VA , tak . tn I:. second, ifcirCUmi out. Those schmeat! Ah, this 4th D summer .m at those that you the concerned. And infinitely more tolerable because, like some of you, we don't have central air. When we did major remodel of our home this past winter, air conditioning didn't did-n't make the budget. So we've muddled and sometimes melted through this summer with a hardworking hard-working little room air conditioner. condition-er. And most days, it's sufficient. And we've been grateful for this weather this summer, ticking tick-ing off the months so far - May, June, July - each one with only a few really hot days so far. And often, with a spit of rain and a spectacular light show in the evenings to cool things down. That part, (except for the lightning) light-ning) actually reminded me of the wonderfully mild summers garden -here putter in morning, instead rauie uawn to racP S plants before the bli to Hquefy you wS And you could walk , ? car m the afte wall of heat smasW J'v mmute you stepped So, after the v snowy, and verv - , ' uluo summer reward. We didn't do tk Uh -itch, extreme cold to extre?. just a week, scrambw:1"61 . snorts unda . layers of snow hats, rf' coats. No, we aet.,inL ' saw kiy 111!"1' On ,urder ' to"- H taPrec ytbey urever, &,pv saw 1 ela'st 'Coulc L perse tutor Sb luxurious spnng, and and easygoing summer. So here's hopin' for and lazy autumn! Reader's Forum EAGLE MTN. Eagle Mountain participated in a Neighborhood Watch National Night Out last week to make residents resi-dents more aware of the Neighborhood Neigh-borhood Watch programs in the city. The National Night Out was officially scheduled for Aug. 3, although some Eagle Mountain neighborhoods had their programs pro-grams on the weekend. This was the 21st annual National Night Out, sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch. The purpose of the event is to teach crime and drug prevention, as well as to support a link between community members and police, according to the National Night Out at www.nno.org. EAGLE MTN. Eagle Mountain accepted the audit report for the fiscal year 2002-2003 in a City Council meeting meet-ing on Tuesday, Aug. 3. The audit revealed a $730,000 surplus in the general fund. Although the audit was completed seven months late, Mayor Kelvin Bailey said the audit for next year will be finished ahead of the due date. The council unanimously approved the audit. EAGLE MTN. Representatives for the Mountain View Corridor presented various plans to the Eagle Mountain City Council on Tuesday, Aug. 3. The plans have been narrowed down to four choices for a northern route and four choices for a southern south-ern route. The representatives asked the residents of Eagle Mountain for their feedback. Residents can go to udot.utah.govmountainview to see the freeway plans and give their feedback. LEHI The Lehi Arts in the Park concert series will feature Hindsight and Stephaine Smith Sunday, Aug. 15, at Wines Park, 600 N. 100 East! Lehi. The event is free to the public pub-lic and the audience is invited to bring lawn chairs and blankets. LEHI Adopting a cemetery program forces an audit of all available sexton sex-ton records and the cemetery tombstones. When Lehi City began its program in 1998, BYU assisted in gathering cemetery headstone information. On Oct. 30 of that year, the city switched over onto a computerized system, Spatial Spa-tial Generations. The cemetery office, to access the Spatial Generations Gener-ations program, is open during regular city office hours, Mondays through Thursdays, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., at City Hall, 153 N. 100 East. A copy of the records in print form is available at the Lehi Cemetery pavilion, south of the Veterans Memorial. LEHI At the city precouncil meeting on July 27, Rodger Harper, North Pointe transfer station manager since May 1, answered questions and explained the use of the punch card. On March 1, tipping fees changed at the waste station. Based on a study, one punch is good for up to 500 pounds. While other cities also have punch cards for residents, Lehi City gives the most punches per card. The standard stan-dard is three to four a card, or allowing the cardholder to dump 1,500 pounds of garbage at the transfer station. In Lehi, anything more than 2,500 pounds of waste costs $32.56 a ton to dump at the transfer station. If a transfer station sta-tion customer gets charged over the amount of the punch card value, they should get a receipt and an explanation of charges for the extra weight, said Harper. LEHI Approximately 1,500 children, visited Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, Hogsmead and the Room of Requirement on July 31, Harry Potter's birthday. Those sites and more were found at the Lehi City Public Library Saturday with young witches and wizards learning learn-ing magic tricks, making wands and getting autographs from characters char-acters of the Harry Potter series authored by J.K. Rowling. "It went really well," said Crystal Grover, party organizer alias Professor Minvera McGonagall. "We had lots of kids come and I think they had a good time." SARATOGA SPRINGS Builders are quickly working to accommodate the 560-plus students stu-dents who will be attending the Saratoga Springs new elementary school, Saratoga Shores, in three weeks. The school, located at 1415 S. Parkside Drive next to the Saratoga Hills Development, has an administrative trailer on site and a 14-classroom portable satellite satel-lite unit, and when school starts, it will have six double trailers serving as classrooms. To celebrate cele-brate the school's opening, Principal Princi-pal Glenn Martin is hosting a family picnic Wednesday, Aug. 11, at 6:30 p.m. at the Saratoga Springs Development Pavilion. Families need to bring dinner and blankets and the school will provide pro-vide drinks. Minor Music will be entertaining and there will be dancing and activities for the fam ily to enjoy. Parents and kids meet the staff and teachers. Yes, Kalkb rere an ution c a,;,howpr " Irown barge. r estimon fried Irown t ajhe pa tola's ! Pajela ttheAi 83,000 lotion ; ies i 'orks, Co. carpets, interior lighting, offices will include City chambers and a courtroor manager Ken Leetham interest rate is about 4.51 SARATOGA SPRINGS Th Approximately 100 rer; " showed up at the July 27 Eil rrr Cn4 n.'i... "!.. -1 I ga upiiuga iuy U)U11C11 E to give comment on the t: element of the city's generi :Lmb ine meeting was nelQii station to accommoda; crowd. Public comment e be e-mailed to Wife: sprmgs.net, mailed to env 2015 S. Redwood M, or k K7 Vto riffipoc Plonninrr Dave Anderson said the t: igj document came from 18 ::: )evelop work and public hearing b jje(j Planning Commission, an: . jg p blueprint to use as the dty;:ireen ers zone changes for int. Da ,jesj developments. He saidtheg;: plan does not change any: zone even if it designates beca one's property as part of a Honshu ular zone. The mayor alio1: Ira co minutes of comment each'" luilt T north end, the neighborh: Jtadiun commercial areas, the soEise th and the city in general, fc later ments limited to three re iecause "We love our town" was a C-W es phrase used by speakers. But th N d: AMERICAN FORK American Fork's City Co Planning Commission Disjoint Dis-joint work session Aug. 5t-: mine the direction for proposed amendment to-Use to-Use Element of the Gene The two groups stance the planners had preparing a proposal, now go to a public beam? being sent to the Cit)- an adidtional hearing tion. The plan addresses .11 south of the freeway and Lind foted J fa : Sider fminj Can development ai three-per-acre densities- e rn fPplica We. u Citv Puval, rvftiich ,;:Fisio day, Aug. 14, .Pliec American tron-..grates E. 700 North, wesiu The AMERICAN FORK Smith ana Stephanie Fotheringham .-i cries Summer Concent- Timpanogos ted to public IS IHvi-- and is encourage- fhrremt ions, blankets or , , -onnre sit on ana w F' r weather. is can SARATOGA SPRINGS Saratoga Springs' City Council approved the contract to buy the second floor of the south office building just cast of SmiKa supermarket, on July 27. The $1.1 million contract with Kimrock Construction includes t;io- nnn interior finishes, walls- ..m cnPK The American ForK is Becking dont , new and used DVDs, books on UP rf CDs and magazine t-f Other needs are i: CD player, a cork D for vho i .-. nm Director 1 ing. Those - t lS "K " Parker. ec Hoi ve. 'Oui 4 M |