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Show .Commemits Free Press Wednesday, August 7, 1996 - Page 4 Dale Carnegie meets Mr. Schwinn: Influence pedaling man. clutching a th hearine: Editorial Where in the world is Dale Carnegie when you need him? Anyone is political office ought to be required to read his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Unfortunately, by mistake they must have picked up the subversive text, How to Win Influence, because no group seems immune sitfrom what seems to be eyebrow-raisin- g uations. On a Sunday night news talk show, the group discussed the merits of the new township law, particularly regarding the move to stay the election from the people. I don't pretend to understand the ramifications of the township law and which side is right, but I'm wondering why officials are so afraid to let the people, that silly group who is responsible for paying the actual tax dollars at stake in the issue, decide for themselves. Although a good percentage of the human race seems to be trying to prove otherwise, not everyone is stupid, and if those in power simply present the facts honestly and openly, voters should be able to make their own informed decisions. Speaking of decisions, o ye residents of Lehi, there are some important decisions that are being made at the many meetings that take place in the community. Perhaps it would be wise to attend some of these sundry meetings in order to see for yourself what goes on in city government. The Lehi City Council has often been at the forefront of certain issues and citizens have been known to attend en masse at times. Cellular towers, Micron and other business proposals, even a possible dance hall have been the target of criticism by these groups. But perhaps the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting is equally important. Even fewer people attended the last meeting of the Planning Commission than the last City Council meeting. And for some residents, those issues may be just as important. For example, if you received your copy of the Free Press this morning, Wednesday, you have less than seven hours to not only Let's welcome all to temple open house After three years of planning, building and preparing, the Mt. Timpanogos Temple will officially start to entertain visitors this week. Plenty of people have already had opportunities to walk through the building especially the many volunteers who have helped in the clean up and other preparatory activities of recent months. And many visit the temple each day or night to explore the site. But Saturday, we officially open the k doors for the long open house that is expected to bring well over a million people to American Fork. , North Utah County has never seen anything like it. For one thing, we can prepare for major inconveniences as our road system will be taxed to its limit. Fortunately, most of the roadwork that has torn up the streets for months is finished, and the rest should be completed by Saturday just in time for the rush. Also, many of our businesses can expect to see more customers than usual over the next six weeks. Restaurants, convenience stores and gas stations are some of the businesses that can expect to benefit from the influx of visitors. Finally, north Utah County communities will have a chance to shine for the visitors. We will be able to show off our pleasant blend of rural and urban lifestyle in the heart of the Wasatch Front. We have so much, and here is our chance to share it with others, even if it is only for a few minutes as they ever-changi- six-wee- Trying drive to and from the temple for the open house. Over the past three years of construction, many area residents have had the opportunity to share in building and finishing the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. Many have felt blessed for their participation. Now is our chance to share this, too, with others as they come to see what has been built in our midst. There are many things we can do to make the visitors feel more welcome. For example, we can drive carefully and courteously. Our roads will be y busy. It won't hurt to give the to a person trapped at an intersection or against a curb. It might be a good six weeks to drop the standard attitude Utah Driver's winner-take-atowards the road. We can greet our visitors with a friendly attitude and a welcoming smile. After all, these are friendly comwe just need to let our natmunities ural warmth show through. And we can keep our yards and homes looking their best and our streets looking clean and neat. After all, this short term inconvedividends for nience will pay long-terour communities and the temple will although in keep visitors coming for decades to smaller numbers right-of-wa- ll come. So it's time to put out the welcome mat and to learn to keep it out. Starting Saturday, people from all over the state and throughout the world will be coming. We want to see them all take home a great impression of north Utah County. You can to kick the caffeine habit Brynn's Beat It is only 9:15 a.m. on Monday morning and I have already given up on the idea of drinking fewer caffeinated drinks this week. Giving myself some credit, I did make it ' past the multitude of convenience stores on the way to the office this morning without stopping. Which is actually a huge accomplishment, considering that I am on a first name basis with every employee at every store in the area with a refrigerated ' drink section. But, after spending a very unproductive 30 minutes staring at a blank computer screen I decided my job '. came first. (How is that for justification?) A short five minutes later I am back at my desk, ice cold drink in hand, some caf--' feine in my system and a slightly better 1 attitude. I'm not even sure if it is the caf--feine that is making me feel better, or if it is just knowing that I've blown my V Monday morning resolution and now I . don't have to worry about it for another full week! (Everyone knows that you can't I start a diet, or any other type 2 goal in the middle of the week.) I have been trying, albeit ly, to kick the caffeine habit for quite some time now without success. Taking full advantage of my status as a member Generation X I have decided not to take ' any responsibility for this addiction. It is my mother's fault. Actually, I can do one better than that and spread some of the blame back as far as my grandmother. It started way back in the days when there was only one selection in the diet soda department; before the days of refill-abl- e e insulated mugs, even before fountain drinks and crushed ice were readily available. My grandmother and mother, true pioneers of diet soda dependency, lugged home Tab Cola, eight bottles clanking away in their convenient cardboard carrying case. At a very young age, I believed that my mom was getting paid to drink Tab. Every time we went shopping we would carry all of the empty bottles back to the store and clerk would give us money. I found it all very exciting. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to start drinking Tab. Both my grandma and mom had a vari- . self-deni- al self-serv- By BRYNN BECK ety of reasons for not allowing any of the children to have even a sip of their drinks. My mother's personal favorite was to feign concern that we would knock our teeth out with the heavy bottle. Now I know better. She didn't care about our teeth, she just didn't want to share. (I know the feeling all to well.) My grandma, always the creative sort, told us that we couldn't drink Tab because it was made out of rusty nails. (It is possible that she was telling the truth.) My mom is in her sixties now and even though Tab hasn't been on the shelves for years, her lovehate relationship with diet soda is as strong as ever. (She likes to quit on Mondays, too.) Amazingly enough, this shared passion for diet soda has served as a bonding device for the women in our family. Imagine the length of conversation you can have over a 44 ouncer, especially if you go light on the ice. e to our family depenAnother dency on diet soda? It is remarkably easy to come up with a last minute gift for any special occasion. too. I Of course, there is a down-sid- e can't begin to tell you how many frantic, up-sid- dashes just one more soda. It when I am in my sweats, on and bad hair, with the I've made to get never fails that with no make-u- p tell all green bottle in my hand, 111 hear someone call my name, or bump into someone I know. On the most humiliating occaor a sions, it will be an rival. Although, I have to be honest. Most of the time, under these circumstances, it turns out to be my mom, or one of my sisters. Now, if we could just get the clerk to give us money for all of those empty plastic bottles we could buy something chocolate! (That is my grandmother's fault high-scho- too!) ol Diclc Boland 1996 Creators Syndicate, Inc. missile? Let us hope that he wasn't praying for guidance on governmental affairs. This would be hypocritical in view of our separation policy. Come to think of it, will there be congressmen and women who will pray that the amendment is defeated? That could be considered the ultimate hypocrisy. God has been out of our schools for quite some time, and the results alone should be reason enough to bring him back. Those who don't believe could simply put their brains to rest during school prayer or meditation period, or use the charms. A timn tn talk to their good-luc- k iSS! Daly Planet By RUSS DALY become informed on some transportation issues now under consideration, but also to compose and submit written comments about the plans. Of course, if you didn't read last week's paper, youll have to add some extra time to go down to the Public Works Office and peruse (or purchase) the plan before the 3 p.m. deadline. If you really want to be festive, pack a lunch, take your children and make a day of it. The agenda for the meeting included a public hearing on this transportation plan, but the commission chose to put off discussion until the very end of the meeting. Were they hoping the few citizens in attendance at the beginning of the meeting would give up and go home before they got around to it? Did the putting off thereof also cause the members of the audience to think that they weren't allowed to speak up during the "public hearing," which technically ran for the entire length of the meeting? According to officials at the meeting, the current transportation plan has been in effect since 1979. Granted, revisions are probably highly necessary after nearly two decades, especially with the rapid growth that has taken place just in the last five years, but I believe the commission did a disservice to the people of Lehi by not allowing a longer comment period on the proposals. The commission did not submit the proposal to the paper for last week's story about the pending meeting, rather we asked for the information to help them short-sighte- tri-cit- expect us to edit your copy The old joke in writing circles goes something like this: "The greatest desire known to mankind is the desire to edit another's copy." In the poster format I've seen, several words in the simple sentence are crossed out and alternate words are suggested in other words, the phrase is edited to death. And it seems like it is true. As the managing editor, I usually get to have the last word. It is a great feeling of power. But when you are writing yourself, you usually appreciate a little editing. I pass my column around the office each week and let my colleagues have at it with a red pen. I don't have to take their suggestions, but I appreciate their input. And they always catch stuff that I missed when I wrote the column, and continued to miss as I read it through. My wife taught me a valuable lesson in editing shortly after 1 started editing these three newspapers and before she was my wife. I made a change in one sentence, adding what I thought was a clever twist to the words. She made it clear in no uncertain terms that if she had wanted it worded that way, that's how she would and I should keep my have written it opinions out of her column! And I have. I'm a fast learner. But not everyone can write as well as Sharon. And almost anything that is submitted to our newspaper is likely to get edited; some items will be edited more than others. We don't often get complaints, but once or twice a year people complain that the wedding announcement or missionary article has been altered before it appeared in the newspaper. We got a complaint last week over a wedding announcement, and that prompted this column. We edit for several purposes. Of course we edit to correct spelling and grammatical errors. That is our first consideration. We also edit to maintain a consistent style within the pages of the newspaper. Often certain things like numbers or dates can be expressed more than one way in print. One way isn't right and the other wrong; but for a newspaper, one is style and the other is not. For the most part, we follow the Associated Press stylebook, a style guide used by most newspapers God and country, together again Congressional Republicans are thinking about putting God back into our schools. It will not be easy, since there are many elected officials who are apparently against exposing our children to God. Back when we had school prayer, we had very few metal detectors at the entrance and even fewer guns. Separating the church from the state seems to have turned out poorly in this regard. The worst thing that could happen by reinstating God is that some of our children might decide to live by his precepts. It will certainly be interesting to see what a vote on this amendment will look like. Will all of the congressmen who are against God please stand up? Be prepared for all kinds of mealy mouth explanations of equality and fairness, which most religions advocate, on why I couldn t approve the return of God to the classroom. How did we get in this mess anyway? Were too many of our students turning out to be religious zealots? Do the atheists control the vote to the point where we threw God out. If we are serious about the separation of church and state, why do the networks show us a 10 second clip of the president leaving church pvery Sunday cnrryW his The one have copy of the paper, said he wouldn't even known about the plan had it not been included in that edition. So their decision to accept written comments only until 3 p.m. today is, in my opind at best To err on the side ion, of caution, by leaving the comment period open for at least one week following the publication of the story about the meeting (see the front page), would have given a greater number of citizens the chance to share their views and would have instilled a greater degree of confidence in our local public officials. Look at the number of meetings that were held last summer to get input on the proposed road expansion throughout the y area. Although no consensus was reached, at least people had the opportunity to express their views. Perhaps the lack of consensus itself was a statement that the best solution was no solution, but with the number of meetings that were held, at least people had a chance to be heard. Frankly, I thought that sort of tactic was reserved for members of congress, who were known to approve their own pay raises in the wee hours of the morning. With all that extra money, it's no wonder they had to resort to check kiting. A friend loaned me a book about Washington. It's called Blood Sport, written by President Clinton's buddy, Vince Foster, who committed suicide in connection with one of the many scandals that plague the First Office. Shortly before his death, Foster wrote in his journal, "In Washington, ruining people is considered a sport." It seems to me that there was an adage, an old saw, if you will, (no, perhaps it was more akin to a proverb) that says "Avoid the very appearance of evil." Seems like good advice to me, and it could easily be applied to politics these days. No one would have to be ruined if they followed the advice. While our public officials are reading Dale Carnegie, they might want to take a look at that other book, the one with those proverbs. Between the two, they might have some good lessons for us all. recent poll indicates that 73 percent of the public supports the amendment to reinstate school prayer. Prayer is not mandatory. If you don't want to pray, you don't g have to. The group must fear their numbers would diminish if their kids were exposed to prayer. Oh well, let's hope so. We live in a country that is pretty much controlled by the dollar, the same dollar that bears the inscription, "In God We Trust." If we trust him with our money, shouldn't we trust him with our children? Americans for the Separation of Church and State is, of course, against any amendment to the constitution concerning God. As far as I know, it has not advocated removing his name from our money, or perhaps in its zeal, its lawyers for free. Pretending that there is a separation of church and state is utter nonsense. Most of our elected officials practice their religion and, in so doing, are swayed by their beliefs when making decisions on how the country should be run. How some atheist nut was able to turn them around is an indication that perhaps they should pray a little harder before casting votes against the one that put them here to govern. The ?, Editor's Column By MARC HADDOCK across the nation, so that our copy is uniform. When it comes to style, I am the court of last appeal as far as our newspaper is concerned. This doesn't mean I'm right, it just means we do things my way when we aren't sure which way to do them. That means at least we always do them the same way. We edit for space. We always have more news than we can fit in our paper. I am often cutting stories for the front page as I am putting the page together. Computers have made this a lot easier. We used to edit stories with knives cutting the stories to fit in ways that could be quite messy. Now we can cut them as we see them. We want to keep some stories the same length as much as we can. This is the case with the announcements of weddings or of missionaries departing or returning. These make up a big portion of our lifestyle pages and are one of the most popular parts of the paper. There was a time when both were longer than they are now. Wedding announcements used to include lengthy descriptions of the wedding dress, for example. We just don't have room to do that anymore. So our stories are quite uniform. That puts a crimp on originality, but it makes it possible for us to put as much in our paper as we can. We edit for taste cutting out items that we feel are inappropriate or out of place in a newspaper article. For example, we don't let infants announce the upcoming wedding of their parents. We let the couple make the announcement instead. But in one recent wedding announcement where an older couple were getting married, we had no problem letting their adult children make the announcement. In the wedding announcement that prompted this column, the writer had urgedthose coming to the reception to, "Bring your spurs and Wrangler jeans for a .high falutin', rip roarin', boot stompin' time." We cut that out for reasons of both space and taste. We also took out a portion of a sentence that referred to the courtship and engagement of the couple in a way that may have appealed to friends of the couple, but which would have left the rest of our readers scratching their heads. So I guess you could say that we also edit to make our stories understandable to most of our readership, rather than to just a few. The bride's father, who wrote the original announcement, took exception to our changes and wrote me a letter taking me to task for changing "a fun, unique announcement into a mediocre embarrassing article with misspelled light-hearte- d, words." Frankly, the changes were minimal and the resulting article was more in keeping with regular newspaper style. All the news- papers I know that still print wedding announcements would have made the same changes, and we stand by them. (Also, I've been over the article several times and still can't find any misspelled words.) We didn't mean to offend anyone. But articles submitted to this or any other newspaper are subject to the editor's pencil, and we intend to keep it that way. Letters to the editor Letters malign junior high Editor: Many of us at Lehi Jr. High would like to respond to some of the coverage we have received in the Lehi Free Press in recent months. We are frustrated in part by the unsubstantiated allegations which have been made, but particularly by the insinuations which accompany them. As a faculty and staff, we feel it is very demoralizing to have all of our efforts on behalf of students ignored while you publish accusations which have very little basis in fact. Your most recent headline in the editorial section is particularly offensive. "More Problems at Lehi Jr. High School" implies that this is a continuation of past improprieties. In fact, there is no evidence which suggests problems in the past. The choice of that headline approaches the kind of sensationalism one would expect to find on newspapers of much lower repute which attract weary shoppers at supermarkets. All of us at Lehi Jr. realize that our most important task is the preparation of our young students for their future. We work hard to give them the information and knowledge they need. More important, we have identified behavioral skills which are essential in their futures, such things as courtesy, initiative, diligence, integrity and personal responsibility. Unfortunately, some students choose to disregard those standards of behavior we consider to be imperative for the welfare of the student vody of more than 1,000 students. Just as in life, those who choose to violate the rules also choose to accept the consequences. None of the rules are secret nor imposed on a selective basis. They are clearly defined and apply to all students equally. We at Lehi Jr. High are not perfect. Neither is any other group, from corporations to families. Some of us are stronger than others, and some of us are more compassionate; that's part of being human. None of us is uncaring; otherwise, we would not have entered the education pro- fession. Hopefully, there are enough parents in our community who have had positive experiences with L.H. staff to recognize that recent charges are based upon a single perspective and reflects the personal biases of the family. We will continue to give LJHS students every opportunity to build and gain those skills positive which will prepare them to become competent, caring citizens in the future. The Faculty and Staff of Lehi Jr. High ts letters to the editor. All letters should be typewritten and double spaced. Letters must also be signed, and must include the writer's name and telephone number. Please send letters to Editor, Newtah News Group, P.O. Box 7, American Fork, Utah, 84003 or through email at We welcome Newtahaol.com. |