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Show A-18 The Park Record Meetings and agendas Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, January 18-21, 2020 More Dogs on Main TO PUBLISH YOUR PUBLIC NOTICES AND AGENDAS, PLEASE EMAIL CLASSIFIEDS@PARKRECORD.COM By Tom Clyde The joys of winter Notice is hereby given that the Summit County Board of Adjustment will NOT meet on Thursday, January 23, 2020 The next Board of Adjustment meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 27, 2020 Senate impeachment trial of President Trump begins Sen. Mitt Romney insists on former adviser’s presence LISA MASCARO Associated Press WASHINGTON — The chief justice of the United States arrived Thursday at the U.S. Senate to preside over President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, ready to swear in the senators with an oath to ensure “impartial justice” as jurors for only the third such proceeding in American history. Chief Justice John Roberts made the short trip across the street from the Supreme Court before being ushered to the Senate chamber. He was to be sworn in himself before administering the oath it to the senators. The Constitution mandates the chief justice serve as the presiding officer. Roberts, who has long insisted judges are not politicians, is expected to serve as a referee for the proceedings rather than an active participant. Senators will ultimately render the verdict. The Senate opened the impeachment trial at the start of the election year as Trump seeks another term, a test not only of his presidency but also of the nation’s three branches of power and its system of checks and balances. Several senators are running for the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Trump in November. Earlier Thursday, House Democrats prosecuting the case stood before the Senate and formally read the articles of impeachment against Trump. “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!” said the Senate’s sergeant at arms, calling the proceedings to order at noon. Senators filled the chamber, sitting silently at their seats under strict trial rules that prohibit talking or cellphones, as the ceremonial protocol shifted the proceedings out of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic-run House to the Republican-majority Senate. Seven lawmakers prosecuting the charges, led by Rep. Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee and Rep. Jerrold Nadler of the Judiciary Committee, made the solemn walk across the Capitol for a second day. “With the permission of the Senate, I will now read the articles of impeachment,” said Schiff, standing at a lectern in the well of the chamber, a space usually reserved for senators. All eyes were on him. “House Resolution 755 Impeaching Donald John Trump, president of the united States, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” he began, reading the nine pages. The other House prosecutors stood in a row to his side. Trump faces a charge that he abused his presidential power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, using military aid to the country as leverage. Trump was also charged with obstructing Congress’ ensuing probe. Ahead of the proceed- ings the Government Accountability office said Thursday that the White House violated federal law in withholding the security assistance to Ukraine, which shares a border with hostile Russia. The president calls the impeachment a “hoax,” even as new information emerges about his actions toward Ukraine that led to the charges against him. Pelosi said new allegations from an indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, only reinforces the need for the Senate to consider further testimony about the president’s actions toward Ukraine. Pelosi noted that typically a special prosecutor would investigate but she doubted that would happen. “This is an example of all of the president’s henchmen,” Pelosi said, “and I hope that the senators do not become part of the president’s henchmen.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened the chamber Thursday decrying Pelosi’s decision to hand out “souvenir pens” after she signed the resolution to transmit the charges to the Senate. “This final display neatly distilled the House’s entire partisan process into one perfect visual,” McConnell said. “’It was a transparently partisan process from beginning to end.” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer renewed his party’s request that the trial include new witnesses and documents not available for the House impeachment proceedings. “What is the president hiding? What is he afraid of?” Schumer said. “The gravity of these charges is self-evident,” he said. “The House of Representatives have accused the president of trying to shake down a foreign leader for personal gain.” The president has suggested recently that he would be open to a quick vote to simply dismiss the charges, but sufficient Republican support is lacking for that. Still, an eventual vote to acquit Trump is considered highly likely. On Wednesday, in a dramatic procession across the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats carried the charges to the Senate. “Today we will make history,” Pelosi said as she signed the documents, using multiple pens to hand out and mark the moment. “This president will be held accountable.” Moments later the prosecutors walked solemnly through the stately hall, filing into the Senate back row as the clerk of the House announced the arrival: “The House has passed House Resolution 798, a resolution appointing and authorizing managers of the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump, president of United States.” Opening arguments are to begin next Tuesday after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Earlier Wednesday, the House voted 228-193, almost entirely along party lines, ending a weeks-long delay to deliver the charges with a tally reflecting the nation’s split. The top Republican in the House, Kevin McCarthy of California, said Americans will look back on this “sad saga” that tried to remove the president from office with the “weakest case.” The president’s team expects acquittal with a Senate trial lasting no more than two weeks, according to senior administration officials. That would be far shorter than the trial of President Bill Clinton, in 1999, or the first one, of President Andrew Johnson, in 1868. Both were acquitted. The seven-member prosecution team is led by the chairmen of the House impeachment proceedings, Reps. Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee and Jerrold Nadler of the Judiciary Committee, two of Pelosi’s top lieutenants. On Wednesday, Schiff released new records from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, about the Ukraine strategy, including an exchange with another man about surveilling later-fired U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Schiff said the new evidence should bring more pressure on McConnell, who is reluctant to allow witnesses to testify and prefers swift acquittal. The White House has instructed officials not to comply with House subpoenas for testimony and documents. “The challenge is to get a fair trial,” Schiff said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It shouldn’t be a challenge — if the senators are really going to live up to their oath to be impartial, they’ll want a fair trial. That’s obviously not where Mitch McConnell is coming from.” The managers are a diverse group with legal, law enforcement and military experience, including Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Sylvia Garcia of Texas, Val Demings of Florida, Jason Crow of Colorado and Zoe Lofgren of California. Two are freshman lawmakers — Crow a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Garcia a former judge in Houston. Demings is the former police chief of Orlando and Jeffries is a lawyer and member of party leadership. Lofgren has the rare credential of having worked on the congressional staff investigation of President Richard Nixon’s impeachment — he resigned before the full House voted on the charges — and then being an elected lawmaker during Clinton’s. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is leading an effort among some Republicans, including Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, to consider Senate witnesses. She told reporters she was satisfied the rules will allow votes on that. Romney said he wants to hear from John Bolton, the former national security adviser at the White House, who others have said raised alarms about the alternative foreign policy toward Ukraine being run by Giuliani. Any four senators could force an outcome. Republicans control the chamber, 5347, but it takes just 51 votes during the trial to approve rules or call witnesses. It also would take only 51 senators to vote to dismiss the charges against Trump. This past week of skiing has been amazing, sort of a whole season’s worth of powder in a single week. I managed to get out for most of it, hitting favorite spots at both Deer Valley and Park City, hiking the side country, exploring the trees, and just generally having more fun that I probably deserve. Quality skiing was usually followed by lunch with friends. It was all very civilized, and the best Park City has to offer. It was like living in some marketing piece, at least until I got home. The place has been deserted. Despite traffic jams that seem worse every day, there was room in the parking lots. One day S.R. 248 was backed up to the Rail Trail crossing. I have no idea where the people all went, but by the time I inched my way to Bonanza, the traffic vanished, and I parked in Lot 2 at Deer Valley. With the sun out and 6 inches of new snow on top of the six from the day before, and Little Cottonwood closed. So it’s been a real treat to have conditions like this during the January slow-down. I’m still adjusting to new equipment. Scarpa makes the most amazing, elastic ski boots. I’ve skied them for years, gone through several pairs in different models. The one constant is that when I put them on in the morning, it’s hard to get them to buckle at all, even in the loosest notch. Then about three runs into the day, I have to crank them down again. A few runs more, and I’m on the tightest notch on the buckle. I don’t know how they do that, expanding almost two sizes, and then returning to their original size over night. I don’t think my bird- like ankles are swelling in the morning. So one of these days, I need to spend some time with a boot guy and/or a podiatrist. But not while the skiing is this good. The dark side of all this snow is that I have to plow things open at home. We’re not quite at Donner Party conditions, but there’s a lot of snow to deal with. It’s more pleasant now that I have a tractor with a heated cab. But it still takes a couple of hours each time, and I have to get at least a quick pass on my road before I can drive out in the morning. It’s really dark and cold at 5:30, and the dogs won’t even get up with me. One day I noticed that the lever that controls the direction of chute on the blower was working fine in one direction, but the hydraulics really groaned when I tried to point it the other way. The dark side of all this snow is that I have to plow things open at home.” I’d reached the point of needing a recovery day from skiing, and decided to figure out what was happening. The hydraulic valve itself is located down under the floor of the cab. It’s connected to the lever on the control panel by a rod that bolts to the lever, down inside the panel. I could see through the gap where the lever moves that the bolt was loose, and the nut was about to fall off. Seeing and fixing are two entirely different things. I had to take the control panel apart. There were seven well hidden bolts holding it in place, in three different sizes, and a rat’s nest of wiring in the way. Once I got the thing opened up, the repair was easy. Then I remembered that I had done this before, and if the nut was going to vibrate loose again, it really called for a better solution. I considered duct tape, but decided to do it right. That’s why they make those lock nuts with the nylon insert in them. I’ve got a peanut butter jar full of them in assorted (as in completely random) sizes in the shop. The only problem is that everything else on the ranch is English size, and the new tractor is metric. So I did what I had to do, and drove 15 miles into town, on really messy roads, to buy a 37-cent nut. With the drive, the nut probably cost close to $20, but there was more snow on the way and I had to get it put back together. It was hard to get my hand down in the panel, and on the first turn of the nut, it fell into the deep recesses of the tractor. There was no retrieving it. I wasn’t about to drive back into town for another $20 nut, so I put the original back on. That was just going to vibrate loose again. To make sure I didn’t have to do this again, I got a 5/16 nut out of the peanut butter jar and forced it on to the 8mm bolt as a lock nut. It’s not going anywhere. Ever. Let it snow. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. Sunday in the Park By Teri Orr When you start down a rabbit hole... This is The Year of the Rat — it is an immutable fact — not just my opinion — it dates back centuries in the Chinese culture. ... There are 12 animal characters that rotate every 12 years and they determine the strengths and weaknesses of the year ahead. And the strengths and weaknesses of the people born under these signs. The Lunar New Year started in a soft way on Jan. 17 (with the Kitchen God Festival or Little New Year — a time to sweep with a clean new broom and sweep away bad luck). The official holiday begins on Jan. 25 (you must not sweep on this day or you will sweep good luck away) and the holiday ends on Feb. 8 — as all good holidays do — with fireworks. It is the time of the Lantern Festival. And during this time — you can now expect to receive lucky red envelopes filled with cash. I grew up 20 minutes outside of San Francisco and my birthday falls — on the same date of course in the Gregorian calendar but — in different parts of the cycle of Chinese New Year. My oft-divorced, mostly single mother loved controlled adventure — she was a lifelong Republican — so venturing into Chinatown at night was wildly and somehow acceptably exotic. Each year for my birthday we would attend the final nighttime parade with the serpentine dragon carried by dozens of Chinese people through the streets of Chinatown at night. We would sit inside at a window table on the second story of a Chinese restaurant and eat bowls of noodles and drink pots of tea and try to understand the coded messages in our fortune cookies. There were firecrackers and candied ginger and coconut. This fall I had a magical visit to San Francisco to meet family I never knew I was related to until now — who turn out to be funny and smart and lovers of fine Chinese cuisine. After a perfect morning at the San Francisco MOMA (where we saw the most remarkable exhibit by mysterious photographer JR) they took me to a hip Chinese restaurant owned by a longtime San Francis- co Chinese family and we ate family-style dishes cooked at the table right before us. On my last day — before I headed to the airport — I went into Chinatown and sat down for a slow tea ceremony with a lovely woman who didn’t have to work too hard to convince me to buy two pounds of fragrant tea — blueberry oolong and rose bud. It was just the heads of the animal characters of the zodiac brought to life. It was dizzying to look up and see them all and to meander between the animals.” In 2012 on a business trip to Washington, D.C., I was fortunate to witness the magical and exotic art from Chinese dissent artist Ai WeiWei. It featured 12 giant bronzes surrounding an outdoor fountain at the Hirshhorn Museum (part of the Smithsonian). It was just the heads of the animal characters of the zodiac brought to life. It was dizzying to look up and see them all and to meander between the animals. I had heard WeiWei speak in 2011 while he was under house arrest in China. He was on a cellphone while he was in a closet in his home and I was in the audience at the annual TED conference where it was broadcast to us. We sat in our seats in the auditorium in Vancouver holding our breath — fearful he might be discovered as he explained his art and his risky brave life. This week I saw a press release that stated WeiWei would be among the rock star folks from the arts and culture world who would be speaking on a panel during Sundance. The rabbit in me hopped up and down. And I tried to remember what this was “the year of the ...” and a song popped into my head, “Year of the Cat.” (Which it is not — of course — it is The Year of the Rat — we have established that fact already). But in the Vietnamese zodiac — The Year of the Cat (not found in the traditional Chinese zodiac) becomes ... wait for it ... the Year of the Rabbit. My year. So, the fact the popular, haunting Al Stewart song recorded at the iconic Abbey Road studios in 1976 when it was actually the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac — which was made the Year of the Cat in the Vietnamese version — seemed somehow cosmically connected or just the kind of midnight connections that happen when sleep evades a wandering mind. And then I got to thinking about the intersections between Sundance and the Chinese New Year and Ai WeiWei being here and I imagined the parade of my childhood winding down Main Street one night during the film festival. A serpentine, brightly colored dragon and firecrackers and candied ginger tossed out to the crowds that would gather and it seemed like an idea that begs to take wings or get legs or whatever animal euphemism you are comfortable with... This week about half a cord of beautiful piñon pine firewood arrived on my front porch perfectly stacked in a crisscross manner while I was at work. It was better than a crisp bill in a red envelope. Starting a new year this week makes perfect sense to me — separating it apart from the Christian holidays. I am ready to light some firecrackers and sip fragrant exotic tea and bundle up to stand in a line in the hopes of getting into a panel where the greatest voices shaping arts and culture in the world will appear at the Sundance Film Festival. And this year that festival will start on the eve of the Chinese New Year, which is something to prepare for this Sunday (don’t forget to shop for a new broom) in the Park... Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the director of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. |