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Show A-12 Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, June 20-23, 2020 The Park Record State says recovery plan won’t risk residents’ health Herbert says surge in cases in Utah is cause for concern BRADY MCCOMBS Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY — Utah state leaders said Wednesday that updated plans intended to help drive economic recovery won’t compromise the health of residents even though the state is experiencing a multi-week rise in cases. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, said the increase in cases was somewhat expected because many businesses were allowed to reopen starting in May and restrictions on how many people can gather together have been loosened. He acknowledged that the rise causes “concern and pause” but said the state shouldn’t have to choose between keeping people healthy and making plans to reopen businesses and get people back to work. “It’s false choice to say we can only do one and not the other,” Herbert said. He spoke a weekly briefing in which Utah state epidemiologist Angela Dunn declared after three weeks of rising case counts: “The risk of being exposed to COVID-19 is higher than ever in Utah.” The state tallied 586 new coronavirus cases Friday — the highest mark it’s recorded and significantly exceeding the daily average for June that was already nearly double the 168 average daily cases in May. With three new deaths reported Friday, Utah has recorded 155 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. “I’m urging you to limit your number of close contacts by practicing social distancing, wearing a face-covering when you are in public places, practicing good hand hygiene and staying home when you are ill , no matter how mild the symptoms,” Dunn said. Herbert also issued a new plea for Utah residents to use masks, comparing it to wearing a seat belt in a car. Herbert has stopped short of making masks mandatory. “There’s no guarantee if you wear a seat belt you won’t get hurt in an accident. But it does reduce risk. It makes the odds better for you,” Herbert said. “Same with wearing a mask. It’ll help you against catching it from somebody else. It also helps you from spreading the virus....For those who really care about their neighbors, you should really wear a mask.” The latest iteration of the state’s plan to emerge from the global economic recession caused by the pandemic that led 175,000 state residents to claim unemployment since mid-March includes a plan to use up to $60 million in federal stimulus funds for a grant program to help businesses reopen and stay safe. The state also plans to invest in infrastructure projects ready for construction. The plan encourages businesses to pledge to maintain safe working spaces by adhering to practices such as social distancing, strict hygiene and the use of face masks, said Derek Miller, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber and Downtown Alliance. Senate President Stuart Adams, a Republican, noted that the most people 18-64 years old don’t have to be hospitalized if they get coronarivus. “We can open the economy if we take care of the medically frail,” Adams said. SERVING ALL YOUR FRAMING NEEDS FOR OVER 30 YEARS! Large Selection of Ready-Made Frames Easy Parking | Convenient Location 1240 Iron Horse Drive PARK CITY 435–649–3640 More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde An overdue change The dogs woke me up very early Wednesday morning. One of them decided he need to go out, right now, and there was no convincing him that he could wait a while. While he was pawing my face, he reminded me that the new carpet was not quite a week old, and it would be a shame if something happened to it. So at about 5:30, we were up and at it. I opened the door and it was snowing. Hard. Like a January blizzard. There were 2 inches of snow on the roof of the car. The grass areas were white. By the time the dogs decided to come back in, my teeth were chattering, so I turned the heat on. I decided to eat breakfast, and turned the TV on to see what weirdness had hit overnight. It was all garbled. I mean the picture, though the content lately is pretty messy, too. It’s June 17, and I’m brushing the snow off the satellite dish. It might slow the rate of growth around here if Realtors were required to make a written disclosure on every property that it will snow in June and even July, and that, by normal standards, the climate here is uninhabitable. You might die of the plague in New York, but at least it doesn’t snow in midJune. Could be worth it. The big news overnight was an announcement from PepsiCo that they have decided to retire the Aunt Jemima pancake brand. For 130 years, Aunt Jemima pancakes have been a grocery staple. But in a sudden fit of cultural awareness, officials at PepsiCo decided that maybe selling a product branded with racial stereotypes that relate back to slavery was a little bit tone deaf. Ya think? Fifty years ago, the Aunt Jemima branding seemed all wrong, and it hasn’t improved with age. Meanwhile, at the Mars cor- poration in London, they announced they were looking into the Uncle Ben’s rice branding. No changes were announced, but they were “evaluating all possibilities” for “evolving the brand,” which has all the same issues surrounding it as Aunt Jemima. Cultural changes happen slowly, until they happen, and then they seem to happen literally overnight. One day, the 130-year old, uncomfortably racist image of Aunt Jemima is acceptable on our pancake mix, and then the next morn- Cultural changes happen slowly, until they happen, and then they seem to happen literally overnight.” ing, it’s not. Office towers full of marketing people are supposedly studying this stuff, making sure the brand has broad appeal in the marketplace. Somehow, they missed this one. Like so much in culture, if it’s been that way for five generations, it becomes invisible. It’s just always been that way, which explains so much of where we are right now. By the way, has anybody seen Betty Crocker recently? All the attention on the Aunt Jemima situation got me thinking about that. I have a serious brownie habit, and my go-to brand has always been Betty Crocker (which I upgrade with chocolate chips and walnuts). I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the way, Betty’s portrait vanished from the package. She’s been replaced by a red spoon. I looked at the box of the most recently purchased brownie mix, and Betty Crocker has gone missing. A little research showed that Betty Crocker has gone through some serious changes, from her early incarnation as a sort of austere grandmother, to a corporate look, then more of a younger, working-mom vibe. The latest makeover was in 1996, when she took on a little softer, more approachable look. The power suit was replaced with a red sweater, and the pearl necklace became a gold chain. There were kind of disturbing blogs where people expressed clear preferences for one version of Betty or another. People care. And then she vanished. There was nothing online mourning the passing of Betty Crocker, or explaining that cake mixes do not require an ethnic identity behind them. She’s just gone. This seems like something Fox News should be looking into. What did those protesters in Seattle do to Betty Crocker? What’s the Hunter Biden connection? Anyway, I’m sure the creative minds at PepsiCo will soon come out with something new to replace the Aunt Jemima pancakes, and I will probably still prefer to use the Bisquick mix — even though the sinister Betty Crocker disappearance lingers over the entire General Mills family of products. If you’re going to eat pancakes, you’re going to eat them the way your mother made them. In our house, it was Betty Crocker all the way. If Bisquick was good enough for Betty Crocker, it was good enough for us. 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 NOW OPEN! By Teri Orr A most delicious week 1355 Lowell Ave., Park City, UT BUY THE BIG BURRITO A BURRITO. HAPPY FATHERS DAY! BASE OF PARK CITY MOUNTAIN RESORT 435-649-2252 After more time than I can ever remember in my long life of preparing (I can’t say cooking when there were days I just opened a can of soup or unboxed a frozen entrée) my own meals — I ate out. In fact — I ate out multiple times. Before mid-March, the truth is I ate out frequently. With friends and business partners. All meals were subject to being held in a restaurant — breakfasts, lunches, dinners, coffee hours, cocktail hours, Starbucks moments. I really had no earthly idea how little I was in charge of feeding myself most weeks. Then COVID. And cold turkey — was what I was serving myself for lunch, sliced thin — lunch meat style on bread purchased weekly and stored in the fridge where it could dry out to become something I would later tear apart for the birds in my yard. When you live alone there is no way to get portion control right. And anything worth really cooking — like a chicken or chili or pasta — is never something you create for one serving for one person for one day. Stuff lasts and multiples in a fridge. And the small freezer drawer. Cheese and cracker meals become the new normal. And ice cream — oh dear lord — you remember ice cream is always the right choice at any time of day. So when my friend Nan reached out and invited me to the opening of Eileen Dunn’s (Done to Your Taste) latest creation — Fiercely Fresh Eats — outdoors in Kamas — I was beyond ready. I needed conversation that wasn’t on a screen. I needed sun and fresh air and basil enclosed in a glassine wrap embracing shrimp. I needed to drive to Kamas. I needed other humans. I was delighted on all fronts. It was a beautiful spring day in the county which is the country with a light breeze and warm sun. We ordered our meals and then got settled in deep cushions for deep conversations under an umbrella on a cozy patio. We had so much to say — about the state of the planet and ourselves. We have both lived in our respective zones here about 40 years — give or take. And we have been reporting on news all those years. We had much to catch up on. Eileen Dunn came out of the kitchen to share some virtual hugs and we spoke of all we had been doing and not doing in quarantine and life changes for us all. She shared her staff working at the cafe was a who’s who of food service folks we knew mostly (formerly) from Deer Valley — Karen and Scott and others. The food was crazy, crazy good, reasonably priced and served in disposable (or take-home) boxes with bamboo utensils. The umbrella provided the right amount of shade and the time somehow suspended. Days later I was sitting on the porch at my old home away from home — Cafe Terigo. They had reopened the cafe and the patio. And I was with my dearest friends and we sat at the perfect table — closest to the street — where we have had more meals than I can count and watched all the parades for decades. The paper menus were delivered by masked waitstaff who we had missed so much. Owner Debi was there and her husband Ed and their daughter Amy and their grandgirls who had been sheltering from Texas with them. Daughter Carly was in the kitchen creating a new pasta dish. (Son Travis has re-opened his restaurant to rave reviews also last week — Purple Sage). We sat in that sun for all the hours it stayed on Main Street and we visited about how life — as we knew it — was never going to be the same. And how some of that was really positive. Mostly, we talked over each other like excited puppies in a basket — happy to be re-engaged in some semblance of the new normal. Also this week — in a bittersweet twist of fate and the times — I received a note from Matt and Maggie of the beloved Tupelo restaurant on Main Street that they would be creating their long-dreamedof farm-to-table experience in downtown Heber — closer to their little farm and where they live. It will be called Afterword by Tupelo Park City. When the time is right they hope to return to Park City in some form but for now — starting July 1 — they will open a new place and a new chapter in their creative lives. They have hosted so many great adventures and conversations for the arts and the city I will miss them on Main Street. And I look forward to experiencing that new dining adventure they have crafted ... soon. For now I have tiptoed also into a few lunches and dinners at the homes of friends — who have also been deadly serious about protecting themselves during the past several months of lockdown. It has been so joyous to just be slightly normal. I returned also to caring for my home outside my walls. I have planted my herbs and they are growing wildly already. I have been harvesting oregano and mint for friends along with snippets of rosemary. I have been filling the bird feeders — knowing the squirrels and bunny rabbits are also snacking on the falling seed. The magpies have grown to the size of turkey buzzards and there are so many brightly colored new birds stopping by — I am going to have to pull out a bird book and see if I can name them. The world is not hurting any less than it was last week — not the folks without jobs and/or in compromised health situations or precarious living conditions. I know some of that acutely within my own small circle. But to be able to be useful sometimes you need to recharge and remember and reconnect with both nature and good humans who can help you chart a course forward — in sunlight — both brightly and as it fades. With some time for reflection — and some measure of grace — these Sundays in the Park... Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the founder and director emeritus of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. |