We got word about an hour ago that our dear friend and political and professional mentor, J.D. Williams, died last night at his home in Holladay, Utah. He had been fighting cancer for more than a year.

J.D.’s lovely wife and lifelong love, Bea, called Ted to deliver the news. J.D. was 81 and died peacefully with family nearby.

It’s the end of an era, for sure.

I took an introductory political science class from J.D. (everyone called John Daniel Williams by his initials) in 1979. P.S. 110 was held in a huge classroom, with desks arranged row upon row of semi-circles. He had a seating chart, but knew our names in less than a week.

I’m having trouble writing this. Ted and I knew J.D.’s life was coming to a close, we had spoken to him just a few weeks ago. But knowing what is coming never makes the end any easier.

J.D. inspired thousands of college students at the University of Utah (and Stanford and Harvard, too) to plant their feet in democracy. His was a roll up your sleeves approach to living in this great country. He taught practical politics with an emphasis on ethics. He once said of his former student, Karl Rove, that Karl got the politics education right, but he had missed out on the ethics.

On the personal side, J.D. and Bea took Ted and I to dinner on the eve of our wedding three years ago. It was a lovely June evening in Millcreek Canyon and we dined at Log Haven. They kept telling us what a treat it was seeing the two of us together. J.D.’s blue eyes sparkled. He loved sweets; especially rich desserts. That night we four shared creme brulee and dense chocolate cake.

In days to come people will be eulogizing J.D. in much more refined ways than I can. I’ve lost a committed teacher and friend. The country has lost a true patriot. This nearly one-party state has lost a liberal firebrand who helped keep it honest.

I’m deeply saddened by this loss but grateful beyond words for the time I had with this man. I love J.D. Williams.

Ted and I hopped on the motorcycle last Sunday and rode the nearly three hours to Price, Utah, for a fundraiser for the six miners still trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine and for the families of the three men killed trying to rescue them.

We have always felt welcome and completely at home in Carbon and Emery counties–largely because we share the same politics with most of the people living there. I’ve given many speeches there to community and church groups, and people still swarm Ted when we visit, sharing all these cool memories of when he ran for U.S. Senate and Utah governor. Invariably, someone asks him when he plans to run again!

So I came home from that bittersweet event and wrote my weekly column for City Weekly about it.

Then, two days later, I saw an interesting letter on the Aug. 23 Salt Lake Tribune editorial page. Letter writer Mary O’Brien, who lives in Coal Country, pretty much sees the topic of miners’ hardscrabble personalities through the same prism as I do.

I am taking some heart, however, in recent news stories that have begun to show the families’ anger and resentment toward mine owner Bob Murray and his toadie for big mining business, MSHA’s Richard Stickler. It’s a powerful thing to hear them speak up against Murray’s one-sided version of the past 18 days. I hope they keep the heat on.

Thought-provoking view today on the latest tragic chapter of the Crandall Canyon Mine catastrophe.

While we in Utah keep waiting for the latest updates to last night’s “bump” inside the mine that killed three rescue miners and injured six others, outside experts are all over the story with their analysis.

I’m actually in this guy’s camp for the most part, how about the rest of you? At the very lest, Congress needs to hold hearings for oversight of mining safety at the first reasonable opportunity.

Mine owner Robert Murray’s insistence on dangerous practices like retreat mining has likely turned that place into a permanent death trap. Wretched.

Did you all see this guy this morning during his rant outside the Crandall Canyon coal mine disaster?

The screaming bald guy would be Robert Murray, president and CEO of Murray Energy Corp. I didn’t get to see him on live TV today, but did listen on the car radio to 90 percent of his news conference in Huntington, Utah. My first thoughts were to cut the guy some slack because he is in shock, is sleep-deprived and deeply worried about the fates of the six coal miners trapped some 1,700 feet below the surface of the caved-in mine. But then…

… He spent the majority of his time berating the news media for trying to report whatever tidbits they could grab on tight deadlines, and highly limited by Murray’s own staff and security goons who my reporter friends tell me have been very stingy in sharing information. He blasted geologic experts for discussing the cave-in as the reason seismic equipment may have registered the event as if it were an earthquake. “IT WAS NOT AN EARTHQUAKE,” Murray bellowed, a couple of times.

At least the seismic experts are holding back a bit, telling reporters they need more information before they make a complete statement on the cause of the catastrophe.

After 27 years in the news business, and having been on site at a few natural and human-made disasters myself, I know the information can be spotty and the scene chaotic. But reporters do their best in these situations, and have no interest in making the case worse for anyone — victims, families, mine bosses, cops and emergency workers. As adrenaline-inducing as these assignments can be, it’s always a horrible spot to be in. Because you can’t win. If you report everything that comes at you, and it isn’t enough to satisfy a rightfully curious and confused public, you’re being lazy or soft. If you get even slightly aggressive, and seek out family members or officials to interview on your own, you are being insensitive and sensational.

In these cases, the press can only work with the information that’s coming to them as a herd, at least until a little time passes and more people are talking.

But Murray had no trouble talking. And talking. The fact that this clown would be jumping all over the liability question (don’t you sense a battle of the experts already brewing to determine damages or insurance payouts in a courtroom?!) while those men are stuck underground, suffering, maybe dead, is the most disgusting and callous form of corporate spin control I can imagine. In fact, I really can’t imagine it — it’s just that bad.

What a dick.

The City Weekly staff returned about 30 minutes ago from the bomb scare across the street at the Wells Fargo Building. Details are still trickling in, but there appears to be no bomb.

The call to evacuate Wells Fargo came at 2:30. We left obediently at 3:15 p.m. — one of the last office buildings (along with our neighbors, the Sam Weller’s Books crew) to be ordered to leave the area. Most people stood around a safe distance from the danger zone. But it was hot. So our publisher Jim Rizzi — ever the generous sort — sent us all two blocks south to Port O’ Call, where he bought a round of drinks for everyone. At least it was air conditioned. And we’re on Tuesday night deadline, no less! (Don’t count the typos in the paper on Wednesday, please.)

Also on this very day during lunch hour I broke up a fight between a drunk homeless man and his drunk homeless girlfriend. I learned later their names are George and Julie. What went down was this:

I was walking into the front door of our building at 248 S. Main when shouting broke out. Shouting and some genuinely awful profanity aimed at the woman, Julie. George was screaming at her, running in and out of traffic and standing on the TRAX tracks. Most bystanders were uh, standing, on the sidewalk, mouths gaping open. Suddenly, George ran up to Julie, who by then was standing on the Gallivan Plaza TRAX platform. He took a swing at her, but missed.

That’s when I ran over, stood between the two of them, looked him square in the eye and shouted: “You lay a hand on her and you’ll have me to deal with.”

He grabbed his crotch, told me to fuck myself. I told him I had called the police, and I would not be leaving till they came. He spit at me. Got my shirt. But it’s black, the spittle didn’t show and besides, it’s washable.

I walked with Julie to the benches at the TRAX stop. We talked. She lives on the street. She just got out of Volunteers of America Detox. She was drunk again. I told her it didn’t matter whether she was drunk or not, I wasn’t going to stand there and let that guy hit her. She said “thank you.”

It took more than 15 minutes for the cops to arrive. I called 911 twice. The second time, I was angry. Why should it take two calls, I asked the polite dispatcher, to a downtown incident? There was violence, there was disruption of traffic. What else did the scene need for police intervention?

Two minutes later, Officers Snipes and Conrad arrived. Snipes is a bicycle cop. His bike was on the back of the squad car. They were very professional. I told them I’ve written a lot about homelessness. I know it’s a cycle, I told them. You’ll take George away, but any day now he’ll be back and so will Julie. She doesn’t have the tools to leave him, neither of them can be drunk and stay at the shelter, so here they live, on Main Street.

Gwen Springmeyer, of the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs, told me she’ll communicate with the City Council and Police Department about the problems. No one here at CW wants a sweep of the homeless off Main Street. This is city life. The sidewalks are free and open to all. But I don’t want women getting beat up out here, either. No one — of any stripe — should have to worry about that.

This post seems to mesh nicely–if sadly–with the previous remarks about remaking our sad and ragtag Salt Lake City Main Street.

A City Weekly reader, Jeanne Allein, just sent me this e-mail:

Emilie Segil Martin left us on July 2nd at the age of 87. Do you know the history of this remarkable Salt Lake woman? In the 1960’s I worked at Adrien ‘n Emilie’s boutique with other young and naïve women . . . seven of us are still living in the SLC area and we spent a delightful afternoon with Emilie at a bridal shower several years ago. Emilie was our mentor and friend and she shared all of her worldly knowledge with us. She helped change the face of downtown Salt Lake, along with her brother, Adrien.

I immediately wrote back to Jeanne. I told her about my first-ever pair of bell bottom pants. Purchased at the Cottonwood Mall Adrien ‘n Emilie store in 1970, they were pumpkin orange, fine-wale corduroy with the widest bell legs you could imagine! My mother even sprung for a cotton knit “body shirt” — purple with orange stripes and a little scalloped edge at the neck and hems of the long sleeves.

What an ensemble! I was 13, in the eighth-grade at Olympus Junior High and HOT.

I know that Adrien Segil was killed some years ago while riding his bicycle in town. That was tragic. And I know that Emilie–who skied regularly at Alta into her hearty eighth decade–was a pioneer along with her brother in Utah’s fashion circles in the ’60s and ’70s. Their shop was on upper Main Street. Very cool place.

I’m sorry to hear of Emilie’s passing. Does anyone else remember their great store?

I am sitting at my office keyboard at City Weekly in the historic David Keith building. The address is 248 S. Main Street. I have two 8-foot high picture windows (which desperately need cleaning) looking eastward and straight down at the Gallivan Plaza TRAX stop. Sometimes I look down at that zany KUTV news crew doing live reports with barbecue chefs or some such fun on the sidewalk right across the street.

It’s 4:39 p.m. Before human beings started working around the clock and from home offices, this used to be known as “rush hour.” In Salt Lake City’s downtown golden age–50 years ago or more–it meant people moving on the sidewalks, cars idling at traffic lights. Men and women in hats and pressed suits.

There was life here.

Now there is scarcely any life at all.

The TRAX trains fill up nicely. A good thing, certainly. But they come into town and go home to the suburbs. Nothing on lower Main Street draws a crowd.

I think we are supposed to be patient, wait for another five years while the LDS Church builds its City Creek Center three blocks to the north. We keep hearing about the trickle-down theory of marketing and commerce. We’re told the new mall will wake up everything down here, and great throngs will find their way to Second, Third and Fourth South.

One of the most important questions we can ask the field of mayoral candidates is what are their plans for this sad, decaying, shuttered-up downtown. I’m not willing to give up to The Gateway–just to throw up my hands and admit priorities have shifted to chain stores and beige stucco.

If you were the architect, what would you do to kick the real downtown SLC into gear? One suggestion will do. Post it here, on the blog. Or am I just wrong? Maybe I live in one of those filmy, TV dream montages, where the downtown of my youth shows up and keeps me in a constant state of wishing for more. Maybe downtown is just dead; its resurrection just a pipe dream. Geez, Holly. Just get over it.

I think any downtown resurgence hangs on more than simply changing the liquor laws, though that would help. I’d love to hear your thoughts. And maybe the people running for Salt Lake mayor would, too. Most of them read this blog.

Did anyone watch the first two-hour episode of “The Mormons” on PBS last night? Your thoughts?

In brief…The production values and interviews were excellent and well-edited. I did find myself dozing a bit on the couch during some scenes, including the early history of the LDS Church (Smith’s first vision, his death and martyrdom, etc.). This may have more to do with the fact that we first watched the Utah-Houston playoff game (hey, priorities!) and then “The Mormons” on a Tevo recording.

But growing up in Mormondom as I did, most of the background was familiar.

One small question: Why, in the visuals for the Saints’ trek into the Salt Lake Valley, did we see countless scenes of Monument Valley, Goblin Valley and other spectacular red rock formations of Southern Utah? A shot of the mouth of dry and scrubby Emigration Canyon would have done nicely.

Perhaps the “Life Elevated” team from Utah’s tourism office got hold of the early cut? Ha.

Tonight’s installment will feature more of the call of culture on Mormons, the political influence and business holdings of the church and the push-pull its doctrine and demand for strict obedience has on its members. Look for our friend, Jim Clayton, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Utah. He’s interviewed about the church’s mix of theology, politics and revisionist history that leads many faithful but questioning members to drop out of the fold.

I’m looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, any thoughts?

You know those moments when some item in the news, a fabulous quote or some whammo-concept stops you long enough to make you actually think? Your mind starts racing and before you know it, you are pondering this idea taking root in your world.

This has been going on for me all week. It started with this announcement of a new Utah advocacy group. You also can read about Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment by linking to Doug Fabrizio’s live KUER-FM90 interview here.

Environmental groups, even organizations as button-down as the American Lung Association, have been warning about the danger of auto emissions and unfettered coal burning power plants for decades. When strides are made, like the federal Clean Air Act (34 years ago!), we’re all jumping up and down. Then a few more steps forward. Then nothing. Or worse, the clock gets turned back under presidential administrations and congresses that can’t say no to auto makers and big energy interests.

But ah, what about doctors? What about those men and women wrapped in white coats, with stethoscopes hanging from their necks and offering that thoughtful nod as they listen to your list of symptoms? Credible folks, those docs. And smart. And in the eyes of our state lawmakers, the docs have no political axes to grind. When the guys in the white coats begin beating the drum for air quality along the Wasatch Front, someone in power might really listen.

Dr. Brian Moench, a Salt Lake anesthesiologist and leader of the physicians’ group, has written several opinion pieces for Salt Lake City newspapers on the topic. He’s got current research about increased afflictions related to minute particulates in the air that link directly to asthma (rates are skyrocketing in children everywhere–especially in urban areas), cancers (more than 80 percent of them are environmentally caused) and generally shortened life spans.

Among other ideas, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment are advocating for fewer vehicles on the road. To help accomplish that, they’re pushing for free mass transit. Whoa. Now that’s an idea with some heft. Can you picture a Utah state budget that for once defers to better transit options — and maybe even free — over more and more highway construction?

It’s so radical the thought makes me shiver.

My stepdaughter, Jenny Wilson, had the same stop-in-your-tracks feeling I did last week, apparently. Jenny is running for mayor of Salt Lake City this year, and according to one privately commissioned poll by a prominent local business, is far ahead of the 10-candidate pack for the race, at 21 percent name recognition and favorable image.

Jenny and her husband, Trell Rohovit, are parents of two little boys, ages four and one. Zach and Max are healthy and adorable. But they will take over this planet someday, and their parents and grandparents are starting to worry about its future. A lot.

Currently a Salt Lake County Council member-at-large, Jenny last week spoke in favor of a Salt Lake County Council of Governments proposal for a commission to study Utah’s endangered air quality and ways to improve it.

I know, I know. You read the words “commission” or “task force” and have to stifle a yawn. But it’s like this: If the county (and Salt Lake City, which I hope will be under Jenny’s charge after the November election) gets a jump on this issue — working in tandem with these progressive physicians and other advocates for clean air — we have more ammunition for the state Legislature and Utah’s congressional delegation to do something meaningful.

I haven’t been this charged about an issue since Roe vs. Wade.

Try keeping a secret in this town. Salt Lake City may be growing, and changing, and adding a big-ass mall downtown that promises to be life-changing. Still, you can’t keep something about a little job change quiet for long.

Today marks the official start of my new job. Yes, I am the new editor of City Weekly, a 60,000-plus circulation alternative newspaper in Salt Lake City. John Saltas founded the paper 22 years ago. Back then it went by the name Private Eye, which remains the title of Saltas’ regular column at the front of the paper.

We had hoped to break the news on our own deadline, which happens to be today, but so it goes. When Salt Lake Tribune business writer Dawn House called yesterday, I had just finished meeting with my new staff at CW’s very cool Main Street office. (More to come on the cool factor of the CW office) I was sitting in Saltas’ office when Dawn called. It was a hoot. Saltas told her he wasn’t ready to announce my appointment until Wednesday. House, like any decent reporter, refused to give up and demanded the story on her own timetable. I would have demanded the same thing were I in her place.

You go, Dawn.

Not that this is an earth-rattling story. We’re still fighting a miserable and losing war in Iraq, aren’t we? And didn’t the U.S. Supremes just bitch-slap George W. Bush for his administration’s hands-off approach to auto emissions and unbridled greenhouse gases in the environment?

Naturally, most of what I told House ended up on her cutting room floor. She spent an unbelievable amount of newsprint today trying to prove what I think she cosiders a conspiracy behind my predecessor, Ben Fulton, taking a leave of absence. BTW, if Ben chooses to return to CW in some other capacity in four months, I plan on keeping options open for him. But House didn’t ask me about that.

Oh well. I’m not sure she came close to capturing why I want to edit CW, but then most trad news people have never taken such a risk. Working at an altie paper is a total gas, I promise. Much more fun than sitting in press row behind a glass partition, a daily newspaper ID badge dangling from your neck and watching the state Legislature all day.

Here is what I’m looking forward to:

First, I’m back in my ‘hood, right where I belong and love to be. I’ve been a newspaper journalist for 26 years, and spent six of those as a reporter at the Twin Cities Reader in Minneapolis and the Dallas Observer.

Without hesitation, I tell you those were the finest and most productive years of my professional life. I had unlimited freedom. I received careful and creative editing. I developed an actual “voice.” And our staffs had high morale — a welcome change from the snarky, grousing comments and insecurity that punctuate life in most traditional newsrooms.

Second, as House mentioned in her story today, readership of alternative newspapers has been growing, while readership at dailies is either stagnant or declining. I like the idea of heading up a newspaper that, instead of constantly ruminating and stressing over how to gain readers in the elusive 18-34 age category, tries to attract them with basic, good journalism. What a concept.

Now. Does that mean CW is doing good journalism? Mostly, but certainly not enough of it. I told the staff we’re going to “own” certain stories in and around Salt Lake City. This is the purpose of “alternative journalism.” We’ll use traditional reporting and editing tools to get our stories. We’ll run all the traps. No one will accuse us of taking short cuts or lacking reporting or writing quality. The fact is, dozens of stories fly well under the daily newspapers’ and local TV news programs’ radar. Guess whose shoulders it falls on to dig them out and make them interesting and worth reading?

You got it. Your friendly neighborhood altie paper.

Do I sound crazy-excited? I am. I’m going to keep this blog going as well as contribute regularly to CW’s own site. If you haven’t access to the print version, please visit http://www.slweekly.com when you can.

Tomorrow’s issue is the annual “Best of Utah” — a record-setting 208 pages, publisher Jim Rizzi tells me. Can’t wait to read it. BTW, I’ll be pimping the “Best Of” in a guest appearance on FOX-13 early morning news tomorrow (that’s Thursday, April 5). Tune in between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. if you can. I’ll be the one wearing the least amount of pancake make-up and with middle-aged woman bags under my eyes.