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.

I just finished a telephone interview with Missy Larsen, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council for Utah. PPAC is the political action committee for Planned Parenthood, and has the legal authority to lobby state legislatures and Congress on family planning and abortion rights measures.

Here in Utah, when the Legislature tries to roll back the clock on women’s reproductive rights to the Mesozoic Era, it’s typically PPAC workers who show up and try to gently talk them out of it. They’re already gearing up for another fight come January, when state legislators are expected to take another spin at overturning Roe vs. Wade.

Missy tipped me off to one of the latest Utah myths concerning sex she’s heard through her line of work (and in this state she hears plenty of them). It’s called “floating.” Apparently, more than a few teenagers and even some college students believe it — the idea being that if you put a penis inside a vagina and then hold very, very still — it doesn’t really count as sex.

“Floating” is such a popular notion in Utah culture it even got a mention in this year’s version of Saturday’s Voyeur, the annual spoof on Utah culture by the Salt Lake Acting Company. Now that’s some street cred for a stupid urban myth, eh?

Sometimes I just want to go plum insane.

I must have driven both directions across the I-35 bridge 3,000 times during my six years in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Only a few times did I ever entertain a “what if” thought of the thing collapsing. You never do your life that way, right?

Both of my children were born in St. Paul. We lived in both cities during our time there. The cities are peppered with massive bridges spanning the mighty Mississippi.

It’s deeply tragic, this collapse of the I-35 bridge. Of course it is. I’m simply thinking right now of all the victims and their loved ones, and praying silently for the rescue and recovery efforts.

Minnesota is an amazing place, populated with some of the most caring and engaged people I’ve ever known. That is true of people everywhere, I believe, when catastrophes occur. We all pitch in and do whatever we can to help. But whatever it is — that hardy Scandinavian-Lutheran-Democrat-Farm-Labor personality that Garrison Keillor has always captured so perfectly in his writing and radio monologues, perhaps — these people will band together and soldier on.

I wish them all the best.

… but fear itself.”

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s immortal quote from his 1932 inaugural address is almost the sum total of my knowledge of this amazing man. That, and the regular moments of hero worship my parents–especially my mother–lavished on FDR’s memory as I grew up. My parents were born five days apart in 1927, so while their experiences of the Great Depression are those of young children, it of course, was a period that carved itself deep into their earliest memories. My mother was much worse off in those times than my dad; for one thing, his father never lost his job with the Union Pacific Railroad. My mother, on the other hand, moved at least a dozen times in her first 10 years of life. Several of those upheavals were to live with her unemployed father’s relatives in Los Angeles. I think I cut my teeth listening to her tales of traveling across the Mojave Deseret with no air conditioning, towing a trailer filled with all their worldly possessions, and topping out the speedometer at 35 mph.

I’m raising the legacy of FDR for the purpose of recommending a fantastic new biography. I bought it yesterday and am sitting here at work right now, wishing I were propped up against a shade tree, reading it. It’s titled, simply, “FDR.” The author is Jean Edward Smith, who was a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a biography on Ulysses S. Grant. Smith also has written a well-received biography on the first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Marshall.

In his preface to the book, Smith unfolds a map to the 800-plus pages for the reader. He says the question frequently arises as to how Roosevelt, from his old-money, blue-blood, Hudson River clan, developed such an uncanny sense of empathy for the poor and disenfranchised. Smith agrees with most historians that FDR’s lifelong struggle with polio (he was paralyzed from the waist down for half of his presidency) certainly guided his political and social philosophy. But long before he was elected president, Roosevelt had spent extended periods in Warm Springs, Ga., taking mineral springs treatments for his polio. Smith says his exposure to intractable rural poverty in the deep South began shaping his thought process years prior to his life in national politics.

Smith also firmly believes that contrary to some recent criticism, FDR had no evidence of or any involvement in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He does, however, make a case for Roosevelt’s complicity in the attack. Intelligence reports suggested strongly of a Japanese plot against the U.S. that would force us into World War II, but FDR believed Pearl Harbor to be far too fortified to fall under an invasion. I’m really looking forward to reading a thorough analysis on the topic.

But the main reason I shelled out $35 (!!) for the hardcover (published in May 2007 by Random House) is that I so desperately need to learn about a glimmer of hope that lit the way in one of this country’s darkest eras. For me, and I suspect for millions of other Americans, we are living through similar parallels in this decade. Yes, unemployment is screamingly low. But as we continue to grind on in a baseless and protracted war that fewer people support and growing numbers of young men and women have no desire to fight, I have been yearning for a thorough lesson on what a real leader did in similar and harrowing circumstances.

I won’t pretend to compare the intellect of a GWB to an FDR. A greater apples and oranges comparison couldn’t exist. But isn’t that a part of the mystery so many of us want to figure out? How is it this country could go from a Roosevelt to a Bush Jr. in fewer than 70 years? Is it possible to ever find a leader with the power and humanity of FDR again? Perhaps the stink of big money has corrupted politics to the point we’ll never see a redo of a Roosevelt-like presidency. And as I said to my husband Ted last night, world power has grown so diffuse–due in large part to sweeping technological changes in communication. It’s hard to imagine something like a 2007 Yalta Conference, with a “Big Three” calling all the shots, ever again.

Still, I’m aching to know more about the man whose name in my childhood home was almost on par with Jesus, followed by Jack Kennedy. I’d love to hear from any and all bloggers who can impart memories or knowledge of the Roosevelt legacy to me and others on this space. It’s high time for a glimmer of hope again, isn’t it?

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.

Can someone tell me how this happens?

And what is this “a family of about” 15 children? I have “about” 15 tomatoes on my plants in the garden. I have “about” 15 pens and pencils in the cup on my desk.

But counting children? Isn’t that sort of an exact science?

Unbelievable.

He looked healthy enough. He was sitting on a public bench five feet from the City Weekly offices at 248 S. Main Street and chatting with a man in a wheelchair beside him. He held a hand-lettered sign that read: “HOMELESS.” ANY SMALL CHANGE WILL DO.

When I got upstairs to the newsroom, CW copy editor Brandon Burt pointed out how the guy had a little punctuation issue. “I’m not sure if he’s homeless or not,” Brandon said. “If you put quote marks around ‘homeless’ does it mean you’re not sure?”

Hmmm. These days, there are so many homeless folks — with or without quotation marks — on Main Street, it’s hard to know. We have about a half-dozen regulars right at home on the stretch between 200 South and 300 South. When the midday sun gets too brutal, they cross Main Street to the expansive tree shade at Gallivan Plaza.

A lot of street kids come to this end of Main, too. They migrated south from the entrance to the old Crossroads Plaza, which a wrecking ball flattened months ago to make way for City Creek Plaza. Last week, a skinny blond boy with bad acne played a violin — and quite well — below my office window for 70 minutes. I gave him a 5-spot.

But the guy who lacked proper punctuation was new to me. As for his sign, it’s possible the guy simply felt like being ironic.

I guess a guy has to make a living.

But isn’t it slightly weird to see this man defending convicted polygamist Tom Green’s son? David Leavitt (younger brother to former Utah Gov. Mike) was the Juab County Attorney who prosecuted the elder Green. Back then, Leavitt considered it a crime to be doing more than one child-bride at a time. Now, son William is a victim of a system that lacks appropriate boundaries and this 19-year-old defendant has Leavitt pandering to the court for a lighter sentence.

Whaa?

Of course, you have to get your arms around Utah’s love-hate relationship with polygamy in the first place. I’ve never been able to do it. Mostly because, every now and then, I’m due back on Earth.

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.