Utah Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble has called for a legislative audit to determine where state funding for smaller classrooms is going. The Provo Republican and CPA wants accountability. He’s not happy with the knowledge that in spite of several legislative efforts to funnel more money toward this goal, classrooms really aren’t getting much smaller.

Oh, this is so duh. I mean, double duh.

Good lord, Curt, do the math. Here’s the way the problem might look in a standard fourth-grade textbook:

Huge Utah families + no desire to curb family size + no extra taxes levied against huge families for their strain on the school system = WAY BIG CLASSROOMS.

Is that so hard? The kids keep on coming. The money needs to keep coming, too. For this, you need a legislative audit?

You people are making us nuts.

Wham.

That was the sound of reality smacking me upside the head.

I must get a job.

Not just a fun little keyboard-tapping blogging job. Though let it be noted that I have made a whopping $16.53 from Google since starting mullentown in mid-January.

Since leaving my paying job exactly two months ago, I’ve become a well-loved and deeply appreciated full-time wife/mom/housekeeper/dog walker/cook. I’ve had more fun than I could imagine paging through Cooking Light magazines and the new 75th anniversary edition of “Joy of Cooking.” BTW, the French onion soup I made last week has no equal — at least in this earthly realm.

But I need a paycheck. And benefits. And another crack at building up my 401K if I’m to spend my golden years anywhere but sleeping on top of a grated steam vent in some downtown alley.

You might ask what brought on all this soul searching. Uh, well, it was a little yearly ritual called Tax Time. Ted spent his entire President’s Day holiday holed up in his home office digging up e-receipts, little scraps of paper, and calling for a tourniquet to stanch our hemorrhaging spending. To be completely fair, he included himself.

You see, the day started with taxes and evolved into budgeting. A real Come to Jesus session.

Oooh baby, there’s nothing I like better than pulling tax info together. The door to Ted’s office is our home’s demilitarized zone — at least until he gets everything neatly packaged and off to the CPA. I tiptoed up the stairs and kissed him on the cheek a couple of times. But preoccupied as he was, I think it must have felt like a mosquito buzzing his head.

It’s occurred to me that NEXT TAX YEAR will be my time to shine. If I spend the first quarter of 2007 gainfully unemployed, I won’t have any income to claim.

Meanwhile, it’s off to work I go. See, because I could get nicely accustomed to whipping up delicious meals and watching birds cavort in the trees outside my kitchen window. But neither activity will pay anyone’s college tuition, will it?

Working-stiff existence, here I come.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

No one yet in the media has offered the possibility that Trolley Square shooter Sulejman Talovic might have suffered a schizophrenic outburst of some sort on Monday night.

I’m not trying to be flip or funny. I mean it.

It’s possible that Talovic’s loner personality and brooding countenance could have everything to do with a serious mental illness taking hold in his mind and body. Schizophrenia, for instance, often shows up in victims in their late teens or early 20s. Parents who have known this cruel disease in their children will often say they had no outward signs until the first real behavorial meltdown occurred.

If the Trolley Square massacre doesn’t scream out “mental meltdown,” I don’t know what qualifies.

I’m not any abnormal psychology expert. But I’ve certainly battled depression and anxiety with the help of a doctor’s care, talk therapy, plenty of exercise, and prescription meds. My mother’s side of the family is plumb-full of chronic depression. Some of them have had the good sense to get help; others, well, I’ll just say they’re still struggling.

We will never know what demons spoke to Talovic the night he sprayed Trolley Square with buckshot and took out five good people in the process. I’m just thinking the psychotic epidsode or complete breakdown explanation makes as much sense as any. For me anyway, it seems to explain the random nature of it all, the cold and determined brutality.

It’s also possible that Talovic’s parents — with limited income and with their own challenges as Bosnian refugees of adapting to a whole new culture, finding work, helping their four kids adjust — simply did not see or understand warning signs of mental illness in their oldest child.

My thoughts are just that: Mine. Any mental condition this killer suffered will never fully explain or excuse what happened. But it does give pause. And it does make me think how limited we are in recognizing, understanding, and accepting mental illness.

Less than 30 minutes ago, I attended a press conference where the Salt Lake City Police Department released basic details about last night’s shooting rampage at the Trolley Square shopping mall, which ended in the killing of five mall patrons and the gunman.

The dead included two men and three women.

The shooter was Sulejmen Talovic, an 18-year-old male from Salt Lake City. Police released little more than that. Chief Chris Burbank said Talovic lives with his mother. They are still investigating his motives, his work and or educational background, and seeking information about his friends and associations. Burbank said they have no knowledge of his mental state last night or leading up to the shootings.

Police believe at this point that Talovic acted alone and had no assistance in planning the crime.

The dead are identified as:

Jeffery Walker, 52.
Vanessa Quinn, 29.
Kirsten Hinckley, 15.
Teresa Ellis, 29.
Brad Frantz, 24.

The hospitalized injured are:
Carolyn Tufts, 44.
Shawn Munns, 34.
Stacy Hansen, 53.
Jeffery Allen Walker, 16.

At this writing, we know nothing more about their backgrounds, hometowns or other personal information.

Burbank told reporters the shooter had a “minor” juvenile criminal record with four non-violent infractions. He would not discuss details, citing the confidentiality of juvenile criminal information.

Talovic parked his car in the mall’s west parking terrace, and just before entering the west door of Trolley, shot two people. He entered the building, then shot a woman. He walked eastward through the lower level of the mall, and shot five people at Cabin Fever card and gift shop. Burbank said Talovic “encountered two others before he was contained” by four Salt Lake police officers and one off-duty Ogden police officer.

The Ogden officer was able to keep Talovic at bay until other police arrived, and is being hailed as the hero of the night. His name is not yet being released. All the officers — including the Ogden man — are on paid administrative leave during the investigation.

“There is no question that [the Ogden officer’s] quick actions saved the lives of numerous people,” Burbank told reporters gathered at the west entrance of the Salt Lake City and County Building. The officer, he said, engaged a suspect who was well-armed. He was wearing no uniform and had none of the customary back-up of his partner or SWAT team.

Police said Talovic carried a backpack into the mall and had two weapons — a .38-caliber handgun and a shotgun. Burbank could not describe the shotgun. Talovic also had several rounds of live ammunition in the backpack and in a bandelier around his torso.

ScanlanKemperBard Companies, owner of Trolley Square, has established a fund for the victims and their families through Wells Fargo Bank. Contributions can be made to the “Trolley Square Victims’ Fund” at any bank branch. Tom Bard, SKB executive vice president, told me his firm has made a “sizable contribution” to the fund, but would not elaborate on the amount.

Random thoughts:

Mayor Rocky Anderson, who conducted the press conference, was thoughtful, calm, and reassuring — just what we need and expect from the leader of our city today. “This is as tough as it gets for any community,” a somber Anderson began. He assured everyone, which was echoed by Burbank in his remarks, that statistically Salt Lake is a very safe place. “This was an isolated incident,” Anderson said, adding that crime statistics across the board have been dropping in Salt Lake for 14 straight years.

“This kind of thing is really unheard of here,” said Burbank. “I am just amazed standing here. Exactly what caused this? What drove a young man to do this?”

While we all await that answer, which may never fully come, my current thought is somewhat opposed to the mayor and police chief’s disbelief. The fact is, we can never view this city as so fundamentally different than everywhere else. This city is growing and changing–and we have invited that upward evolution every step of the way, for goodness sake. It’s perfectly fine and normal in the aftermath of this numbing tragedy to act surprised, shocked, even incredulous at this unspeakable and random act of violence.

But do let’s give up on the notion that our bedrock Utah values somehow save us or cocoon us from crimes and violence shared by the rest of our society. We are no better or worse than anyone else who lives and loves their family and friends — and that means in Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, or Newark.

Instead of looking back on Salt Lake’s good old, safe old days, let’s accept we no longer live in a bubble. (If we ever did at all!!) And let’s start working, as soon as tomorrow I hope, on getting to know and understand the people in our midst. The people who live and work near us, the children packed into the huge warehouses we call schools. Because as this city continues its well-loved march toward expansion, the strains and stresses of urban growth will build right along with it.

We will never be safe and sound and fully protected.

Working my way through the Sunday paper on a rainy morning, I was deeply moved by several personal stories of Utah parents and children living with autism. A national story last week revealed Utah’s rate of kids with various types of autism to be 20 times higher than in the mid-1980s. That is due partly to progress in diagnosing the disorder, but no one can quite explain why the numbers keep climbing.

Even with one child pretty well launched and the other getting closer, I have moments when gratitude for their physical and mental health just cascade over me. Since no research has adequately determined what, exactly, causes autism I found myself wondering as I read The Salt Lake Tribune stories: Why not me, and why not our family? Were my pregnancies somehow better and stronger than so many other women’s? I mean there were a few rare occasions when I sipped a half-glass of wine. I took a daily run right up to the seventh month of both pregnancies–until my bulging belly and aching hip and pelvic joints all but screamed at me to stop. Was any of that healthy? Or did my children and I simply escape some bad cosmic joke?

Nothing about parenting is easy, but you don’t even stop to think about that when trying to navigate through its daily haze. One day you are not a parent. The next day, guess what? You have a kid! Parenting is at once fascinating and joyous; it’s also scary as hell. And it never seems to be done. Two nights ago, just one mile from our home, a whole family was all but wiped out when an apparently drunk 17-year-old boy slammed his Jeep Cherokee into their VW Jetta. The mother, five months pregnant, was killed. So were two of her children, 11 and nine. The father was driving and escaped with a broken rib. Another boy, age 6, is fighting for his life today.

What were the last words or feelings that mother shared with her little family, I wonder. No doubt she was simply being a parent in the hours leading up to her last second on earth. Perhaps she threw a load of wash into the machine, helped the youngest one tie his shoes, braided her little girl’s hair. Just mom stuff — the duties that come with the job and increase as you go along. Nothing big, nothing earth-shattering. It’s all part of the territory of parenting, and you do it with little regard that suddenly, it might end later that night when some stupid, careless kid careens into the family sedan.

It’s odd I would even think of the mundane activities of parenthood, given the profound tragedy of this event and how it will unfold over the next few days, months, years.

It’s unbearably sad.

In reporter Lisa Rosetta’s Trib story about a Provo couple and their 12-year-old son with autism, the father, Joe Parry, said something quite profound. It’s profound in its relation to rearing and loving a child with a disability, but it’s applicable to any parent really, and pretty well describes what should be our main job description. Joe Parry has discovered something about the role of parent, and it certainly isn’t about molding or bending a child to some unrealistic state of perfection.

Joe Parry said he finally had to step back and let his son Will, just be Will.

He said: “I’ve got a pretty amazing person here who is very much alive — the greatest lesson I’ve ever learned.”

It’s one of the best moments of the Utah Legislature — that interview when GOP leaders offer their rationale for allowing so many morality-laced message bills to clog up Capitol Hill’s system.

Today it comes from House Speaker Greg Curtis, in a Salt Lake Tribune story by Rebecca Walsh. Of bills that ban abortion, open the gates for unfettered religious expression in public schools and regulate gay clubs in high schools, Curtis says:

“They generally come around every session. Legislating is all about morality. We represent the people. Some of the representatives are more aggressive than others in doing that. Some legislators want to push the envelope on court rulings.”

Hmm.

First of all, Curtis is a lawyer — though his specialty lies in using his political influence for squeezing municipal zoning rules to allow sprawling development along the Wasatch Front. Senate President John Valentine also is an attorney.

Curtis may not know the fine points of constitutional law, but a whole stack of eager lawyers on the Hill can help him out. Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has testified, for instance, to the constitutional shakiness of several message bills.

Second, the speaker and senate president, along with their majority leaders and whips, wield control over which bills move through the committee and floor process. They oversee their party caucuses, where presumably, serious arm wrestling occurs in weeding out bills for the 45-day session.

One theory for leaders allowing their party’s rubes and goofballs to run amok with morality bills is the cover it provides for the real agenda. So far, that would include the well-financed-from-outside school voucher bill, which is fast-tracking its way to the state Senate and then to the guv’s desk for his anticipated signature.

Does anyone think for a minute that as Sen. Chris Buttars blathered on about kids who can’t wear CTR shirts to school, and Orem freshman Rep. Stephen Sandstrom pulled out dusty Ronald Reagan quotes in defending a draconian anti-abortion bill, that other more “go-to” guys like Rep. Steve Urquhart and Sen. Curt Bramble weren’t doing the GOP’s serious heavy lifting?

(Bramble is the brains behind a bill to make school board races partisan. He says it’s only because he wants more citizen interest and involvement in those historically dull elections. The truth is, he wants the well-organized and powerful right wing of his party to control those races at the caucus level, thus ensuring ultra-conservative school boards and yet another Republican power base in Utah politics.)

In my fantasy world, legislative leaders would come clean at least a teeny-weeny bit and admit that this is how their game gets played. So much of it revolves around diverting constituent and media attention from the real — and very unsexy — business on the hill.

It’s just one big shrug of the shoulders, one big “sorry, it’s not my problem.” And then we all go on.

I’m sitting with a business associate at lunch at Fiddler’s Elbow in Sugar House. On the way in, I had grabbed a City Weekly from the sidewalk newspaper box. I set the paper beside me on the table.

A twentysomething woman approaches me with another publication in her hand: In Utah, which is The Salt Lake Tribune’s “let’s try like hell to attract younger readers” weekly supplement. “Which one is the best paper?” the woman asks, pointing to the paper in her hand, and then to the City Weekly on the table.

My lunch partner does not hesitate. “City Weekly,” he says.

I have to tell you, I am a professional busybody. I talk to everyone. I ask them personal questions, I often “interview” total strangers. My family gives me grief for it, but I can’t help it. I worked for so long on my newspaper column, and before that, news stories. It was always tough to pass up a possible column idea. And I love people. I want to know all about them, all the time.

I start talking to this woman. She lives in Phoenix. I wonder if she’s only visiting town or has she recently moved here? I’m not just being nosy. She may be looking for an apartment. I’m prepared to point her toward the classifieds.

Her voice catches a bit. “I’m sort of visiting,” she says. “My, uh, grandparents were the people who froze to death this week.”

Anyone who read a newspaper this past week, tuned in to radio or watched the local news knows this story. The Palmers, married for 56 years, died together last week when their car got stuck in the snow on a remote mountain road in central Utah. Their old Cadillac had no heater. They had no provisions for cold weather. Rescue teams found them within a short distance of each other, about three miles from the car, dead of exposure.

Their granddaughter from Phoenix points me to her mother, sitting at a table about four feet from mine. I approach her, tell her how sorry I am for her loss. Suddenly, I am embracing a woman I’ve never met. I hold on for a couple of seconds.

“I am so sorry,” I whisper in her ear. “This is so sad.”

Her eyes fill with tears.

I ask her if she knows anything more about how her parents died.

“The media has been wonderful,” she says. “They reported it accurately.” Her parents were both in their 70s, and her dad sometimes had a problem with dozing at the wheel on longer trips. That frightened her mother, who wanted to avoid driving through Spanish Fork Canyon — the narrow, winding, U.S. highway known for horrific crashes and dubbed “Utah’s death strip.” So they took a side road, seldom traveled in winter and nearly 7,000 feet at its summit. Their car got stuck in snow and they apparently started walking to get help.

Help was 40 miles away. They made it three miles on foot.

The Palmers’ daughter tells me, with her hand on a glass of beer, “we’re the other side of the family.” In Utah, of course, that means you have lapsed on your Mormonism. It may or may not have led to emotional and spiritual distance from your family.

I sense there is plenty of love for this daughter, sister, aunt. She tells me her family is certain her parents died within moments of each other. “They were always together,” she says. “We think mom’s spirit left her body, then went to Dad. She wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone.”

In Mormon culture, such stories are labeled as “faith-promoting.” They have a certain feel to them; a formula. They usually focus on a loved one helping another to pass into the hereafter. They rely heavily on miracles and coincidence. God’s hand is always present.

Growing up Mormon, I heard these stories throughout my young life — in Sunday School lessons and in monthly “fast and testimony” meetings, where church members witnessed to their faith in God, Christ and the Holy Ghost.

I loved these stories 40 years ago; I love them still. I embrace them. I do not question or doubt them. I’ve lost enough loved ones in my life that any explanation or attempt to ease a loss somehow soothes me.

I give this grieving woman’s hand one last squeeze. Then I rejoin my table.

When Elder M. Russell Ballard, member of the LDS Council of the Twelve Apostles, takes a public stand in urging compassion from the state Legislature, will its members listen? Is his point of view enough to open hardened minds — clouded or closed entirely by political gamesmanship?

Ballard, along with Catholic, Protestant, business and political leaders who comprise the Alliance for Unity, sent a statement opposing HB224 to the Mormon-dominated Legislature shortly before it hit the full House for a vote yesterday. The bill would repeal a 2002 law allowing Utah children of undocumented immigrants to attend state colleges and universities on in-state tuition — provided they have attended a Utah high school for at least three years and have graduated.

A tie vote (37-37) killed the bill, as per legislative rules. But as your read this, legislators are scrambling to line up votes on both sides and reintroduce it in the House today.

I’ve always thought LDS leaders do their finest work when they rally members to act with love, kindness, charity and gratitude. It’s an even stronger message when the leadership can apply that sermon to specifics in the real world — relationships with spouses, neighbors, and anyone else who looks, acts, believes differently than the rest of “us.”

I suppose the most rigid legislators on this issue could argue this isn’t an official statement from the church’s First Presidency. It’s Ballard’s opinion, just one man, just one thought.

But he is a decent man. He is a man church members look to for guidance and authority, especially in matters of confusion or debate.

Donnelson and his supporters stand on a platform that all laws must be obeyed and upheld. The 2002 law was drafted specifically to permit the exception for undocumented students with their high school diploma. It IS the law. And this miniscule group — kids who deserve a resident-tuition funded education — has been following it exactly as written.

HB224 has been sliced and diced on every media cutting board. According to state higher education numbers, the tuition break covers 180 students. It would help educate a sliver of the population that most likely isn’t leaving the state any time soon. I guess the Lege can dig in and decide to pass this ugly bill, choosing instead to support those who might benefit through government programs like Medicaid and CHIPS. Or lawmakers can give a leg-up in this small, benevolent way to a hard-working and deserving group of people.

Don’t you just love those puffy “best U.S. cities” lists that the mainstream media gobble up like buckets of theater popcorn?

They rarely contain that all-important context, such as a live quote from a recent crime victim or a parent whose kid was shunned by others at the neighborhood school for membership in the wrong religion.

Just three months ago, some self-promoting outfit called Morgan Quitno Press decided that the city of Orem was the 12th safest U.S. city in which to live. Naturally, Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn was delighted. He told the Deseret Morning News at the time his city’s ranking had a lot to do with Orem’s values, which are “centered on the family.” The schools are good, and the cops are community-oriented.

(What Orem doesn’t have, what all of Utah County doesn’t have for that matter, is an established shelter for the homeless. But why quibble?)

Of course, statistics don’t lie, and no one in Utah County could be accused of being blind to the real world. It’s just that at least anecdotally, Orem seems like a damn creepy place to live. And with regular, glowing descriptions of how fine the city is … well, try a bite of this reality sandwich:

1. A young married couple the press has dubbed Utah County’s Bonnie and Clyde was arrested last weekend and is now charged in federal court with armed robbery of the same Lindon bank three times. Authorities allege the once-wholesome, now skanky, pair spent the money in Las Vegas, Palm Springs and on drugs. Seems they wanted a honeymoon but couldn’t afford it. Because, well, they had to — allegedly — buy drugs, too.

2. On the same weekend, police booked an Orem man on suspicion of drug possession after finding two balloons of heroin under his mattress. On the way to jail, police say, the suspect admitted to hiding more heroin in a spot where the sun don’t shine.

Now, is Orem any different than other Utah cities — like Salt Lake City, West Valley City, Ogden, or (oh my heck) Provo? Of course not. Is it fair to single out Orem for cancers like meth addiction, domestic violence and property crimes? No.

It’s just that we all ought to know there is no such thing as “12th safest city in the nation.” Grit is one cost of urban life. And “safest cities,” quite honestly, are just a state of mind.

You could call it the perfect storm of background research for blogging. Today, from 2:15 to 4:35 p.m., I sat at the Utah Drivers License satellite office in Salt Lake’s Rose Park neighborhood. Sam, my almost 16-year-old, was applying for his drivers learning permit.

While Sam hunkered down in the testing corner to answer 50 questions such as “does smoking marijuana impair your driving ability?” I reached deep inside my mother psyche for patience and waited. Someone, thoughtfully, had left today’s edition of the Deseret Morning News on the hard resin seat beside me. So I made use of my idle time.

Reporters Bob Bernick Jr. and Jennifer Toomer-Cook had a front-page story detailing the introduction of House Bill 322, by Springville Republican Rep. Aaron Tilton. Based on the tragic deaths of his 17-year-old niece and two of her friends last year in a car crash in Utah County, Tilton wants to mandate an addition to state drivers education curricula. As of this entry, Tilton’s bill sits in the House Rules Committee waiting for a committee assignment.

His idea is this: Before passing a drivers ed course and securing a drivers license all teens would be required to research and write a 10-page report on the death of a friend or some other teenager while driving. Tilton explains how powerless he felt after his niece’s death, and how her parents and other family members suffered. How the entire community suffered, really, because how can such a senseless event not take its toll on everyone? Tilton felt compelled to somehow reach other kids who might someday pile into a car and speed along some random highway or careen down some winding canyon.

As I read that story, I watched one teenager after another line up for the written test, then zoomed in on their facial expressions (it was either sublime joy or utter dread) when they learned whether they had passed or failed. Honestly, I did wonder how Tilton’s bill might make a difference in the way they think about driving. Would one more dry school report in the life of a 16-year-old do anything at all?

Then, in the same newspaper, a story described House Bill 217, which would outlaw cell phone use by teens while driving. Taylorsville Republican Rep. Kory Holdaway’s bill makes oh-so much more sense. Trust me. You want to hit a kid where he or she really, truly, deeply lives? Go for the cell phone, the MySpace page or that Nintendo Wii.

Anyway, it’s impossible to fault Tilton’s genuine and heartfelt motives. But it’s hard to buy the notion that just any old effort at teaching safe and defensive driving will help. It’s more sensible to reinforce laws we already have, especially those requiring teenagers to spend a certain number of hours doing day and night driving, or driving only with adults, and limiting the number of friends in the car. As for cell phones, puh-leez, feel free to go after them with the usual legislative zeal.

With teenager No. 2 poised to take to the road in two months, I’m more than a little anxious. But I know a 10-page report would do little or nothing for him. Besides, what kid with a typical scheming, short-cutting teenage mind wouldn’t find the easiest way around the work? Say, typing a 10-page report in 24-point font?