Dear mullentown bloggers:

I could give you 335 reasons why I love my husband. But on this particular day, I love him for his ability to witness a rare moment in nature and to describe it beautifully, and for his interest in keeping this neglected little blog alive. I must say I’m not sure where mullentown is going. I’ve been concentrating nearly full-time on building the City Weekly blog. It’s in its infancy, and like any new baby needs huge attention. I’ve been posting at least once, sometimes twice a day there and am trying to get the rest of the staff to join in regularly, too. Check it out; we’re having great fun.

So … that means in the interest of feeding my blog while I’m crazy-busy with other work, I’ve asked Ted Wilson to share another entry here with you. It’s a lovely piece. The only missing element is photos. And as Ted and Rick explained to me, the scene they witnessed was so far away they could only have seen it through a spotting scope. The average digital camera couldn’t have worked. So you’ll have to rely on Ted’s fine eye for wildlife (he’s been integrally involved in the big outdoors his whole life). Enjoy!

*****************

From Ted Wilson, with help from his friend, Rick Reese:

Yellowstone National Park–Our principal mission last week was the wily Cutthroat trout. But we were sobered while hiking to the Yellowstone River. Suddenly, we found our path dotted with huge fresh grizzly tracks in the mud. It’s the kind of deal that causes you to appreciate the small canister of pepper spray slung on your chest. But, like a soldier hitting the beach, just because you have a weapon your survival is not assured. Most grizzly attacks are so devastatingly swift that putting faith in weaponry is laughable.

We had the “Yellowstone Buzz,” a deep atavistic feeling rattling in your head when you realize you are not at the top of food chain. You know and you fear a creature lurking over the next rise or secluded in a clump of brush whose sheer ferocity and power can heaven-send you like lightning. The Buzz makes Yellowstone even more fascinating and strangely alluring.

So we clattered down the Hellroaring trail on a cloudy October morning yodeling, hooting, and hollering to fend off Old Ephraim. After a nice hike, our fears slid away as we stood alongside the magnificent waterway of the Yellowstone, the longest untamed river in America. The fishing was good and the scenery magnificent, but not the high point of the day.

Exhausted by fishing, we slogged back up the 600 vertical feet to the car and began our drive back to Gardiner, Montana, at Yellowstone’s north gate. I shared the day with old friend Rick Reese, long time Yellowstone expert and former director of the Yellowstone Institute. Rick knows the park as well as his back yard and he encouraged me to pull off the road where several people were already posted with their long-range optical gear.

It was a pretty routine stop. Thousands of people these days take pleasure animal watching in Yellowstone. The grizzly and black bear offer unusual viewing. And the sight of bison, elk, and deer are routine after the 1988 fires that exposed thousands of square miles of wild life forage. The newcomer is the wolf. And, though the animal is wild and elusive, sighting a wolf is now a big time spectator sport that brings many to the LaMar Valley, the Yellowstone River, and other parts of the park.

We didn’t expect more than the usual long range sighting as we approached the watchers. “What have we got?” Rick said in the tone of voice of an expert who has seen hundreds of wildlife sightings over the years. When one guy gushed, “15 wolves and three grizzlies alongside a herd of elk,” Rick’s eyebrows rose in astonishment and skepticism.

But squinting through Rick’s binoculars, we discovered the guy knew his numbers. Exactly three grizzlies and a bunch of wolves were scattered over a sage-covered hillside not more than a half-mile from our passage earlier on the Hellroaring trail near the Yellowstone River.

Even Rick couldn’t mask his excitement and dashed to the car for the spotting scope. A bit stunned, I was thrilled to see my first wolves. As an erstwhile Yellowstone gazer, I’ve spied plenty of bears but wolves had escaped my view in spite of several attempts to spot them.

Rick set up the scope and focused. “You are not going to believe what is going on,” he muttered. Reese is not given to overstatement so my enthusiasm caused me to lean hard against his shoulder to signal my turn squinting through the scope. More people had arrived and leaned over our shoulders to see what was going on.

A full pack of wolves was circling, nipping at the heels, and fully stalking a grizzly bear. I gushed, “How often, Rick, does a pack of wolves try to down a grizzly?” His reaction–now remember, I’m asking a Yellowstone expert of more than three decades–was simply, “I have never seen this before and never heard about it from any of the park biologists.”

The wolf is a serious killer. A carnivore, wolves work together in packs and use strategy to down their prey. No animal in Yellowstone is immune from a wolf pack. Except perhaps the grizzly, an animal so large and so amazingly equipped with size, speed, strength, claws, jaws and teeth to command almost any meal in the park. And here we were seeing first-hand that yes, huge bears do get attacked by wolves.

The wolves were serious and continued their harassment of the bear for a full 30 minutes. The bear was dark and appeared very large though at the distance we were viewing we could not be sure. Perhaps it was young or even sick, causing the wolves their interest. But the bear was moving well, at times kicking back his rear legs, and another time breaking into a lope.

I have no doubt the wolves were out to down the bear and share a meal. Rick thought that improbable and brought up the aspect of play. I’ll leave that to experts. The pack dispatched one wolf to continue to drive the bear down the hill while the rest circled to set a trap. When the bear slammed into the circlers, he merely brushed by and carried on his way. No wolf ventured forth to set his teeth into bear fur.

Rick said if the wolves attacked, his money was on the bear. That calculation may have occurred to the wolves, too. They eventually dispersed and allowed the bear a chance to rest.

Off to the side of the main circus, another grizzly hunkered down behind a rise stalking the elk herd. Rick said the main tactic was for the bear to charge the herd to see which elk did not run well because of youth or illness. The unfortunate, slow elk makes a meal for a hungry bear about ready to enter the winter den. The grizzly has been very active feeding recently in the park because of poor forage from a sweltering summer. We saw no charge of the bear.

We packed up our scope and drove back to Gardiner through a spectacular sunset. Today, I feel like I have just watched the classic movie, Jaws. Many years ago, after seeing that film, I felt a creepy little buzz in my shower the next morning. As if the teeth of that massive Jaws shark were going to come up the drain and grab me. This morning, I looked into my back yard and I was sure I saw a grizzly stalking behind the fitzers and the chestnut tree.

Consider, the 2007 Nobel Prize Trifecta:

(According to me, anyway)

Peace: The real U.S. president of 2000, Al Gore (with the United Nations).

Literature: Amazing British author Doris Lessing, whose writing changed my life (for the better).

Science/Medicine: University of Utah’s Mario Capecci (shared with Oliver Smithies, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin Evans, of Cardiff University in Wales.

I consider it the best list in ages. And I’m still wagering Gore will not run for president. But what do you all think?

Our regular poster, twowheelfish, has goaded me out of my silence. Way to go, twowheel! Since you’re an avid fisherman, you know I have to take the bait.

But mostly, I’ll toss this post off to you faithful visitors to mullentown. What can we liberals, who see nothing particularly wrong with moving toward national health insurance (you know, that gol-durned socialized medicine) in the first place, do about this piece of plywood who occupies the White House for 15 more months?

I know the answer to that question: We gotta be patient and wait for our turn. I guess I was simply offering a rhetorical scream in the wilderness.

And what about the Democrats, who now control both houses of Congress? Where is their power — their will, really — to muster up necessary votes to override George W. Bush’s veto of SCHIP (state children’s health insurance plan) reauthorization?

I’m absolutely floored, totally undone, by this man’s complete lack of courage, compassion and lack of political will when it counts. One reckless decision of his seems to bleed right into another, day after day after day. One longtime conservative and very active Republican in Salt Lake City who has given piles of money to his party mentioned the other day that he sees Bush as absolutely having destroyed the Republican Party, especially since the election last November.

Even Bush’s once-blindly loyal followers here in Utah are losing faith.

What does it take to find even the slightest serving of compassion in this country anymore?

(I’m drawn to this thought because I’m back to the Jean Smith biography, FDR. I let Ted borrow it and he read the 900-page monster in about two weeks. Now there was a president who knew compassion. The fact that he could blend it with political instincts and timing made all the difference at a moment when this country was seriously deteriorating.)

Where do Americans go from here? Will we ever get an insurance plan that addresses the needs of the population? If we can’t even extend coverage to children and increase their benefits when necessary, I don’t know where we as a society can go from here.

Canada, maybe? I don’t think they’ll have us!

… take only photos. Isn’t that how the old admonition goes when traveling?

Well, no worries there! No sweat at all for the Mullen-Wilson dyad. We got all the way to Pa’ia, Maui and realized Ted had forgotten to insert the battery in his camera! We found a Costco just outside the Kahului Airport, but since the store is obviously on Hang-Loose Hawaii Time, its operating hours were from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. When we finally found the store open, we saw plenty of digital cameras on display, but no accessories. And no one to help us find a battery.

I saw a lot of t-shirts, too, that said “RELAX. THIS AIN’T THE MAINLAND.” Well, they got that right. So we did. Relax, I mean. We never bought a battery. And this is the long way of explaining why you’ll not see any photos on this blog of Maui’s North Shore or points between, beyond and next door.

I’m not complaining. We had eight luxurious days in a sweet little sugar cane plantation cottage, fully restored with wood floors, original wainscoting, big porch, squeaky ceiling fans. I felt like a female antagonist in a Hemingway novel (only a lot nicer to my husband than Pappy’s fictional harpies).

I’d been to Maui several years ago, but spent the entire three weeks on the isolated Hana (east) side of the island. This time was more about beaches, my first turn at snorkeling (amazing) and hiking deep into Halakalea’s crater–which was absolutely stunning. I only wish we had done it at sunrise. Next time.

As for the lack of photos, Ted kept telling me at least we would always have memories. Well, true enough. A friend who fancied himself a Buddhist — though I think he was more creepy New Age than anything — once told me that photos are for people who live in the past. I can see that to a point. I’m fine, at least, without a permanent image of how I looked in a swimsuit after a week of glutenous eating and drinking.

Meanwhile, and completely off-topic, go here to see that my little blog is ranked 19th among the 20 most-read political blogs in Utah. I was shocked. I’ve floated a good bit in the past few months as I’ve gotten busier and more involved with my full-time job at City Weekly. But then, I’m ranked below the Salt Lake Tribune’s political blog, which hardly stays very timely. And I’m also below the dreadfully bland Utah State Senate Site. So I ought to get my ass in gear, eh? I could maybe go up a couple of notches.

I’ve actually taken a lot of passes on political commentary on the Salt Lake City mayor’s race, given my stepmother relationship to Jenny Wilson. One day back to reality on the mainland, and several people have already asked me if I’ll start writing about the final election between Ralph Becker and Dave Buhler. I’m not inclined to get involved in it. For one thing, anything critical I might write would only be construed as sour grapes. And it would only harm whatever credibility I might have at CW. I’ve learned that much from the primary.

For another reason, the race promises to be a snore fest. Some have said the city is ready for a dull race/dull mayor given the eight years we’ve suffered under our current psychopath. I can’t think of my hometown in any way as dull though–so I hope we get a little huff ‘n puff in this election cycle.

But hey, this doesn’t mean you can’t all post away to your heart’s content about the mayor’s race, the 2008 presidential election, or any other political thought you are generating. I’m a millimeter away from supporting Hillary, BTW. I’ve got a whole blog entry planned for that as soon as I get my thoughts well in order. So think and write away. Besides, your participation might help keep mullentown.com in the VIB (very important blogs) listings. I’d hate to fade into total obscurity, and I’d like to get my ranking above that awful Senate Site.

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.

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.

That’s it.

I’m done.

No more Tour de France for me. No more professional cycling races of any kind for me.

With two top riders out and under suspicion of doping, with teams dropping off all over the place and scandalized, I’m not one whit interested anymore in what happens in the sport. I’d rather put my energy behind professional wrestling. It’s more legit.

Pathetic, all of it.

I like what British rider Bradley Wiggins said. He rode with Cofidis, which quit the Tour on Thursday after Italian rider Christian Moreni got sacked over suspicion that he used testosterone.

“It makes you think about your future as a professional cyclist,” Wiggins told the British newspaper The Independent. “You ask what is the point, I could do better things with my life.”

Me too, Brad. So long, pro cycling.

… 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?

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.