As much as we hate to kill off a good lively discussion, it's a new Sunday morning, so we decided to kick off something new. We've had a quite robust conversation going in Jim's lower election discussion thread for the last few days, with over 210 comments so far. At this point, the volume of comments is becoming unwieldy however, so we'll start off today by focusing upon several of this morning's Standard-Examiner journalistic offerings.
Now that Emerald City has become a bona-fide recreation mecca, we suppose we'll be seeing a lot more articles like these on our home town newspaper's front page:
Vertical Excess?
Yosemite troubled by climbers' garbage
Although the approaches in these tandem articles differ slightly, they are both bound together by a single common general theme. The sport of rock climbing is now booming. Rock climbing, once the sole province of a relatively small class of hard-core elitists, is being overrun by newcomers, many of whom have learned their climbing techniques and outdoor ethics in urban "climbing gyms." In conjunction, these two articles nicely set forth the clash of cultures that's now occurring in the rock climbing world, as the "old school" elitists confront wet-behind-the ears "climbers" from the downtown gym. Interesting reading, we think, and highly relevant to our own community, inasmuch as a giant plastic climbing wall is now a featured attraction, down at PeeWee's Playouse.
Over the past few years we've marvelled, as the Standard-Examiner has intermittently placed odd-ball articles on various back pages, highlighting little towns throughout the west, who've hitched their economic development wagons to tiny ski resorts and cable-based aerial contraptions. It's in that context that we find this morning yet another such article, this one asking the pregnant question: "Will small ski resorts lift cities?".
Maybe it's just us, gentle readers, but we're somehow getting a strong sense of Deja Vu. Here we are, just a short five days from our yet-undecided municipal election, and the Std-Ex already begins another transparent push for rinky-dink ski resorts. Can further stories about Chris Peterson's fabled Malan's Basin Roadless Tyrolian Ski Resort be far off? Perhaps this depends upon the results of the election.
And speaking of the still-pending election, we have further information on the activities occurring in the Weber County Election Department counting room, activities which are occurring even as we speak. We received this short missive early yesterday evening, from a spokesman for the Van Hooser campaign:
I have it from a good source that the county has decided it be best to wait until all the ballots have been validated, in or out, then proceed with the counting. I think they agree that it is best to decide on the validity of those ballots without the weight of the absentee and other provisional ballots being counted. It was a wise decision and one that I appreciate them making. The goal of the Van Hooser campaign is to have as many votes validated as possible, count them and let the chips fall where they may. The goal of the Godfrey camp is clearly to rush the process and count as few of the provisionals -- especially from 108 - as possible. I believe that McEwan, the County Attorney and the Lieutenant Governor's office all want the same thing -- empower the voters and let them decide. Encouraging news.Encouraging news indeed.
That's it for now, gentle readers. We invite you to carry on the discussion from here, wherever it may lead.
Update 11/12/07 10:45 a.m. MT: For those who've been sitting on the edges of their seats, we belatedly link here the final results of the Grift Ogden Vote or Shut Up Challenge . The complete scrolling gallery of contest submissions, including winners and noble non-winners alike, can be viewed at the griftogden.com website. All-in-all a fine array of contest entries, we think -- and a tough task for the judges, in narrowing it down to the final three.
