It started as a regular Socratic Seminar: I posed an overarching question, and the students did the rest of the talking (aside from the occasional follow-up question I included when the discussion slowed). We were discussing how strict electronic restrictions for minors should be and, as usual, ...
A city council is a ruling body through which elected officials meet to make important decisions regarding the city. It’s a representative form of government and ideally a microcosm of the people they serve. Orem has a six-member city council and a mayor who also has a vote on the ...
In the early 2010s, a group of us in Utah's underground music scene came together to transform a backyard into an amphitheater. We brought together all the things we loved most — tasty food, good music and each other. We called it Grillfest — a cheeky name for what was really just a family ...
Here we go again. Another government agency made the decision to let the forest burn, during the hottest and driest part of the year “to see what would happen.” This time the fire on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon took the historic lodge plus around 80 other structures. We see this same ...
Whenever I see the 7-foot bronze likeness of Brigham Young standing resolute on the lawn of Provo City Library at Academy Square, I’m reminded that the answer to Utah’s homeless crisis isn’t as complicated as we might think. Over the past three years in my advocacy for the unhoused, ...
The Utah County Republican Party (UCRP) is endorsing candidates in nonpartisan elections for mayor, city council, and school board offices. In a recent Daily Herald opinion piece, Utah State Senator Mike McKell (June 18, 2025) expressed concern that the endorsement process requires, in his ...
When the minimum wage does not go up, it goes down in buying power. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 per hour since July 24, 2009. For full-time workers that amounts to $15,080 if you are paid for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. The minimum wage is falling further and further ...
What is it about living creatures that we can never be content with comfort? After all, we spend all of our lives searching for it. But give a person half a chance and you’ll find them struggling on a rock face with every muscle aching in their designer climbing wear. Even animals are not ...
There is that old adage that “life imitates art”. Or is it “art imitates life”? In 1987 Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd starred in the movie “Dragnet”, a spoof of sorts on the 1960s television series. Aykroyd’s character plays the nephew of Joe Friday, the straight-laced, all-business ...
In 1976, I was serving as the police chief in Orem. With just a few months on the job, I received a late-night phone call from Lt. Gerald Neilson regarding a potential homicide at a Sinclair gas station. I went to the crime scene and saw a dead young man on the floor of the gas station ...
