“What Came West” is easily the strangest of five books I’m reading with the early to mid-1800s as backdrop, and the best.

But then I know and admire the author, so maybe I can’t be taken for the definitive voice. The other four stories are acclaimed: A.B. Guthrie’s “The Big Sky” and the Pulitzer-winning “The Way West”; “Fools Crow,” by Blackfeet author James Welch, writing from the tribe’s viewpoint; and “The Indifferent Stars Above,” by Daniel James Brown, the lone nonfiction in this pack about the Donner Party trek that got stuck on the wrong side of the Sierra at just the wrong time.

“What Came West” author Josh Weil will speak next Tuesday, Sept. 15, at Dolly’s on Main Street and Wednesday at The King’s English in Salt Lake City.

In the spring, I got to read an advance copy of the novel published in June. The story shows the West in a fraught period through a hermit trapper, Silas Hall, stretching from his childhood near Pittsburgh, when passenger pigeons still darkened day into dusk in swarms across vast woodland only freckled with farms, to the northern Sierra foothills during the deadly earliest part of the California Gold Rush. 

This story, like all of Weil’s work, is no simple tale. Here’s a writer who discards first, second, sixth, 11th ideas to get to just the right one. He’s a patient miner, with research as well as story nuggets, and it shows in the deep seams of his work.

This plays out most in Silas, a protagonist impossible to like and yet, I suspect, one every reader will wind up loving quite against their will, full up with the tragedy of his murderous soul, understanding why and perhaps even agreeing, if very uncomfortably.

Westerns play out against our knowledge of what happens after the story, and this one ends at the cusp of a gold-fevered horde about to scour the northern Sierra foothills and in a relative instant decimate a surprisingly dense native population that had prospered there for millennia.

Weil wrote the novel in an old camper at the epicenter of the Gold Rush, largely in solitude himself. Silas Hall is only the latest of leading characters in Weil’s work who live much of their lives alone, apart. Silas must, which is part of the tragedy. He cannot withstand the company of other people. He was born this way.

He seems happiest, if never fully happy, by himself in the wild. But his distress at not being able to stand the proximity of other people causes him to seek cures that can’t work, including nearly drowning himself at the bottom of the Ohio River and burning his scalp in desperation. Laudanum makes it all worse.

He finds a measure of solace in sketching, his mastery eventually drawing him west to the Sierra largely through a string of misadventures. A sole romantic encounter with a servant attracted to his illustrations results in a toddler he leaves but can never forget. Half the novel is a long, long letter to his son, now 15 if alive. Parts of this letter alternate with chapters in third-person narrative of a manhunt closing in on him.

The novel offers no diagnosis, but The New York Times goes right there in its book review: “New novel follows an autistic trapper on an odyssey during the California gold rush.” And Weil in the acknowledgments names “Diary of a Young Naturalist,” by Dara McNulty, as helping him the most in his approach to Silas’ neurodivergence.

Death is commonplace in all these books, and most of the killing feels almost nonchalant. Certainly there is grief, too. A.B. Guthrie devotes a chapter in “The Way West” to a boy killed by a rattlesnake bite, which shakes up a whole wagon train. Outside family and closest friends, though, this is just the way of things, especially between Indigenous people and whites. Characters joke laconically about killing and even in several of these books talk about distaste for “man meat” in times of starvation well short of abject horror at the very idea.

“What Came West” has plenty of what I view as casual violence steeped in its times, but also Silas’ horror at killing his food and trapping animals he feels more kinship toward than humans. There’s a schism in his soul here, even in regard to killing people. Though he certainly does. Kill people, that is, and in the end intends to kill as many miners as he possibly can as they come for him.

I’ve read the novel twice, so far. This is my way with all of Weil’s stories. The first read is rapid, to see what happens next. This tale surprised me at every turn, the effect of using the 11th idea rather than the first or second in every instance. And I just had to know — now! — all the way through.

I found the second read at least as worthwhile for sinking into the scenes and better understanding Silas and his way of understanding (and not understanding) his world. Knowing what happens next opened me way more to the why of it all, freed from plot mania.

Weil’s weird take on a Western thrills in the genre’s way and also challenges the classic trope of the lone antihero in strange, occasionally wonderful and ultimately awful ways. This is the hardest of reckonings, not a glimmer of a happy ending here, which inevitably means the story will haunt you long after finishing the last page, however many times you read this book. Beware.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or 970-376-0745.

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Picabo Street is the most recognizable of the nominees for Vail Resorts’ board of directors submitted by activist investor Oasis Management, which seeks changes in how the ski company that owns Park City Mountain manages itself.

The company announced Friday morning it had received notices of intent to nominate the following individuals on these dates: 

• Via Oasis Management, on Sept. 9 and 10: Robert A. Chapek of Florida; M. Ashton Hudson of Florida; Bryce Roberts of Park City; and Picabo Street of Park City. 
• Via Gregory Syvert Meyer, on Sept. 10: The company received a self-nomination of Gregory Syvert Meyer of Florida. 

Vail Resorts said it “prioritizes consistent engagement with shareholders and welcomes ongoing dialogue around the shared interest of continuing to drive long-term shareholder value. As previously announced, the company has an active, fulsome search underway for a new independent director, which it expects to complete in early 2027.”

In other words, um, no. Not unless they can drum up a majority of shareholders to upend the company’s current path.

According to online news outlet SnowBrains, Oasis, which holds 6%-8% of Vail Resorts’ stock, seeks changes in the company’s management that could include selling some of its mountain properties.

Park City-based Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince has been loud about his desire to purchase Park City Mountain and publicly critical of the ski company’s management. Prince and wife Tatiana own The Park Record.

According to SnowBrains, because Vail Resorts is the largest ski resort operator in North America and the only major publicly traded ski resort company, a successful activist campaign could influence more than just the company’s future:

“If Oasis is able to enact changes, the outcome could also have implications for how major ski resorts are operated and invested in across the industry.”

“After evaluating all candidates, the board will include its recommended slate of director nominees in the company’s proxy statement to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and distributed to all shareholders eligible to vote at the annual meeting,” Vail Resorts said. “Vail Resorts shareholders are not required to take any action at this time.”

Stockholders can obtain free copies of the company’s proxy statement (when available) and other documents that will be filed by Vail Resorts with the SEC at sec.gov, the SEC’s website, from the investor relations section of Vail Resorts’ website, investors.vailresorts.com, or by emailing Connie Wang at InvestorRelations@vailresorts.com.

Street charted a new course for American women in winning World Cup season titles and taking silver in the 1994 Olympics, gold in 1998, and began to show what American women could do on the slopes. Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin went on from there to dominate. Street’s last race was during the 2002 Olympics, finishing 16th in the downhill.

She has since started a school for winter athletes in Park City, Picabo Street Academy, and is a commentator for NBC Sports.

“I’ve spent my life skiing, winning Olympic medals, and giving back to the sport,” Street said Friday morning. “Over the years, I’ve learned that real success isn’t just about gold medals — it’s about passing that love on.”

She said she wanted in a director’s role to help bring back the magic of skiing for more people and families.

“Whether visitors are strapping on boots for the very first time or chasing powder on a cold morning, I want them to feel the same spark I felt as a kid. It’s time to make the most of these mountains that we all love so much,” she said.

On Sept. 2, Vail Resorts announced the departure of Sue Decker from the board after 11 years. In July, Vail Resorts added MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle, a Park City second-home owner, to the board.

Why is Park City so pivotal in the board of directors battle?

Discontent over Vail Resorts ownership has been simmering there for years, with complaints about crowding, infrastructure and worker pay wreaking havoc during recent seasons, including a debilitating ski patrol strike.

In an interview this summer with the Vail Daily, Prince again urged Vail Resorts to sell the ski area to him so he could properly invest in the employees and the mechanical infrastructure of the mountain where he once taught skiing before launching Cloudflare.

Prince said that the shareholder activist strategy is fairly straightforward in acquiring enough stock to force a board of directors vote on the direction of the company, either by changing leadership, taking the company private, selling off individual resorts, or all three. He emphasized at the time that he was not part of any activist takeover and doesn’t own Vail Resorts stock.

“Every one of the activist firms that is sniffing around Vail, and there are lots, has called me because I’m part of the strategy,” Prince said. “If they can find me and a handful of other people at the other resorts who are willing to pay to take over the resorts, then it becomes really inexpensive for them to actually launch this campaign because they’ve basically got a guaranteed source of financing to do it.”

Oasis officials did not respond to requests for comment for that story, in which some longtime Vail residents also discussed the future of the company and the possibility of Vail Resorts being compelled to spin off individual ski areas.

Vail Resorts in July launched Epic Experience to try to improve dining, customer service and other aspects of the ski experience at its various resorts.

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There are a couple of hundred businesses, give or take, depending on how broadly you draw the circle around the “generational opportunity” at least some of us have attached to the dusty, dystopian 5.25 acres abandoned for a decade now at the corner of Kearns and Bonanza.

You’ll forgive me, I think, for thinking I’d walk into a crowded hall at the Blair Education Center at the hospital on Friday morning for a robust briefing and Q&A among leaders in the business and lodging community.

Hmm, I counted 18 people in all, including organizers, dedicated opposition, one of the property managers of the Prospector district, me. Not a big room. Not a lot of people. There was a handful who said they ran businesses, only not in the Bonanza Park or Prospector areas. Their establishments are on Main Street.

Oh, wait. There was me! My office is right across Bonanza Drive from the 5 acres. Probably why I’m a fan of moving City Hall to the people where they live now and doing something with the Marsac Building that helps with that dwindling foot traffic along decaying Main.

Was I the only one from a nearby business whose view will be ruined, parking spots all taken up, unable at all times to get in or out of our location, having to contend with those affordable renters spoiling the neighborhood, lost in the shadows to new business competition?  

Yes, I’m sardonic here. Again. Someone has to point out the absurdities, after all. But I also recognize that some of the arguments against the development plans have at least grown a little more more resonant and cogent with time: the sense of a kitchen sink development, questions about the financing and city’s stake, whether there’s really enough public benefit in the deal.

Unfortunately, cool rationality wasn’t much in evidence at the briefing Friday. Instead of Q&A, this was Rant & Roar. The opposition squandered an opportunity to gather ammunition for later. A question might have been nice. The speechifying sent several people early for the door, and there wasn’t much from that audience to lose. 

Just as well the business community at large wasn’t there.

But all wasn’t lost. I did learn a little more about the plan. For instance, that 1,200 more car trips daily would be offset by better circulation, along with bus lanes added to Bonanza Drive. The impact during peak commuting times would be negligible, with 100 more cars maybe, mainly going the other way, I think. The workers already in town would not be joining the commute in, a point pretty much missed. The bigger traffic problem is more about Snow Park than this corner. I have first-hand daily knowledge of that much.

I also learned a little more between long rants about mostly unrelated this and that about how Brinshore could lower the height to within the requirements. Basically, that’s 8-foot ceilings, down from 9. And more-squat gables that break up the roof line. If the Planning Commission grants exemptions, it will be to provide closer to regular Park City steepness to those. And trees on the property will still be taller than all but one building in the back.

For more of a clue about how neighboring business owners look at the 5-acre plan, I turned to a recent letter from two attorneys to the Planning Commission. Ryan McConnell and Matthew S. Boyden lay out over 4,300 words the concerns and objections of Auntie Em owner Emily Burney on the east side of the 5 acres and Mack Tilling of Mack’s Finest Gelato, a frozen dessert place across Bonanza Drive.

In lawyerspeak, the letter expresses concern about height limits and possible exemptions, Auntie Em’s strip mall being in the shadow of the four-story building next to it and more of a stretch at the east end, literally, with shadow possibly reaching across the street near sunset. It also contests the open space allowance and the parking math, and mentions the toxic soil that must be cleaned up whatever the city does with the land.

Mostly, to me at least, it’s so much blah blah, devolving in one passage into alleged shadows near sunset stretching from across Bonanza Drive and a parking lot to darken the gelato shop’s door (maybe the mountain should be leveled in this argument). But there is a compelling part, too. Auntie Em’s borders the 5-acre site where the largest building at four stories is planned. Besides winter shadow until noon, the attorneys list concerns about the proximity of garbage pickup along with loading and delivery to the building Auntie Em’s inhabits.     

The use of the underground parking would be interesting to see, and Prospector’s parking lots across Bonanza would be tempting, I think. Critics have a point here. For whatever reason, going underground is a friction point that makes it easier to park on lots across the street. This seems like solvable inconvenience, though, rather than a deal killer. Also, so what if overflow parking for a weekend or after-hours event happened? The lots are largely empty then.

What strikes me by far the most, though, is the business community’s silence on the 5-acre plan. A few businesses on Main Street chirping, mainly the usual suspects. Two of a couple of hundred businesses around the 5-acre site speaking up in any public way.

This does not sound like a business community exactly galvanizing. More like a few stray crickets amid the NIMBY chorus.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

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Ask Myles Rademan to speak about the future and he’ll start with the big bang. Yep, that one.

You’ll get slides. You’ll get pithy one-liners. You’ll get frank truth that cuts all ways, sometimes a grenade. Myles doesn’t care. Well, he does care. Only not about your preconceptions, ideological notions, ridiculously gauzy nostalgia, prejudices, fuzzy thinking, and you are full of it. Me too. He tends to pierce all that, pin to hot air.

This is what I really like about Myles. Enough to think of him as a sage, only in a coyote sort of way, sometimes sideways.

He’s older now, gets cold enough in the winter to migrate for the season to Mexico. But he did historic stuff for Park City back in the last transitional era. Was one of the early visionaries for open space and trails, controversial then and beloved now as if always a hallmark. He was a big part of Main Street’s rise and place in the 2002 Olympics. He started and ran Leadership Park City for a generation, retiring as class 30 finished up in October 2024.

He came to Park City in 1987 from Crested Butte, Colorado, as the city’s planning director in time to help lay out the successes we’re suffering from today. He’s consulted enough across all the ski towns over the decades to observe the challenges in common, which have little if anything to do with the Olympics, by the way.

Colorado turned down the Games and the ski towns still blew up. So did Lake Tahoe, Jackson, Whistler and the rest from the ’90s on. This is more a story of relative wealth, obscene wealth and free time for an ever-more remote elite than anything else. This is me talking, not Myles, by the way and just for a moment.

I don’t begrudge, though I do weary of declarations they fully earned their dumb luck in today’s America. Still, no one would want to come to Park City before the ski era. Spoiled rotten, we’re largely complaining about blessings we don’t recognize as such today. Those dwindling middle and working classes of which I am part benefit hugely, too. That’s just the truth.

Myles recognizes what most peers stuck in once-was don’t. We’re not going back to our future. That past is gone. Myles likely will tell you it never really was, the way elder humans tend to edit their rosy memories.

Here’s the start of his talk to the Rotary Club last week, and I will note that his audience boiled over beyond the available seats, including local politicians who don’t come much since they won office.

“So OK, here it is,” he said, acknowledging his speaking time was short as he sped through slides. “The big bang, Earth cooled, Park City four and a half billion years (later). And where are we going? We’ve gone a long way from our beginnings 150 years ago. Where are we going? I really don’t know. I’m as confused about it as most of you and the City Council.”

He ran through slides from the mining days.

“We have a population here now that’s just about equal to what it was inside the city 100 years ago or more,” he said. “And of course, they didn’t have snow plows in those days. And people always ask about, you know, (being) authentic. We want to be authentic, but these were authentic false fronts.”

He had on screen a photo looking down Main Street showing sheds behind wide veneers from when Poison Creek was not so much a name as the stench of a fact of human as well as industrial waste, and China Bridge was how the rich folk stepped clear of Chinatown.

“Yeah, Park City was very affordable in 1970s,” he deadpanned with slides of buildings after mining had played out. “You could buy anything in town for back taxes. And I asked a lot of people, ‘Well, why didn’t you?’ One guy only told me the truth. Said it wasn’t worth it.”

Back at my table, Park City Mayor Ryan Dickey noted how clear the political direction seemed then. The weather vane today is spinning by comparison with, I’ll say it, the town at the cusp of becoming a Sun City and I don’t mean the ski town with a similar name. But I’d argue the direction is clear enough if Park City hopes to be a regular-ish community and not pass fully into retirement enclave and short-term mecca for highest-end ski vacationers.

“Now, of course, we’re in a new era, obviously. So we’ve changed a lot, and we’re still changing. And change is hard for most of us. I understand that.” Myles went on. “But here’s a statistic: Two-thirds of all the people in the entire history of the world that were over 65 are alive today.”

According to the Pew Research Center, America has around 65 million baby boomers now, and 11,200 to 11,400 people are turning 65 daily.

“So we have to confront some really hard truths,” he said. “You know, it’s time to to be realistic about what we’re doing, and we know all these things. Again, this isn’t Kansas. We’re in Utah now. This is a pro-growth state. This is a private property state. This is a capitalism-first state. So those things add up, and we can see it.”

And naturally, people don’t come to Park City for that, he observed. Those who can afford it come to escape the cares of wherever they came from, for however brief or lengthy a time.

“I tried to figure it out,” he said. “And then I realized that nobody moved here to confront reality. This is like Brigadoon.”

If so, a divided one these days. How does misty Dreamland move ahead in challenging, transformative times?

“There is an old Hopi saying: Apparently, the moon would never rise if it paid attention to all the dogs barking at it. So sometimes we have to act. I was talking to some of our council members and said, ‘Whatever you do, 50% of the people are going to hate you. If you do the other thing, 50% of the people are going to hate you. And that’s where we are.”

It there anything everyone agrees on? Myles said he thinks so.

“It’s a sense of hospitality. It’s a sense of belonging. It’s a sense of community,” he said. “Yes, the history is important. The environment is important. But Gary Snyder has a quote. He said, ‘Find your place on the planet. Dig in. Take responsibility from there.”

Can that happen in Brigadoon? Myles has seen this magic before. It looks suspiciously like hard work.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

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San Francisco is perpetually young, at least compared to Park City.

The median age of residents in the California tech town today is 40.5 years old, according to Census Reporter, a site that interprets U.S. Census data. That’s slightly older than the U.S. median 39.2.

Park City’s median age of full-time residents is 48.5, about 25% older than the U.S. median.

It’s probably worth noting that 70% of the residential properties in Park City are second homes, compared to 2% of the properties in San Francisco. Various sources put the typical second-home owner across the nation at 58-60 years old.

Most telling to me is that Census data shows the three largest age cohorts in San Francisco are 20-29 with 14% of the total population, 30-39 with 20%, and 40-49 with 14%. The total of the big three from 20 to 49 amounts to 48% of San Francisco’s population. Count the children and 63% of the city’s residents are 49 or younger.

In Park City, the big three glop comes to 40-49 at 14% of the total population, 50-59 at 17%, and 60-69 at 17%. That’s 48% of Park City’s full-time population. You could add the 11% who are 70-79 years old if you wish, along with the 4% over 80.

That leaves 49% of Park City’s residents 50 or older.

Throw in the average age of second-home owners who live here part time and you’ll recognize why most of the hair you see falls in some shade of gray.

Old Town isn’t just a historic district, in other words.

I compare here to there because of a viral news photograph of the NIMBY crowd in San Francisco’s Marina District that decried plans for an affordable apartment tower to replace a supermarket. Both expensive cities share a common challenge, each with an overall median price for a residence around $1.7 million, according to real estate sites.

The photo snapped by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter stood out for the uniformity of age in the audience: nearly everyone in their 70s and older. This in a city with so many younger adults, half the population.

The housing affordability issue is well understood in the city where the YIMBY movement started. Yes, YIMBY, as in the opposite of NIMBY.

The YIMBYs and young techie residents in and out of San Francisco found great symbolism in that photograph, which inspired lots of social media retorts and some more or less thoughtful punditry, much like I’m doing here.

They made much ado of what’s basically a prosaic image of the people who attend civic meetings of any kind everywhere. Those who go tend to skew older. This is a fact from young Provo to aged Punta Gorda. The too-cool younger set in San Francisco also didn’t bother to go to that meeting, where they might have made a difference.

I mention all this because I’m sure I’m not the only one inspired to compare audiences at similar events, and we happen to have a corker now with the city’s 5 acres at the corner of Kearns Boulevard and Bonanza Drive.

The Park City government bought the land in 2017 for $19.5 million with the idea of making it a mixed-use development featuring Sundance’s Utah headquarters and the Kimball Art Center as the anchors. But city cost estimates cresting $100 million, COVID and other issues sapping Sundance’s finances, and citizen and council pushback on that plan led to more rounds of public input, open houses, surveys, those infamous colored stickers on favorite ideas.

The public direction that emerged for the 5 acres then settled not on an arts district but a mixed-use development heavier on affordable housing than the arts. And the Kimball Art Center, weary of a long wait growing ever longer, accepted a better offer from Dakota Pacific.

This is Park City, of course, so whatever everyone wanted then is what everyone is against now, and vice versa. Could be an arts district, a thirsty green park, affordable housing, a mix of all. Plenty of fickle everyones for each to keep that busy corner dusty.

I made sure last Wednesday to snap a picture of the crowd during the Planning Commission’s public hearing on the 5 acres to compare with the infamous San Francisco photo. I’d put up The Chronicle photo, too, but their licensing agent wanted $2,500 for the kind of news shot I’d share freely. You’ll just have to search viral San Francisco NIMBY photo for yourself; it’s everywhere.

Funny thing, though. You’d think ol’ Park City NIMBYs would mirror San Francisco’s, if not show up even older and grayer, given the demographic dominance here.

This wasn’t the case at all, though. The audience and people lining up to speak their minds, some favoring the plan, included thirtysomethings, teenagers, moms and dads, and yes, of course, seniors too.

My photo didn’t much match the San Francisco one. Not like I expected.

Park City’s NIMBYs and YIMBYs span the generations. I noticed this anew while taking the photo. I remembered in these chambers the Clark Ranch turnout during election season. I remembered the practical fist fight over the redo of the election format. Plenty of older people, sure. But a lot of middle-aged folks, and at least a sprinkling of younger at each dustup.

No, high schoolers don’t regularly go to City Council meetings. Neither do old people. No one goes. The bulk of what councils and commissions and boards do is necessary, important and dull as, well, you know.

I took some pride in Park City from our photo compared to the San Francisco snapshot in that broader engagement way. Give citizens a good reason and they’ll fill the hall across the seasons in life, at least the adult ones. Need a new police dog to bring in the kids.

So the question here isn’t so much how to get people under 70 to take an interest in regular city council or school board meetings.

It’s how to get anyone at all to come.  

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

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Drop in on the right day to the home of the home for authors and you’ll find the handful of staff amid piles and boxes and shelves of books around a repurposed dining table concentrating on their laptops and chatting in the amiable way of people hard at work together.

This is the heart of the Torrey House Press, one in a warren of tiny offices at Church & State near downtown Salt Lake City.

This also reveals the core of the publishing house about as far as you can get from the Big Five of the biz in New York City. Here is a key to understanding an operation filling a big hole in the publishing world, deep and wide as the West.

This family at the dinner table, surrounded by books.

In rural Alaska north of Anchorage, Amy Bushatz is bootstrapping a local online news service, the Mat-Su Sentinel. I learned last week over Zoom that we come to our shared obsession from very different places, though there are intersections.

One super El Nino winter while all the surf breaks were big, big enough to tear down homes and piers, I lived near Santa Cruz between fire seasons, reading the Santa Cruz Sentinel and fantasizing without reason about writing for them someday. I was attending Cabrillo Community College primarily for the fire academy there. I’d only tacked on English 101 to fill in my class schedule.

Amy grew up in the Santa Cruz area and really did work at The Sentinel, in essence a journalist since childhood. A reporter from the paper did a story on her family, and she knew in the gut right then this would be her career. Now she’s breathing life into the last embers of an all-but-dead newspaper she bought recently and tacked on to her online news operation.

The twilight of legacy newspapers, radio and television is stubborn — slow to phase out and even slower to replace. Amy in her isolation runs at the vanguard of this new dawning, sucking in all the knowledge and help she can find virtually.

We at The Park Record are both very similar and a polar opposite. A dying paper attached to a dying company that once ruled like the British Navy was bought at a bargain by a wealthy couple with the intent to revive our version of genuine community service.

Our marching orders were to restore and build the journalism, and worry about revenue later. Never mind that later has arrived, or that this has been my ever-present worry for, oh, decades through tenures at several papers, along with the fast aging that comes with the publisher role.

Amy, the career journalist, knows this well now. At least half her days and nights concern keeping the ship afloat so that she may practice her craft, the one that sews her community together through local news.

You’ve seen the trends in reading, whether local news or books. But then, the masses have never been overly concerned with the essence of either, even through the blooming this past century or so in literacy and public education.  

Only a few take advantage of this vein of human knowledge, somehow less compelling than what TikTok, gaming and other mindless amusements deliver — mainly helping eat time until we can pass entirely from this world.

Is there a hard pearl of a market for this minority that would lift itself only with effort out of the competing bliss of ignorance, that haze? This is the seed, after all, for any growth in the intellectual capacity and progress of our species, though that sounds a bit dramatic.

The commercial markets for books and community news have squeezed, spigots shutting off the flow of profit. Companies in it for the money are shedding anything costly — like risk — and consolidating, condensing, closing in droves.    

Amy and the Torrey House crew can barely afford to hang in there. Ask about riches or joke about building empires and you’ll get a wry scoff and big eye roll for an answer. This is mission impossible with no hope of payoff, only the chance to keep struggling tomorrow and probably against greater odds. Here are callings they still can’t not answer.

Probably why I love them so.

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

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Making it to the United States is only the beginning, refugees soon learn.

The key for many to what comes next is perhaps surprisingly simple, even pedestrian, but it’s also everything: a driver’s license.

With one, their new country unlocks. A job is easier to land. The road to self-sufficiency smooths. An American life becomes that much more attainable.

Crystal Bayat couldn’t have known any of this four days after the Taliban arrived in her hometown, Kabul, on Aug. 15, 2021, when she protested in the streets on Afghanistan’s 102nd Independence Day. Though it turned out to be a first step toward Utah.

Seeing a news photograph of a partially obscured Taliban fighter pointing his assault rifle at Bayat that day as she was looking another direction, the wonder might be that she is alive today, never mind exploring ways a handful of years later to help fellow refugees in her adapted community in the Salt Lake Valley.

It’s not hard to imagine the finger on the trigger in the menacing way the weapon is pointed at her, the slightest twitch imminent, her having discarded any pretense of a burqa, fierce and angry and scared to death among 200 others but only six other women at a demonstration she helped organize. The wonder at the trigger finger somehow not twitching in that moment.

This woman in the most oppressive patriarchy in the world, her voice shaking but determined in a video posted on The New York Times website as she declares she’s willing to be killed protesting the latest indignity.

“Today, unfortunately, all my dreams died,” she says in the clip.

She endured to escape Afghanistan nearly a year later and work on behalf of her homeland from afar despite death threats, at least one attempt with a bomb in her car, and the finger on the trigger that day on the street, perhaps her closest call.

Now she’s setting up a pilot program for refugee women to negotiate the high quest … for a driver’s license?

Yes, absolutely. She said she knows this is the path toward truer freedom. A license, a car to drive, a job, independence in a way public transit can’t provide, especially for newcomers who don’t speak the language or understand this strange new world they have landed in, especially for the women.

“As a refugee woman, I personally experienced, and then the girls that I brought through (from Afghanistan). … Each of us experienced how important these basic programs are,” Bayat said. “I mean, it sounds very basic, but these basic things always create big challenges for these new residents. So we saw that mobility was a critical challenge for these women.”

Lee Rech, Bayat’s mentor and executive director of her small foundation, Hope for Her International, was part of the team associated with then-state Attorney General Sean Reyes that extracted Bayat from Afghanistan after a member noted the news coverage of her.

Bayat spent six weeks in a military compound in Wisconsin while her papers were processed and her background more fully vetted. Then it was on to Utah.

She stayed for a weekend at St. Regis in Deer Valley before moving to Salt Lake City for a couple of years. She spent the summer of 2024 at a home in Old Town until moving that fall to Pittsburgh, where she is finishing her master’s in public policy and management at Carnegie Mellon University on a Fulbright scholarship.

She said some of the strangeness of her new life eased with the Park City area’s resemblance to home.

“In terms of how it looks like my country or where I was, it’s definitely so similar. And the culture, the people, are so family oriented. They’re so supportive, very loving,” she said. It all reminded her of home, and she said she felt less like a refugee.

Bayat escaped and then helped others escape Afghanistan as she dialed in her foundation that among other efforts helps educate girls online in the country banned from school by the Taliban. According to the website, the group has aided in the escape of 100 individuals from the country to Canada, the United States and Europe.   

The pilot Drive to Thrive, launched in May to help refugee women here through the driver’s license gantlet, sounds as important as the rest to Bayat.

It obviously is to Mary Maker, who fled South Sudan as a child with surviving family to Kenya after her father was killed, and came to the United States after her husband and uncle were killed in South Sudan. This much comes through her limited English spoken in a thick Dinka brogue.

She has settled in Salt Lake City with family members including two teenage daughters, a young adult son and grandchildren.

With a driver’s license and a car, “My life,” she said with a big smile, “my life will be easy.”

She is one of four women in the pilot program taught by Nilofar Noorzai, an Afghan refugee herself. Noorzai meets with three Afghan women online for an hour weekday mornings, and Maker for an hour in the evening before Maker heads out for her night job. On Fridays they meet for two hours for review, and quizzes come on Mondays. The foundation picks up all the costs.

Maker’s workday begins at 7 a.m. to care for senior citizens, getting home after 5:30 p.m. Then she’s off again around 7 p.m. for overnight shifts cleaning the expansive floors of Salt Lake City International Airport. She must arrange rides or the bus to get around. Public transit remains much slower, limiting and a hassle, especially with children.  

She looks forward to driving her daughters to school, to appointments, on errands, to the freedom a license and a car bring in Utah generally and the Salt Lake Valley in particular.

Heaven on Earth for her sounds a lot like driving on a Saturday — anywhere she wants.

This will begin to happen after she passes her written driving exam. That’s the plan for August. Next is learning to drive through the Salt Lake International Driving School, which offers instruction tailored to recent refugees.

Noorzai recently arrived via Qatar, where she had won a scholarship to study. She was the only woman allowed out of Afghanistan from a group of 69 that tried to leave. Her brother happened to be with her and could serve as guardian under the new Taliban rule. The rest of the women were turned away.  

“I came from an educated family, and I studied in one of the American University branches in my country,” Noorzai said. “I used to live in their dormitory, so the day when my country was taken over by the people right now, I had to hide my identity because they thought, like, people who stayed there are all converted, they are atheists, or they have a different religion.”

Today, her day job is with the state Department of Workforce Services helping people with disabilities find work. Teaching the pilot program is a passion project for her. She has family in Afghanistan living under reasserted Taliban rule.

“I still have my sister who can’t go to school,” she said. “So I’m struggling every day to find an online school for her. Now, this online driving school, driving is a basic human right. Education is a basic human right that not most of the people can get.”

She said she connects with Maker and the others from shared experience living in war zones and with personal freedoms taken away, as well as the pain of separation from loved ones.

“I can speak English, I can study, I can teach people, I can make it easier,” she said. “I can summarize for them to study, get their lives, and make their life easier. If I make Mary’s life easier today, it’s not only her life. It’s her children’s lives, as well.”

She continued, “So today I help Mary. Tomorrow she helps somebody else. … This chain needs to grow. That’s why I’m here, and I dedicate my time for them.”

Noorzai speaks several languages. Dari, Hindi, Urdu, Pashto, and English.

“I learned it from TV when I was just like 7,” she said. “I used to watch. There was a Cartoon Network channel that would play cartoons 24/7, and I was in love with it. I learned English from the TV.”

An estimated 900-1,300 people from Afghanistan live in Utah, primarily the Salt Lake City area. Enough of them, along with 2,000 people from neighboring Pakistan and up to 1,250 Iranians, for a handful of family run restaurants to open in the valley, serving meals from the region.

Rech’s family originally came to America from Armenia in 1906 under similar circumstances, no doubt fueling the longtime public relations professional’s commitment to Bayat’s cause, as well as others like her. She said the Armenian community, numbering around 1,500 in the Salt Lake City area, also looks at the mountains and Wasatch Back as a comforting hint of their homeland.

Meantime, Bayat’s extended family situation is common among her country’s diaspora. She has a grandmother who took refuge in Iran, and other relatives in Pakistan. Both countries, like the United States, today are uncertain hosts seeking to send refugees back to Taliban-run Afghanistan and to possible punishment for suspected ties to America.

Bayat’s paperwork is secure, as confirmed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while she notes the difficulties and uncertainty running through the refugee community. As support for refugees becomes more tenuous, she and others see more need for their help.

“It’s not just about helping the community, but down the road it actually contributes to the country’s economy,” she said. “I know the dollar amounts that we are investing in these women are not as big as, like, they receive only so much from the government, and our goal is to help make them independent financially, have a job. So that’s what makes our program unique, because we do not only help them with a driving license, but then also using our local resources to donate them a car because it’s just so difficult. They don’t have a credit background, so they can’t even go for a loan and get credit.”

In other words, a simple driver’s license for these women and their children is not so much a license as a ticket. A license, a car, maybe eventually a chance to establish credit, that toehold on the American Dream.

“Mary is really busy,” Noorzai said. “She has a job from morning till 5:40, something like that, and she gets home, and then she leaves at 7 again. She works overnight at the airport.”

And she plans to go to school as well. Learning to get her driver’s license is only a first step toward that goal.

“I know she’s going to make it,” Noorzai said. “She’s working day and night, but still she dedicates her time to learn, and that’s what I really appreciate about her. She’s really strong.”

For more information about Drive to Thrive and/or how to support the program, email contact@hopeforherinternational.org. Also: hopeforherinternational.org/#DRIVE-TO-THRIVE.

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Claire Carusillo of Midway wrote a crazy novel, and an imprint of a Big Five publisher picked it up.

You don’t know how big of a deal that it is. For writers, this is the pinnacle just about none reach. Everest, Olympus. Never mind a debut author.

My friend Claire did this.  

As if that weren’t the coolest to someone like me, a hack columnist and hobby novelist, she’s also opened a combo bookstore, skate shop and coffee bar named Storyboard in downtown Midway with life partner Galen DeKemper. Galen freelances with us, so you may have read some of his work, mostly in Wasatch County, mostly cool features.

Claire’s story couldn’t possibly be further from my lived experience or interests in life. Not even my interests in reading.

And still I loved it. Right on through the vanishing Sea-Doo, or whatever they’re called, no interest in them either, especially not as a purist sailboat guy and once surfer. Oops, hope I’m not giving anything vital away here.

I’m the uptight soul who tossed aside “Confederacy of Dunces” in disgust, only got irritated with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” even dropped “Midnight’s Children,” Salman Rushdie’s breakout, annoyed with all the absurdity in them. I know. I know. All gems accomplished by such talent, a Pulitzer, a Booker, Shakespeare hisself. I get it.

I hung in there with “The Responsible Party.” More than that. I was smitten with the namesake point-of-view character like Claire in real life, her knowing, her mother’s bravery and foolishness, their wry take on our world. And her shipwrecked great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother, and her great-aunt. The way this crazy, crazy story blew my mind and took my heart.

Hah, I wish I could tell you more about it. Offer some details, those great clues that do give away something and yet don’t touch the core of why you might love this novel, too.

I’ll confess the story sneaked up on me. I read it not so long after giving up on “Dunces” and while still trying to make myself stick with “Midnight’s Children.” Rushdie practically pleaded in an appearance at the last real Sundance Film Festival (it’s gone to Boulder to die, trust me) with the audience to read something by him besides “Satanic Verses.” I tried. I really did.

Shakespeare, well, I found like some columnists he had some great, great one-liners, but I was never much impressed with his full scripts. And the story within the story in “Dream” just lost the thread for me.

All to say, sure, I’m an unreliable critic. Very much so.

And Claire is bit unreliable too. There’s her real name for the narrator in her real hometown telling a story about her real great-great-grandmother aboard a real ship that sank, and real great-grandmother aboard the Lusitania, which also really sank.

But what’s real and insane, and what is made up and insane? There’s a line blurred, hilariously. And how does this wild tale come from life in dull suburbia, a main character working at McDonald’s, all of which seems, well, unpromising for the art rendered in the story?

That is to say, a smart-aleck young woman living in a townhouse with her parents issuing droll one-liners about her underwhelming life — I’m the wrong audience for this, I realize. So why was I so taken in?

I had started “Midnight’s Children” and something else I don’t remember lingered. “Nexus” maybe? I eventually finished that one, fascinating in a whole different way, lining up AI’s place in the evolution of information technology.

Thankfully, looking back, Claire dropped by the office with an advance copy of “The Responsible Party.” I dropped the important texts and ripped right through this one, though not meaning to when I began.

I knew how long and hard she had worked just on the seemingly endless revisions with her editor at Henry Holt and Co., an imprint of MacMillan Publishing Co. This is endlessly impressive to we the aspiring for whom even an agent is a dream too far. Here’s the real deal, right here with a handful of other such literary talent tucked in the Wasatch Back.

The story includes the legend of the women deemed unsinkable from surviving two ships going down, an improbable cold case murder, the Vaudeville circuit, a nearly abandoned lighthouse/party place just offshore Lake Michigan, and characters, lots of characters for characters.

For me, the real Claire’s just-right touch with humor, absurdity and especially heart sews the thing together.

MacMillan obviously agrees. The book comes out Aug. 11. There’s a party Monday, Aug. 10, for it and for Storyboard opening recently at the store in Midway. A lot to celebrate, store and story. To RSVP and preorder a copy: https://square.link/u/0dN8LOTf

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

The post Journalism Matters: A true beacon for me appeared first on Park Record.

Walk Main Street up through Old Town and count the three- and four-story buildings along the street.

Check out the three- and four-story buildings thoughout the Prospector commercial district, the Regency and Alberto’s, the Sheraton, along with the tall two-story buildings, including The Park Record’s building.

Then, by all means, go on (and on) about the three-story buildings and the one four-story building ruining everything forever across the street at the 5-acre parcel the city owns in Bonanza Park, that lovely pristine wilderness in the center of town.

Apparently, buildings twice the height of what is planned in the flats a mile or two away at the base of Park City Mountain and in the historic district are fine, but these destroy the pretty view for milliseconds at a time while driving past on Kearns or Bonanza Drive with those veritable towers shorter than trees on the site now. Never mind the small point that precisely no one is looking that way while driving there.

I don’t want to throw cold water on earnest critics, but is there some point where reality takes hold?

Or, dear God, better tear down that high school, the Eccles, the football stadium, higher yet than the development at the corner of Kearns and Bonanza now running through the Park City Planning Commission gantlet.

Tear down Alberto’s and the Regency, too. Tear down The Park Record’s building, please. It’s two stories, but a very tall two stories, like the buildings around it just about as high as three-story buildings. Must have gotten an evil exemption from a corrupt City Council and Planning Commission; aren’t all of ’em corrupt these days? But all these precious views, lost.

And that density, oh the density. Maybe 60% of those 5 acres owned by the city devoted to soviet-style big blocs? A regular Manhattan, or Moscow, yessir.

And the traffic, let’s not get started with that. Other than anyone living there would not be commuting in from out of town. That is, contributing to the morning and evening rush hours. That would be impossible, since they would already be here.

But people who work in Salt Lake City might snap up those affordable units! Or hold jobs in Heber City, while taking these affordable units. Sure. Like people struggling to find affordable housing on working-class wages couldn’t find less expensive digs closer to work. Like the Heber Valley isn’t scenic. Like they’ve swamped the other affordable housing sites in town? Which, um, hasn’t happened, but it could! It’s possible, right?

Sure, this all makes so much sense. Like a green park with symphonic concerts next to busy streets in a community full of parks and quieter venues.  

Yes, we’ve heard, critics are not against affordable housing, just not at this site, or that one, or that one either. There’s always somewhere else to put that. Not here seems to be the point, always.

Or affordable housing is no longer needed. A new place just got built. Isn’t that enough?

Or let the county handle it. Property values are hurting in Park City.

More seriously, there is understandable weariness with all development. When does it stop? Sprawl indeed is something to dread along the Wasatch Back, and for more than the obvious reasons. So stop sensible in-fill too?

Ah, there’s a question: Is the plan for the city’s 5 acres sensible at this point? Is there enough public good in 88 affordable rentals and some dedicated art space for an otherwise private mixed-use development? Does 2 acres left green, buildings shorter than first contemplated, and parking tucked underground balance the exchange enough?

These are the questions I wish critics would focus more on.

Meantime, after nearly a decade now of inaction on the site, how much longer shall the perfect be the enemy of the good?  

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

The post Journalism Matters: The very height of protest appeared first on Park Record.

Editors influence but don’t control, can’t control even how small newsrooms work. More so than in other fields, this job is very much herding cats. The harder you try, the crappier the result. It’s practically an equation. M = C squared. (M for managing, and C for, well, crap.)

This is no military service, elementary school, police department, court, hospital, publicly traded corporation, dentist office, PR firm or McDonald’s. God no.

Big papers at their peak kind of forgot this simple fact, along with their tiny brethren trying to emulate them. I think much our trouble as an industry stems from that, actually.

The best and poorest quality of journalism as a discipline concerns this directly. The practice took a distinctively professional turn with the overwhelming majority of reporters and editors coming from college, many with degrees in the thing. This elevated the work generally, but best practices became groupthink along the way.   

The essential problem is that journalism itself is an antithesis of professions. There is no credentialing, tests to pass in order to practice, no codes subject to overview, no bar, board of review, no law governing or deciding what is journalism and what is decidedly not journalism. Some conventions, sure, but no real rules despite what your favorite professor declared.

With our degrees, though, we talk like priests about owning truth. And this is true enough with the methodology of the pursuit, much like science and its adherence to the scientific method. We practice the palest form of that, aiming to tell true stories accurate to primary sources of factual assertions.

Alas, the complete truth is often unattainable between documents that can’t be accessed, sources who can’t or won’t talk, reliance on the perspectives of those who can and do, and the perception and skill of the reporter.

Beyond this, journalistic entities take on a wide spectrum of approaches between watchdog and booster, community bulletin board and sensational, shallower and deeper, what-focused and why-focused, along with the differences between small town and metropolitan and on to national/international media, never mind the tilts red and blue in political coverage. Also, the base assumptions of the 25% of Americans who earn college degrees of any kind and the rest of us.

I will throw in here the fact that 75%-80% of the reporting and editing positions in 2002 are gone now. This means much of what we disparage about “journalism today” is actually the emotionally charged, eyeball-seeking, fact-light work of influencers, pundits, propagandists and “opinion journalists,” whatever that is but epitomized by Bari Weiss, now chief of CBS News. Seeking the plain truth among this set has become one of several considerations and not the most important.

That, and for various reasons the American public has gone stupid, less able to recognize what news is and even less interested in junk like facts, evidence, accuracy, context.

Or maybe my natural skepticism has soured into full cynicism. In any case, I work for that perhaps diminishing sliver that does think critically, seeks to understand its community, prizes verified evidence, takes real interest in local issues and how we might collectively better negotiate them free of hot gossip.

I know this makes me peculiar, even eccentric. I mean, I read books, logging 100 in 2025, having long ago dropped social media other than light monitoring for work along with most television.  

I can’t see the point to trying to reach people addled by social media through the platforms that have addled them with real journalism. Might was well scrape a healthy dinner plate straight into the toilet and flush.

That literate, civically interested sliver is a self-selected elite, perhaps, but that’s who I think about when I write and aim to reach in our work.

I know the news media industry broadly remains obsessed with metrics, which feeds a mania to tap into the ethos of social media, mistaking meth for nutrition. But it’s noisy out there. I understand the zeal to make every posting viral, even if that is basically meaningless and meaningless to why we’re here.

Only so many people naturally are interested in what we, KPCW and Town Lift have to report. For them, we’re an oasis in a nation blistering into news deserts. I guess I see a disease of disinterest in reality spreading rapidly. Mental health as a result has degraded. Cognitive abilities have degraded. Political wisdom has degraded perhaps most of all, and at every level.

My interest in contributing to that is, well, zero.

So I lean more toward life and capturing what it’s like to live here versus somewhere else. Government coverage and investigative work have their places, but one tends toward dullness and the other relentlessly gotcha and depressing when overdone. The kids getting their cars ready for a demolition derby, the husband and wife adventurers, the retiree turning to fine breadmaking, that’s more the stuff.

What’s special, what’s wretched, why are we here and not somewhere else even as we moan about traffic that’s not so bad outside commuting time, exaggerate some developments and ignore others, bear with a higher cost of living and talk about how we need to make this community more accessible yet protest vehemently the most obvious steps to do so?

Among issues, where does the city’s 5-acre site in Bonanza Park fit? Some residents are intensely interested, others wonder what the fuss is all about, visitors naturally are oblivious and second-home owners confused if they think about it at all. Yet this concerns Park City’s future more than maybe anyone realizes.

You can tell by the quality of the critics’ arguments — it’s their time now, after all — something about the state of knowledge today. I take heart at some of it, and note those who clearly have paid little attention and cringe while they proudly voice their utter ignorance.

Clearly, our work here is not done. But I’m not discouraged. Distribution year over year has increased by nearly 25%, revenue by 10%-20% so far. These are side indicators to the news effort.

The loud know-nothings will always be a drag on a community. But that sliver, I’ll call it a valuable vein of ore, shows a lot of promise. The best sign might be the critics who know what they are talking about. I see that, too, and even dare to hope.  

Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at don@swiftcharge.net or (970) 376-0745.

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