Denver • On a night the Jazz finally found the defense gone missing so long ago it was about to go on the side of a milk carton, they saw their shooting touch disappear.

On a night initially buoyed by the return of Donovan Mitchell from a hamstring injury, it turned scary when he came down awkwardly after a contorting fourth-quarter layup attempt resulted in him twisting his ankle and being carried to the locker room.

On a night where there were so many encouraging signs for Utah, things still managed, somehow, to get worse.

Mitchell eventually returned, but far too late to make a difference, as an absolutely dominant fourth quarter by Denver resulted in a 103-88 Nuggets victory that sent the Jazz to their third straight loss and dropped them to 4-5 this season.

The Jazz shot just 40.7 percent from the field for the game, and made only 6 of 31 from deep (19.4 percent) in the loss.

Utah’s otherwise strong defensive effort fell apart late, as Denver outscored Utah 35-15 over the final 12 minutes.

Quin: We were better defensively tonight, but the lack of late offense ultimately caused the defense to break down pic.twitter.com/E9wy6fs0XC

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 4, 2018

“Our offense put a lot of pressure on our defense as the game progressed; you don’t get the ball to go in the basket, it makes it harder to defend,” coach Quin Snyder said afterward. “I thought our resolve was there. … We competed tonight, and I’m proud of the way we competed.”

After the loss to Minnesota, and again after the loss to Memphis, Jazz players and coaches bemoaned the team’s dearth of defense.

Apparently, it just got shipped out to the Pepsi Center a couple nights early.

On Saturday night against the Nuggets, Jazz hands were everywhere, racking up 12 steals. Derrick Favors looked reinvigorated, closing down the lane. And Denver’s vaunted offensive attack was disjointed for most of the night — committing 17 turnovers and making just 9 of 28 from deep.

Of course, the operative word there was most.

“Our whole goal is 48 minutes of defense, and when you have a letdown like that, that’s what good teams do. They take advantage of that, and that’s what Denver did tonight,” said Dante Exum. “We’re gonna keep working to make sure that it’s not just 36 minutes as it was tonight. It needs to be 48.”

Dante, on the fourth quarter gone awry, and the need to play well in the upcoming homestand pic.twitter.com/4QxBnqpIFu

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 4, 2018

Mitchell said when he twisted his ankle in the fourth, it was “not a great feeling.” And while he allowed that he should be OK, vowing to start taping his ankles now, his feelings about the game were decidedly mixed.

Like Snyder, he attributed the fourth-quarter defensive lapse to the team’s offensive issues finally manifesting problems on the other end of the court. He said his 7-for-22 effort was a big part of the problem. And yet, counterintuitively, because of that, he actually came away feeling encouraged.

“If we keep playing the way we played today, shots are gonna fall. We missed a bunch of shots. I took a lot of bad ones and missed a lot of bad ones,” Mitchell said. “… If we’d hit more shots, it would have changed the course of the game.”

He may be on to something. Joe Ingles was 1 for 5. Ricky Rubio was 3 for 10. Only Jae Crowder (8 for 15), Derrick Favors (6 for 10) and Rudy Gobert (5 for 9) hit over half their attempts. And two of those three are not exactly adept at spacing the floor.

The Jazz had actually taken control by the end of the third quarter, going on a 14-5 run to grab a 73-68 lead. It didn’t last, however.

Malik Beasley’s 3-pointer with 9:20 to go gave Denver back the lead. Then Mason Plumlee beat the shot clock by draining the first 3 of his career over a sagging-off Gobert. Trey Lyles hit free throws, Juancho Hernangomez hit free throws, Beasley drained another 3, and suddenly the wheels came off, as the Jazz had nothing to counter it.

“I think we competed the fourth quarter; the score didn’t reflect our effort,” Snyder said. “Ultimately, you gotta put the ball in the basket, and we weren’t able to do that in the fourth quarter. I don’t think that was a reflection of our execution. But we gotta get it to go in.”

Still, while the Jazz lamented their continuing inability to put a full game together, and acknowledged that there are frustrating inconsistencies to their game, Mitchell reiterated that it’s too early yet to panic.

Donovan said he doesn’t tape his ankles, but he’ll start now. Also, he’s proud of how the team competed. pic.twitter.com/kmaRoO5JAW

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) November 4, 2018

“This is Game 9 — it isn’t March or April, it’s not time to freak out,” he said. “Obviously, we can’t have that same mindset all year, and go, ‘Oh, it’s only Game 20,’ but we’re building.”

Washington • This time, our eyes are wide open.

Exactly two years ago, many Americans held their noses and voted for Donald Trump. Some were conservatives willing to tolerate his vulgar excesses in hopes of getting tax cuts, a repeal of Obamacare and a friendlier judiciary. Others had Clinton fatigue. Sure, they were concerned about Trump's words about Mexican "rapists" and what he liked to do to women -- but maybe those were just words.

Maybe Trump could build a coalition across traditional party lines to get things done.

Now, all Americans have seen the results with their own eyes:

Trump defended neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.

He oversaw a policy separating young children from their parents and warehoused the kids at the border, including some who have yet to be reunited.

He took Vladimir Putin's word over that of the U.S. intelligence community, accepting Russia's denial that it interfered in our election.

He implemented a ham-handed attempt at a "Muslim ban": a travel ban that caused chaos and, in its early incarnations, was struck down as unconstitutional.

He then challenged the legitimacy of a "so-called" judge who temporarily blocked the ban.

He swung erratically from the verge of nuclear war with North Korea, threatening "fire and fury ... the likes of which the world has never seen before," to declaring he had fallen "in love" with dictator Kim Jong Un and pronouncing the nuclear threat ended -- though no agreement had been reached.

He fired the FBI director, attacked the attorney general and his deputy, and undermined the rule of law by portraying the Justice Department and the FBI as "corrupt."

He lied about hush money paid to an adult-film actress, as recounted in a guilty plea by the lawyer who arranged the payment.

He had hired Paul Manafort and three other senior campaign advisers who eventually pleaded guilty or were convicted in a sprawling and ongoing criminal probe of Russia, Trump and the 2016 election.

He attacked the news media as the "enemy of the people."

He befriended some of the world's most loathed autocrats, including Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whose extralegal death squads have killed thousands; and he refused to take serious action after the Saudi regime murdered and dismembered a Washington Post contributing columnist in Turkey.

He opened personal rifts with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Canada and other countries that had been stalwart allies.

He has released an unending stream of invective on Twitter and in speeches, often in vulgar and misogynistic terms.

He insulted John McCain after the Arizona senator's death, initially not ordering flags to be flown at half-staff.

He has established a whole new level of mendacity, averaging 30 false or misleading statements a day now, and totaling 6,420 such bogus claims during his presidency.

And he has exploited and worsened divisions among Americans, coarsened public discourse and used racial hatred, resentment of women's gains and fear of immigrants and minorities as political weapons.

Now, we are seeing Trump close the midterm campaign with openly racist appeals:

He derided "globalists" to fuel a conspiracy theory about Jewish billionaire George Soros invisibly working against America, even after Trump was urged to stop using anti-Semitic tropes.

He fabricated an "emergency" about a caravan of Central American asylum seekers, hundreds of miles from the U.S. border, and ordered a massive mobilization of the military, declaring that the troops should be able to fire on unarmed people.

He offered more conspiracy theories even after a crazed Trump supporter sent pipe bombs to CNN and a dozen of the president's oft-cited enemies, and when a lunatic apparently motivated by the Trump-inspired paranoia about the caravan murdered 11 Jews worshiping at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

And he closed the campaign with a vile ad showing a Mexican man who killed two police officers, accompanied by the message:

"Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay" -- though the killer came to the United States during the presidency of George W. Bush.

On Tuesday, voters will make a decision in what is the purest midterm referendum on a sitting president in modern times:

Will we take a step, even a small one, back from the ugliness and the race-baiting that has engulfed our country?

Or will we affirm that we are really the intolerant and frightened people Donald Trump has made us out to be?

If we choose the latter, 2018 will in some ways be more difficult to take than 2016. This time, we don't have the luxury of saying we didn't really know what Trump would do.

Our eyes are wide open.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

Honolulu • Utah State extended its winning streak Saturday, while Hawaii tried to keep its season from slipping away.

Darwin Thompson and Gerold Bright each ran for three touchdowns as No. 18 Utah State won its eighth straight game, 56-17 over Hawaii on Saturday night.

The Aggies (8-1, 5-0 Mountain West) amassed 601 yards of total offense, including 426 rushing, and had a pair of 28-point quarters to pull away from the Rainbow Warriors (6-5, 3-3).

"We've started well lately," Utah State coach Matt Wells said. "I thought we were prepared right and our guys had the right emotion, the right energy and we came out and executed right out of the gate."

Thompson rushed 13 times for a career-best 141 yards and scored on a pair of 1-yard runs, as well as a 26-yard sprint. Bright carried a career-high 16 times for 121 yards and found the end zone on runs of 18, 47 and 9 yards.

"I just think our guys up front, our O-line and our tight ends did a nice job and obviously any time you have long runs like we did there's some good blocking down the field and I saw a few by the receivers, but our running backs, both Gerold Bright and Darwin Thompson both ran behind their pads, they got their legs up, they're tough to bring down and they're a load," Wells said.

Jordan Love threw a 16-yard touchdown pass to Ron'quavion Tarver and ran in a 1-yard score on the final play of the first quarter.

Cole McDonald threw a pair of touchdown passes for Hawaii, which finished with 390 yards of total offense and a season-low in points scored.

"Against a team like this, we needed to start fast," Rainbow Warriors coach Nick Rolovich said. "We all gotta do our part and I don't think any facet of this team did its part to beat a good football team."

The Aggies rushed for 400 or more yards for the first time since the 2016 season, when they recorded 428 rushing yards in a win over Weber State.

Utah State built a 28-3 halftime lead.

It has now matched its 8-1 record to start the 1963 season. Utah State was playing its first game as a nationally ranked team since 2012, when it went 11-2 to set a school record for wins and ended the season ranked 16th.

"I think we're in a good spot. I mean, we're going to have to take each week one at a time — and I understand that's coaches' talk — but to come over here and win in Hawaii against a good Hawaii team, it's a hard win," Wells said.

The Aggies have won their last five meetings against Hawaii and lead the all-time series 10-6, including a 5-4 record in Honolulu.

The Takeaway

Utah State: Despite the lopsided score, the Aggies were dealt a blow when Love, a sophomore quarterback, sustained an undisclosed injury in the second quarter. Love kept the ball on a run play and was upended at the Hawaii 6-yard line after a short gain. Although he landed firmly on his back, Love finished the series, but was replaced by freshman Henry Colombi on Utah State's next series. Love, who has thrown for 2,185 yards and 19 touchdowns on the season, did not return to the game.

"He'll be fine. I think he'll be good next week," Wells said of Love.

Hawaii: Since a 6-1 start to the season, the Rainbow Warriors have lost their last four games. It was their 10th consecutive loss against a nationally ranked opponent. They are now 10-43 all-time against ranked opponents, including 9-26 at home.

Hawaii averaged 42 points and 495.8 yards per contest through its first seven games this season, but is managing just 20.5 points and 361.5 yards of total offense during its current losing streak.

"We're not playing like a very good football team right now," Rolovich said. "I don't think any side of the ball should feel good about themselves, I don't think any coach should feel good about themselves, starting with myself. Utah State is a very good football team, but I just wish we had put up a little bit of a better fight."

Poll implications

With losses by six teams ranked above them — including No. 14 Penn State, No. 15 Texas, No. 16 Utah and No. 17 Houston — the Aggies will likely climb a few spots in the next poll.

Piling it on

Utah State entered the game ranked third nationally in scoring offense, averaging 49.4 points per game. Saturday was the seventh time it eclipsed the 40-point mark this season, the fifth time it went over 50 points in a game and the fourth time it scored 60 or more points.

Disqualified

Aside from Love's injury, about the only other thing that didn't go the Aggies' way was Deante Fortenberry's ejection about three minutes into the game. Fortenberry, a senior cornerback, was penalized for targeting on a Hawaii pass play and was disqualified for the rest of the contest.

Up next

Utah State: Home against San Jose State on Saturday, and then close the regular season with road games at Colorado State and at Boise State.

Commercial flights had crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center. Other planes appeared hijacked. For the first time in history, the Federal Aviation Administration closed U.S. airspace, and thousands of planes were suddenly looking for a nearby place to land.

The isolated town of Gander, Newfoundland, on Canada’s east coast, had an enormous airstrip that was no longer being used, a relic of a time when transatlantic flights needed a place to refuel.

One after another, 38 jetliners found an unexpected refuge there on Sept. 11, 2001 — a moment Stephane Lessard, the consul general of Canada, is coming to Salt Lake City this week to celebrate, with the opening of the Tony-winning musical “Come From Away.”

The story told in “Come From Away,” Lessard said, “really speaks to the better side of our nature. It’s a reminder of us at our best.”

The show’s national tour lands for a six-day, eight-show run, starting Tuesday at the Eccles Theater, 131 S. Main St., Salt Lake City.

The play — which lost out to “Dear Evan Hansen” for best musical at the 2017 Tony Awards — tells the true story of what happened in Gander on the day terror attacks killed nearly 3,000 in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., where hijackers crashed a fourth flight.

Locals sprang into action to provide lodging, food and basic amenities for some 7,000 tired and fearful airline passengers, the folks who, in Newfoundland slang, “come from away.” Writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein show how strangers learned to trust each other, have a little fun and form friendships that have lasted to this day.

“The whole message of the show is so positive and uplifting,” said Julie Johnson, a Texas-born actor who — like most of the cast – plays several roles during the course of the musical.

Director Christopher Ashley’s spartan staging relies on a few chairs, lighting and quick-change costumes to instantly shift the action from an airline cabin to a Newfoundland bar.

“The structure of the piece is like something you haven’t seen onstage before,” Johnson said from Seattle, the tour’s first stop. “They’ve written a piece of theater that is one of a kind. … One moment I’m supposed to be Dolores from the Bronx, and Beulah from Gander, Newfoundland, comes out.”

Beulah, Johnson’s main role in the production, is a composite of three women who took the lead in organizing the folks of Gander and their donations of time, labor and supplies.

“The whole town rose up to this task — and as with any situation, some take the lead naturally,” Johnson said. “They don’t seem to let anything knock them down.”

Johnson was struck by details that were crucial for the visitors. Fear of a terrorist bomb meant the passengers’ luggage remained in the cargo holds, so they were left without a change of clothes or other basic amenities.

“Some had been on their airplanes for 28 hours,” Johnson said. “Imagine it. I get upset when I have an hour delay.”

One Newfoundland welcome ritual depicted in the musical — known as “kissing the cod” — is something Lessard has experienced for himself.

“You take some hard liquor, there’s an invocation of sorts, and they make you kiss a cod,” Lessard said, recalling a visit to Newfoundland as he spoke during a call from his office in Denver, where he represents his country’s interests in the western United States. “They make you feel part of their family and community.”

Lessard will be visiting Utah to attend a global economics forum, to meet Gov. Gary Herbert and to tour Logan, Ogden and Provo. But, he said, “Come From Away” will be a highlight of the trip — showing a time when the U.S. and Canada were on friendlier terms.

Recently, there have been tensions between the North American allies, which many attribute to the pugnacious comments of American President Donald Trump and the unwillingness of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to let such remarks slide.

Perhaps the nastiest exchange came this summer during trade negotiations, when Trump seemed to reference the War of 1812, asking, “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” — a dig at Canada’s loyalty that Trudeau called “frankly insulting and unacceptable.”

While relations between countries like Canada and the United States “haven’t always been the smoothest,” every relationship has its ups and downs, Lessard said.

“The arts have that power to build bridges, stronger bridges between cultures and communities,” Lessard said. “That expression becomes so much stronger than the transient politics of the moment.”

Johnson agreed, adding, “Hopefully, this too shall pass.

“The strength of the alliance from person to person will turn out to be stronger than the potholes in the road that are happening right now,” Johnson said. “I hope ‘Come From Away’ is there to be a good ambassador-slash-cheerleader of the kindness we can show to each other.”

——

‘Come From Away’

The national tour of the Tony-winning musical “Come From Away,” telling the true story of Newfoundlanders helping airline passengers grounded unexpectedly after the 9/11 attacks.

• Where • <a href="https://broadway-at-the-eccles.com/" target=_blank>Eccles Theater</a>, 131 S. Main St., Salt Lake City
• When • Nov. 6-11
• Tickets • $35 to $150, at <a href="http://arttix.artsaltlake.org/" target=_blank>arttix.artsaltlake.org</a>

The Draper City Council has initiated a process to restrict future expansion of mining operations in the city, citing adverse impacts to residents as the primary concern motivating the decision.

“We received an application from Geneva Rock a couple of times and the council got to discussing it and felt that it was important to the community for them to take a look at mining,” Draper spokesman Maridene Alexander told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Geneva Rock, a gravel mining company, is one of several businesses with mineral extraction operations at the Point of the Mountain. The company came under fire in September after first proposing an expansion to its gravel pit mine at the location. It scaled back the proposal and withdrew it when told it would have to start the application process over.

The company has indicated that it would reapply.

“The mayor and some of the city council members got together and decided that mining was causing an adverse impact on residents. They listened to what the citizens said and they felt like it was important to take heed of that to look at the future and how mining fits into that future. They decided that maybe it doesn’t,” Alexander said.

Council members last week approved a resolution 6-0. The endorsed plan to ban expanded mining would not affect the established legal rights of current mining operations.

“Our city is growing and changing. It is incumbent upon us to make prudent decisions that protect the health and well-being of our residents, support economic opportunities, and improve air quality,” Draper Mayor Troy Walker said in a press release. “We have heard loud and clear from our residents and our business community that expanding mining operations within the city limits is inconsistent with these values.”

Draper residents who have been invested in the issue are ecstatic about the move to tackle air pollution.

“It is what residents want and it is the optimal economic decision for Draper as it will ensure that Draper is a desirable community for Silicon Slopes and draw in the highly paid occupations of a clean-tech future,” longtime Draper resident Robert MacFarlane told The Tribune.

“I feel that this is not just a win for Draper City, but it will help ensure that Draper is not the source of additional air pollution from the windy Point of the Mountain,” MacFarlane said. “The dust from the Point of the Mountain can travel along the entire Wasatch Front under the wrong wind patterns, and this effort by Draper will ensure the problem does not get worse on our side. Lehi still has work to do containing mining.”

Lehi leaders recently sent a letter to residents assuring them that after looking into the mining operations within their jurisdiction, they have concluded that there is no significant health risk.

They cited a recent council presentation by Sam LeFevre, of the state’s Environmental Epidemiology Program in the Utah Department of Health.

“While construction work that puts a lot of dirt in the air is annoying, it is not a significant public health concern,” the letter said.

“Our opinion would be it is mining waste and it would be amorphous, or less dangerous” than crystalline silica that has been determined to be a health hazard, LeFevre told the council.

A primer on crystalline silica published by the U.S. Bureau of Mines says that silica, in crystalline and amorphous forms, is “present in nearly all mining operations.”

Still, the city said it would create an “environmental sustainability committee” to address such issues as air pollution, storm water pollution and recycling.

“We remain committed to ensuring the health, safety and welfare of our residents while promoting a family-friendly, innovative community,” said the letter signed by Mayor Mark Johnson and council members.

The rabbi in Concord, N.H., where I grew up, sent out an email to congregants this week explaining that the front doors of our temple will now be locked during religious school. It is a prudent security step. But it’s hard to stomach the physical hardening of a place I bounded freely through as a child — a seamless doorway between secular and spiritual, where engagement with community outside is as sacred as the Torah scrolls inside.

I learned about the Pittsburgh shooting in the dark, preparing to hike into a remote canyon near Escalante. Though I ached to be with my community, the desert offered an extraordinary temple. Light spilled through holes in the rock into a deep pool of water. Nestled in the canyon, my grief had a corner to safely dwell against solid walls. Yet stepping back into some of the most sublime landscape on Earth, hopeful ideas flourished.

Since coming to Utah, I have seen that one such idea is that stopping firearm deaths requires working closely with gun-owning families. Finding common ground between health professionals and gun owners isn’t always easy. There is something unexpected about such partnership, in part because the reality of suicide being driven by gun access (and gun deaths being driven by suicide) is only beginning to gain widespread attention.

Early on, some people asked me whether I was capitulating to gun interests through this collaboration. But I know that open dialogue is not only possible, but necessary.

In her 2016 book “Strangers in Their Own Land,” Arlie Russell Hochschild notes, “We, on both sides, wrongly imagine that empathy with the ‘other’ side brings an end to clearheaded analysis when, in truth, it’s on the other side of the bridge that the most important analysis can begin.”

This is my experience. In the face of crisis, we typically sink into either-or thinking and false dichotomies. But nontraditional partners make us think bigger and smarter, connecting the data with culturally relevant messages and messengers. Such collaboration is not only possible, but is crucial to saving lives.

I remember moving through the crowd after a Utah March for Our Lives event to thank an opposition organizer for his group’s respectful presence and to ask for his reflections. He stared at me for a few moments. Then he told me how much it meant that I’d come over. He was saddened to overhear people saying his group threatened the safety of the event, when their goal is the opposite: to save lives while protecting rights. We may not agree on much, but there is something profound about the recognition that we all want our loved ones to be safe.

I felt that empathy this past week, when several gun owners I know reached out. One wrote: “Morissa, our hearts are with you and the Jewish people everywhere tonight. Hate will not prevail, it will be defeated altogether.”

His comment embodied the values of community safety and preventing persecution that I hear often among gun owners. It occurred to me that many of them own AR-15s. Ironically, they may have a more visceral sense than most of the scene that unfolded in Pittsburgh, knowing how easy this gun is to shoot and how much damage it inflicts.

It will take hard work and more trust to extend the lessons and strategies from our suicide prevention work to other types of gun deaths. And I recognize that focusing on guns doesn’t necessarily address the hatred that leads people to use guns in horrific ways. But I do know that moving outside of ideological camps and combative positions makes us all more loving, hopeful and connected. And that’s the stuff that fights hate.

The day after the Pittsburgh shooting, a bouquet of flowers was left at our New Hampshire synagogue front door. An accompanying, unsigned note began: “I am so very sorry. All of us deserve peace, hope, and a safe place to live and love.”

Now is a time to come together. As we explore our own deep canyons of sorrow, we must also remember the expansive landscape of hope that exists beyond our walls. As we close our doors tighter, we must open our hearts even wider.

Morissa Sobelson Henn lives in Salt Lake City. She is a doctor of public health candidate at Harvard University.

My wife is Jewish.

Telling you that a couple of weeks ago probably would have prompted different images than it does following the greatest mass killing of Jews in the history of our republic. And depending on your politics, and in addition to the anti-Semite who did the shooting, you may have people you are inclined to blame.

But blaming is less important to me in this moment of tragedy for Jewish peoples than trying to know, to accept, to understand the country in which we have been suffering anti-Semitism since before the 19th-century mass migrations of Jews to America escaping Russian pogroms; since the early-20th century escape of Jews to America from persecutions of Jews in Eastern Europe; since the mid-20th century escape of Jews to America from the Holocaust; since the shouts in Charlottesville of “Jews will not replace us!”; to the murder of Jews in Pittsburgh. And to recognize that for those of us not raised Jewish, we may be insensitive to the continuing threat anti-Semitism presents to American Jewry — a threat evidenced by a rise in anti-Semitic acts last year of more than 57 percent, the highest increase the Anti-Defamation League has ever reported.

And the rise is not just among the illiterates who populated the Charlottesville protests. The number of anti-Semitic incidents nearly doubled last year in schools and on college campuses. For the second year in a row.

Most of the nearly 2,000 such acts go unnoticed, unreported by even local media. Which may be why no less prestigious a publication and sensitive a commentator on Jewish life than the New Yorker ran a headline commenting on “The Return of Anti-Semitism to American Life.” Thankfully, the story went on to say that Jewish Americans are able to tell you: It never went away.

What we are reminded of by the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and the chants of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville is that in America — where there are more Jewish people than anywhere else in the world — learning about anti-Semitism is part of a Jewish child’s education. It was part of my wife’s education. She remembers her father — a Reform Jewish Cantor — telling her where she should not go for fear of people who did not like Jews, who were prepared to do her harm. And Pittsburgh reminded her that her father had been right.

After more than a quarter of a century with my wife — attending Shabbas and celebrating the holidays with her family — I have come to realize I’ll never really know what it means to be Jewish in the way my wife is Jewish, what Rabbi Martin Buber called a kind of “memory” each of us carries in our bones, a history of experience that not only informs but deserves respect.

And it is that respect that I believe is most lacking today, that “attention” Arthur Miller said in “Death of a Salesman” that “must be paid.” It’s absence is evidenced every time someone says the Holocaust was a long time ago and wonders why “Jews don’t just get over it.” It’s evidenced every time a politician responds to a tragedy such as Pittsburgh by suggesting there is “blame on both sides” or that “both sides” of the political rhetoric are to blame.

Two years ago, right-wing media and politicians attacked the ADL as anti-Trump for criticizing a political environment in which white supremacists go unchallenged and Steve Bannon — "a man who presided over the premier website of the Alt Right, a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists” — assumed a top position in a presidential administration.

And two years later there is Pittsburgh. And my wife is reminded of how wise it is for an American Jewish girl to be afraid.

C​lifton Jolley is a writer and president of Advent Communications in Ogden.

Bringing up politics with family members can be a lot like putting salt on a slug. The two things can coexist just fine, but when they come together, bad things happen. Like, burns and foaming at the mouth bad.

That’s because politics isn’t for everyone, campaign seasons are too long, the heated debates can become relationship-enders and that stuff pales in comparison to casual observations about the weather or the familiar silence of screen scrolling.

Except …

What the actual crap is going on in our world? We are so polarized right now that magnets don’t even know what to do. And we have completely forgotten how to disagree with any grace, not to mention finding any sort of common ground.

Now, I’m not saying that our aim should be grace over all else (in fact, I just bemoaned the downsides of politeness two weeks ago), but we seem uninterested in even pretending to find compromise. Some even see compromise as weakness, impurity or lack of resolve.

And yet, it’s our ability to coordinate and cooperate that has sort of set us apart from our more primal ancestors (or used to, anyway), so we need to figure this business out or I’m afraid we’re doomed.

All of this became crushingly apparent the other day when my far more brave and wise friend wrote an astoundingly honest and risky email to his family asking them to vote this election season with awareness and conscience. He spelled out his concerns, he advocated for compassion, he shared links to credible information and he signed his letter, “With love, respect and hope.”

He wrote from his heart to people he respects and who might be willing to hear an opposing view from him — someone they’ve loved as long as he’s lived.

It was inspired, and several members of his family acknowledged lovingly that they had heard him.

I, on the other hand, am one of those who make weird and ambiguous noises to redirect politically awry remarks when talking with differently affiliated family members or work acquaintances. It’s the old acknowledge-without-agreement tactic that’s been my cherished method of avoidance for so long. I’ve valued ease over understanding. I think I might be part of the problem.

If I can’t figure out how to handle conflict with people close to me, how could I expect to handle it with anyone else? How could any of us? And how can we expect to be understood if none of us are out there seeking to better understand others?

Democracy only functions when we participate and have healthy opposition that we can transform into policy that best serves the majority of us. Our collective reluctance to discuss candidates, issues, processes and platforms with people in our spheres is threatening our ability to do either of those things.

So, it’s time to make politics great again. Disagree? Let’s grab a cup of coffee and talk it out.

Marina Gomberg is a communications professional and lives in Salt Lake City with her wife, Elenor Gomberg, and their son, Harvey. You can reach Marina at mgomberg@sltrib.com.

Heather Ashton Miller was sent to the Davis County jail on a drug paraphernalia possession charge in 2016. She was two days into her sentence when she fell off her bunk and ruptured her spleen. A liter of blood spilled into her body, and she died hours later on the way to the hospital.

Calvin and Kim Ostler are suing the Salt Lake County jail, alleging their daughter, Lisa Marie Ostler, was given insufficient medical treatment before she died from digestive inflammation.

And Ashley Evan Jessop, 35, died of renal failure in his Weber County jail cell in 2016. His mother is suing jail officials, alleging they, too, were indifferent to her son’s medical and mental health needs.

These are just some of the 71 people who died in custody between 2013 and 2017, according to a report looking at inmate deaths across Utah.

You might think that it’s worthwhile for the state to look at the deaths to see if we have a problem, and if so, the extent to which it’s an issue. You might think we could perhaps spot trends or see if practices at a jail with a good track record could help prevent fatalities in other jails, as well.

You might think that more data would be a good thing.

But chances are you are not Beaver County Sheriff Cameron Noel.

The sheriff got more than a little defensive at a meeting of a working group created to study the causes of jail deaths and the policies and procedures that might prevent them.

"It’s not an epidemic,” Noel insisted, blaming the media for blowing inmate deaths out of proportion, according to a report in the Ogden Standard-Examiner. Noel even objected to the reporter attending the public meeting.

“The sheriff’s association took a lot of flak,” Noel contended. “We manage our jails very well. We have done an absolutely excellent job, and now we are castigated.”

But are they doing “an excellent job”?

In 2017, the mortality rate in Utah jails dipped to about 1 in 1,000. Before that, the lowest it had been was 1.5 per 1,000 in 2015, and it was as high as 2.65 a year earlier. Nationally, between 2010 and 2014, the rate of jail deaths was 1.37 per 1,000.

In fact, Utah had the highest rate of jail deaths in the United States in 2014 (the most recent year of nationwide data available), the third highest in 2013 and the seventh highest in 2010.

Surely, running a jail is not simply like running the world’s worst Ritz-Carlton. Your guests have drug addiction issues and mental health problems, they can be violent, sometimes suicidal and presumably they all did something illegal to land them in a cell.

It would be unrealistic to expect jailers to prevent every inmate death — whether it’s from suicide or drug withdrawal or some other medical condition.

It is realistic, however, to expect sheriffs to take reasonable steps to prevent things like inmate suicides, rather than chalking it up to a bad personal choice, as Noel did.

“That was the life they chose to live,” he said. “They chose to take their own life.”

And it’s not just realistic, it’s common sense, to ask how we can do better. Could jailers be better trained to spot problems? Does it make sense to train jail staff to administer anti-withdrawal medications? Is there a way to improve medical screening, particularly in rural jails? Are there policies and procedures and best practices that could help protect human lives?

Those are the types of questions Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Bountiful, said he was trying to get at when he and Rep. Carol Spackman-Moss, D-Holladay, sponsored SB205 last year.

“As a legislator, I have been frustrated that we didn’t have any data. Now that we have a little data, just the tip of the iceberg, I’m not going to feel ashamed that we asked for it,” said Weiler, who is part of the working group.

“What I’m hearing from Cameron Noel is: ‘How dare you? How dare you hold us accountable? How dare you try to make us be transparent?’ And, I’m sorry, that’s a losing argument,” Weiler said. “If you’re receiving taxpayer funds in this day and age, you’re going to be held to a higher standard. You’re going to have to have more transparency than in the past.”

Even with the passage of SB205, 10 county sheriffs simply didn’t provide the data requested by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice for 2013 through 2016, so we don’t even have a full picture.

“Some of them know what they’re supposed to provide and aren’t,” Weiler said.

I get it. For Noel and his fellow sheriffs, all of this concern over people dying in their jails has got to be a real inconvenience.

But policymakers ask these questions for a reason, so we know if we have a problem, where we can do better, and how one jail can learn from another jail’s experiences.

If Noel doesn’t like that, then maybe the solution is for the state to pull its 150-plus inmates out of the Beaver County jail, along with all the state taxpayer money Noel’s dad, Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, keeps getting for Cameron and his fellow sheriffs.

This year, according to Beaver County’s budget, they are planning on $7.3 million in taxpayer money to warehouse state inmates in the county’s ridiculously oversized jail.

That way, we’ll know that at least state inmates will be supervised in the safest and most responsible manner possible, and Noel can go back to doing an excellent job.

Gregory Clark seems to make us uncomfortable, and for that I congratulate him. The responses to his frequent op-ed pieces on religion and belief are always interesting, but no more so than Clark and his pointed, bare-fisted and often troubling articles.

I really don’t understand the problem. He has his beliefs. And, being a scientist and a humanist and a nonbeliever, his beliefs, theories, philosophies and ideas are also often just unproven guesses. Assumptions in science are often part of an exploratory process, and even then they should be just temporary and used simply as “best guesses.” Any assumption over time must become hard science or disappear. This causes that, or it doesn’t.

All Clark appears to be saying is that if something can’t be proven, please stop presenting it as a truth. But he states his beliefs in a way that makes many of us uncomfortable.

The only thing in the universe that can turn an unproven assumption or myth or illusion into something we consider real is the human brain. And I believe this stated assumption/idea can be proven through scientific exploration.

The human eye evolved with a blind spot. There is a small area in the retina that gathers no information. It shows as a blank spot in eye exams and, without some form of scientific testing, we’d have never known it existed. But the human brain developed a way to trick itself into believing the blind area didn’t exist. The brain used sensory color and data patterns of what surrounds the blind spot to create a “best guess” whole image.

We each have the ability to fill in the blank, and we do. But we are influenced, I believe, during the process, not only by the surrounding data but also by how comfortable we are in using information to actively interact with the world around us. You might say that each of us adopts a “best guess” philosophy that mirrors how we engage with what we don’t understand or see, and what we don’t understand or see is the future, or what created the past.

Did God create this process, or was it simply nature doing what nature does?

And if either or neither, why not just state we don’t know? Or is this lack of knowledge very similar to the blind spot itself? And if it’s simply an extension of the idea that the original blind spot created strong negative stress/fear reactions in the brain, strong enough to trigger a fight-or-flight response with each step we took, perhaps creating imaginary images was a necessity. Maybe it, the imagination, played a necessary role in the evolutionary process.

Humans learning to move without fear may have been a necessary requirement in learning to interact with our environment.

What I’ve stated is an unproven assumption that “I believe” is true.

My wife and I created Understanding Us to test unproven assumptions about how the human brain functions. We are working with diverse populations dealing with a number of mental-health conditions: schizophrenia, PTSD, children on the autism spectrum, severe depression, suicide and addiction. Our Street Tai Chi program in Salt Lake City is an extension of this effort.

If an assumption has merit and you apply the assumption, this will happen. And what happens will happen over and over again. Or it won’t.

If God-based philosophies have merit, please put them to work solving our human and environmental problems. If scientific assumptions are getting the job done, please continue. If not, I wish we could all consider looking for more effective “best guesses.”

Dr. Clark, thank you for starting this discussion.

Bernie and Marita Hart are Salt Lake residents exploring a number of “new assumptions” about how the human brain functions. Both are too old to waste time on what doesn’t solve real problems.

Three major factors in Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler achieving power were mass rallies, a patriotic slogan and disillusionment over loss of influence in the world. Power was gained more easily and faster in Trump’s case because TV carries his message to millions rather than the thousands who could attend a Hitler rally.

Their slogans were similar: “Deutschland Über Alles” and “USA! USA! We’re #1.” Their main appeal was (is) to people who saw the world passing them by and blamed a specific group as the root of the problem — Jews for Hitler and Muslim and Latino immigrants (and Barack Obama) for Trump. Each promised to revive their country. Both had failed in their earliest endeavors — Hitler as a painter, Trump as a casino operator and football team owner. Both ignored their top advisers and governed by instinct rather than logic.

Hitler actually had some cause for complaint, in that the Allies had imposed crippling restrictions on Germany after World War I, in which a large portion of its working-age population had been killed or maimed. In contrast, America dominated the world after World War II because its industrial complex was intact, as was most of its youth and working-age population.

Time has whittled away America’s postwar industrial advantage as Europe, Japan and China have recovered. Also, America’s elites have grabbed an ever-larger share of our economy and exported millions of working- and middle-class jobs. But Trump blames our problems on his predecessors signing bad international trade deals.

The reality is that upper-class greed is at the root of America’s problems. Our health care is far worse than Europe’s. In 2017, our average premiums plus deductibles for a family were about $22,800, and 8.8 percent of Americans were not covered at all. In Europe, Japan and Australia, government pays for universal health care out of taxes. Our average waiting times to see a doctor are higher, and medicines here cost roughly twice what they do in Europe.

Personally, I don’t like to see millions of dollars wasted on TV ads for drugs for illnesses I have never heard of, nor do I like to read about doctors getting rich from commissions on drugs they prescribe. Bottom line: Europeans’ life expectancy is three years greater than ours.

“Our education system is the envy of the world.” Really? It’s certainly the most expensive! Yet our high school students rank only 38th in math and 24th in science and reading. Bachelor’s degrees are advertised as taking four years, but only 59 percent of students graduate within six. In Europe, the norm is three years, because they work harder in high school, and the top seven countries have graduation rates of more than 75 percent.

“We need to increase spending on our military!” Why? We already spend more than the next eight countries combined, four of whom are in NATO. We spend roughly three times as much as China and nine times as much as Russia. And we are protected by two rather large oceans. Seventeen years in Afghanistan (and counting) and 15 in Iraq. Again, why?

These problems are exacerbated by our political system, which has four glaring weaknesses.

1. Campaigns run for two years, as opposed to an average of 35 days in the U.K. and 14 in France, wasting what talents our candidates have.

2. There, elections are publicly financed, whereas here, companies and individuals can donate relatively freely — more than $3 billion in 2016. You’d have to be very naive to believe that doesn’t buy favors.

3. We really have only two parties, which means one is always in the majority and can ignore the other, as compared with Europe, where coalitions and compromise are the norm because a legislative defeat normally triggers a new election.

4. A majority of our voters seem to swear lifelong loyalty to a party rather than judging parties and individual candidates on their merits (or otherwise).

I encourage voters to vote out all incumbents this election in the hope that our politicians will get the message and start working for the people instead of their donors and party leaders.

Frank Fish, Park City, was born to a working-class family in England, studied mathematics in college, was a Fulbright Scholar and worked as an information systems consultant in the U.S., U.K., Italy and France before retiring.

As someone who watches TV for a living, I’m often asked: What do you watch for fun? My immediate answer: HGTV.

I watch that channel way too much. I watch “Flip or Flop.” And “Desert Flippers.” And “Love It or List It.” And on and on. I prefer the remodeling shows to the real-estate shows, but I’ll watch “My Lottery Dream Home” or “House Hunters” — although I’d rather watch “House Hunters: Renovation.”

And, of course, I watch all those shows with Jonathan and Drew Scott: “Property Brothers,” “Buying and Selling,” “Brother vs. Brother,” “At Home,” even “Drew's Honeymoon House.”

I love to see houses transformed. I get some ideas for my own house from time to time, although the current remodeling project going on at home — now stretching into its sixth month, with no immediate end in sight — differs from an HGTV show on two important counts.

First, I’ve done all the work myself. And second, my budget is a tiny fraction of the six-figure budgets on most HGTV shows.

(Seriously, like maybe 1.5 percent of six figures. And two-thirds of that has been paid for with cash back on a credit card account.)

And I'll admit that I sometimes wonder if the budgets they announce on HGTV shows are for real. Not just because they're so big, but because they're not bigger.

The Scott brothers recently assured television critics that the budgets on their shows are 100 percent real … sort of.

“We always say it’s unlikely that someone would be able to renovate for the same price that we do because, one, we don’t charge for our design team,” Jonathan Scott said.

In other words, it's a lot cheaper if you're just paying for the remodelers — if you get the interior design for free. That's definitely a bonus if you sign on to one of the Scotts' shows.

(In “Property Brothers,” Drew works with people to find and buy a house that needs renovating; Jonathan does the renovation. In “Buying and Selling,” Drew works to find people a new house while Jonathan renovates their current home so they can get top dollar when they sell.)

The Scotts also get material for free. But, Jonathan insisted, even if he uses, say, free flooring to renovate a house on “Property Brothers,” what that flooring would have cost is included in the final figures presented at the end of an episode.

Drew Scott added: “The shows on HGTV are not trying to trick anybody with what the costs are. … When we get something as a trade-out, we still show the retail value of that in the budget.”

But the projects on “Property Brothers” or “Buying and Selling” are “a very different beast” from what your average homeowner encounters, according to Jonathan Scott.

“We’re efficiency experts,” he said. “We’re doing 16 projects simultaneously, so I’m able to amortize some of my costs across 16 episodes. So there’s a few things that we can do that the average homeowner would not be able to do.”

I'm a fan, but at the same time, it sort of makes me choke when Drew Scott says, “We renovate entire houses for $30,000” — clearly implying that's a small budget.

Geez, I’d love to have $30,000 to renovate my house. I could hire people to do at least some of the work — while I watch HGTV.

Walking through places of worship destroyed in World War II, U.S. Army Chaplain Frederick A. McDonald saw glass everywhere, the “deeply smoked” fragments of shattered stained-glass windows.

“The shards represented something deep that you want to remember about this,” he later said. “It’s so often a little thing that can bring back a flood of memories.”

As he collected the shards in 1944 and 1945, he mailed them back home to Seattle, but he didn’t know what else to do with them. They sat in a closet for decades until one night, over dinner, he mentioned them to a group of friends, said Brian Farr, with Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable and Utah District of Rotary International’s Peace Committee.

The conversation led McDonald to connect with artist Armelle Le Roux, Farr said. They worked with other stained-glass artists to create 25 pieces of work featuring the shards, each telling the story of the churches, synagogues and cathedrals where McDonald found them.

The pieces are now on display at the Walker Center, 175 S. Main St., from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. The “Remembered Light” exhibition, sponsored by the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable and Utah District of Rotary International’s Peace Committee, will continue until Nov. 17.

The organizers hope those who see it learn a lesson about the dangers of polarization.

The exhibition, on loan from the Interfaith Center at the Presidio in San Francisco, is a metaphor for what division breeds — and for what happens when people set aside differences and try to build something out of the broken pieces, said organizer Indra Neelameggham, also with Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable.

Though McDonald died in 2002 before the project was finished, he said he wanted the art “to serve as a memorial to the places they were found and offer hope for lasting peace,” according to a news release from its opening in San Francisco.

Neelameggham said the works are proof that rebuilding after tragedy is possible. The first time she saw the pieces, she said, she was overcome with a feeling of solace.

Since the exhibit opened Oct. 17, she said she’s seen many people come in with coffee for just a quick peek at the art, only to see them linger and reflect on the pieces.

In the wake of the recent mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Neelameggham said, she feels the art’s message is enhanced.

“[It’s] all the more reason to get more to come and visit something like this, so that we never step into that destructive phase anymore,” she said. “That’s the hope.”

Farr said he hopes visitors leave with an understanding of what the exhibition says are the three ways to respond to polarization — and that they choose the most productive one.

The first option is to do nothing and stagnate, an exhibit placard explains. Second, people can escalate the division. Or third, people can, instead, focus on issues that unite them and build a foundation from there.

Isla, Mexico • A 4,000-strong caravan of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico split up into several groups with one spending the night in a town in the coastal state of Veracruz and other migrants continuing toward the country’s capital.

The divisions came during a tense day in which tempers flared and some migrants argued with caravan organizers and criticized Mexican officials. They were upset that Veracruz Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes had reneged on an offer late Friday to provide buses on Saturday to leapfrog the migrants to Mexico City.

The migrants trekked to the town of Isla, about 700 miles south of the U.S. border, where several thousand stopped to rest, eat and receive medical attention. They planned to spend the night there before departing at 5 a.m. Sunday en route to the town of Cordoba.

But other migrants, mainly men and the younger members of the group, kept on walking or hitching rides toward Puebla and Mexico City. They hunkered down for the night in Juan Rodriguez Clara or Tierra Blanca farther along the route.

“We think that it is better to continue together with the caravan. We are going to stay with it and respect the organizers,” Luis Euseda, a 32-year-old from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, who is traveling with his wife Jessica Fugon, said in Isla. “Others went ahead, maybe they have no goal, but we do have a goal and it is to arrive.”

Joel Eduardo Espinar is determined to continue the arduous trek with his family.

Caravan organizers have pleaded for buses in recent days after three weeks on the road, hitching rides and walking. With the group scattered, some have raised questions about whether the caravan would stick together.

In a statement, the migrants lambasted Mexican officials for directing them northward through the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, calling it the “route of death.” A trek via the sugar fields and fruit groves of Veracruz takes them through a state where hundreds of migrants have disappeared in recent years, falling prey to kidnappers looking for ransom payments.

Authorities in Veracruz said in September they had discovered remains from at least 174 people buried in clandestine graves. Some security experts have questioned whether those bodies belonged to migrants.

Gerardo Perez, a 20-year-old migrant, said he was tired. “They’re playing with our dignity. If you could have only seen the people’s happiness last night when they told us that we were going by bus and today we’re not,” he said.

The caravan’s “strength in numbers” strategy has enabled them to mobilize support as they move through Mexico and has inspired subsequent migrants to try their luck via caravan.

Mexico faces the unprecedented situation of having three caravans stretched over 300 miles of highway in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz, with a total of more than 6,000 migrants.

On Friday, a caravan from El Salvador waded over the Suchiate River into Mexico, bringing 1,000 to 1,500 people who want to reach the U.S. border.

That caravan initially tried to cross the bridge between Guatemala and Mexico, but Mexican authorities told them they would have to show passports and visas and enter in groups of 50 for processing.

Another caravan, also of about 1,000 to 1,500 people, entered Mexico earlier this week and is now in Chiapas. That group includes Hondurans, Salvadorans and some Guatemalans.

Mexican officials appear conflicted over whether to help or hinder their journeys.

Immigration agents and police have at times detained migrants in the smaller caravans. But several mayors have rolled out the welcome mat for migrants who reached their towns - arranging for food and camp sites.

Mexico’s Interior Department says nearly 3,000 of the migrants in the first caravan have applied for refuge in Mexico and hundreds more have returned home.

With or without the government’s help, uncertainty awaits.

President Donald Trump has ordered U.S. troops to the Mexican border in response to the caravans. More than 7,000 active duty troops have been told to deploy to Texas, Arizona and California ahead of the midterm elections.

He plans to sign an order next week that could lead to the large-scale detention of migrants crossing the southern border and bar anyone caught crossing illegally from claiming asylum.

When she’s finished for the day at her accounting job, Natalie Fleming fills up her car with gas and turns on the Uber and Lyft apps on her phone to signify that she’s ready to take riders.

Her full-time job pays well, the 26-year-old said, but she drives about 20 hours a week — plus hours spent doing the back-end accounting for a business she’s starting with a friend — as a way to make extra money and to pay rent and various debts.

“During the week, I probably wake up at 7 a.m. and go to bed at 11 p.m., and I probably am working either my regular job or Uber or all three jobs, just depending on the day,” she said. “So, yeah, it does get exhausting.”

Fleming is part of the nearly 1 in 4 Americans that a 2016 Pew Research Center survey found now earns money from a side hustle, in which workers take on jobs from various companies in addition to — or rather than — working full time for a traditional employer.

Some seek the extra jobs out of a desire for flexibility or as a way to socialize or pursue their passions, according to Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research, a California-based organization that studies the future of work. But many take on the tasks out of necessity.

The economy generally has a good bill of health, King said. But as wages have stagnated after the Great Recession, costs have gone up across the country for housing, education, health care and health insurance much faster than the overall inflation rate — putting a lot of pressure on household incomes.

“And so what do you do when you want to maintain your standard of living in the face of that, or if you lose a job or if you have your hours cut? You turn to a second job,” King said. “You turn to a side gig.”

Even working a full-time job and two side hustles, Fleming said she sometimes has trouble making ends meet, particularly as Utah faces an affordable-housing crunch. She lives in Centerville but plans to move into an RV in a few months, so she can save some extra money to buy a house.

“I don’t even have as many student loan debts as some of my other friends — I know friends that have $80,000 to $100,000, and I only have like $16,000 — and [I’m] still working multiple jobs just trying to make the student loan payments and be able to eat and to be able to just have housing,” she said.

Working almost constantly can make it hard to achieve balance in her life and to see family and friends, Fleming said. And while the money makes a big difference in supplementing her income, it’s not always consistent — forcing her to sometimes “move around a few bills" to make it all work.

But even with the challenges, Fleming said she’ll probably continue to work on the ride-hailing app after she pays off the majority of her debt in a few months, because she likes her passengers, the extra money and the flexibility of working when she wants to.

“I meet a wide range of multiple different people, and I probably only have like — I’ve been doing it since January — probably only have like one or two experiences that were negative out of the hundreds of rides I do every week,” she said. “So for the vast majority, you know, it’s an easy side gig.”

‘A sign of troubling times ahead’

There’s a perception that the gig economy is primarily made up of younger workers, but King said that isn’t true — though those people may make up a larger portion of the workforce on digital platforms.

“There have been side gigs and the gig economy," he said, “for as long as there’s been work.”

Still, King noted, economic forces are pushing more people toward the gig economy. Many of those are Americans 55 and up, an age group that is growing “quite rapidly” as those people go into retirement “ill-prepared financially," he said. People of color are also more likely to participate in the side-gig economy, King said.

“It’s up and down age cohorts,” he said. “I mean, it doesn’t discriminate against anybody, our economy in that sense.”

After Will Shiflett, 49, was laid off in February, he turned to the gig economy as a way to make money while he looked for a new job.

Eight months later, he’s still searching.

“There’s a lot of talk at the national level and even the local level that there’s so many jobs available,” he said. “Anyone who wants a job can get one. Well, that’s not true. Anyone who’s willing to take a job for $15 [per hour] or less, yeah, you can have your pick of jobs. There’s thousands of those jobs. When you get above $15, there’s nothing.”

Shiflett, who has a master’s degree in public administration and two bachelor’s degrees, works part time as a political consultant, delivering pizzas and taking on odd jobs whenever he can.

Laboring around 60 hours a week, he said he feels like he’s “constantly working.” But it’s still a struggle to make ends meet for his family on one income, he said, especially since his wife is unable to work due to health complications.

“These are great jobs for people who want some extra cash,” said Shiflett, who lives in Sandy. “But the reality is, the majority of people who are occupying those positions are using them not for extra cash but for cash to actually live on. And I’m afraid that’s just not going to work out. It’s just a sign of very troubling times ahead."

For Valentina Yingling, a full-time journalism student at Brigham Young University, working in the side-gig economy has been a more positive experience. She takes on the occasional acting gig and works a few hours a week for Instacart, a grocery delivery service.

“You download an app, and then that’s where you can plan your hours, that’s where you can see what you’re earning,” said Yingling, 19. “They’ll send you to the store; they’ll tell you which store to go to. Once you get there, it will download the entire list of things, and you scan them as you go so you get the exact one and then, from there, it will navigate you to the person’s house."

She works from six to seven hours a week and said that she likes the ability to choose her time around her school schedule — a flexibility more traditional jobs don’t offer — and that she’s not sitting in an office all day.

“It’s a lot of fun because it’s superconvenient,” she said, though she noted again that the money isn’t consistent.

Love them or hate them, King said, side gigs aren’t going away anytime soon. That’s because the economic forces leading people to seek extra work will remain.

“The gig economy gets a lot of blame,” he said. “And we think that’s kind of unfair in the sense that the gig economy is not causing this stuff, it’s reacting to this stuff. It’s the economy that’s causing the need, and the gig economy is filling that need.”

Digital platforms have made it easier for people to explore their passions, he said, and to learn new skills. But the fact that many are seeking side gigs out of financial necessity demonstrates a need to strengthen traditional employment, King said, whether that’s by boosting the minimum wage or by creating better social safety nets and protections against labor abuse.

“There’s just a whole range of things I think we could do," he said, “to improve traditional employment that would take the pressure off of people to have to go get second jobs and work in the gig economy."

For the fifth straight year, The Salt Lake Tribune has partnered with Energage, an employee research firm, to determine Utah’s Top Workplaces.

To see the 2018 list, click here.

Augusta, Mont.• Falls Creek certainly lives up to its name.

The hallmark of the stream-carved valley sits hidden in its steep bottom, the creek hitting the edge and dropping a few stories into the pool below. On a recent day, area ranchers Dan and Wyatt Barrett stood on the edge of the canyon, listening to the dull thunder of the falls and looking up the valley jutting north from the Dearborn River.

“It’s time to get this opened up,” Dan Barrett told Helena’s Independent Record.

The Barretts were joined on their property southwest of Augusta on Oct. 19 by Mike Mueller with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, U.S. Forest Service District Ranger Michael Munoz and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Game Warden Bryan Golie. The Barretts own more than 440 acres between the county road and national forest boundary. But under a deal recently reached, and pending fundraising, the property could become the newest piece of the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and open up access to about 26,000 acres (40 square miles) of public land.

“With the big picture, this really sews up what we want all the way to Highway 200,” Golie said. “In 25 years as a game warden, I’ve never seen an opportunity that will provide so much for the public.”

The project is a national priority for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

“I would echo that with my 30 years of experience, I mean you don’t even see things like this in national parks,” Mueller said. “And to have a willing landowner, and I don’t always get to say this, it really doesn’t get any bigger and better than this for RMEF.”

Falls Creek has a long and at times tragic history of clashes over access. While the Barretts’ property has remained closed for years due to trespass and liability concerns, an access dispute in a subdivision across the creek turned deadly in 2013 when Joseph Campbell shot and killed neighbor Timothy Newman. Campbell would eventually plead no contest in 2016 to negligent homicide.

The Barrett family homesteaded their property more than a century ago and continue to trail cattle across it to Forest Service grazing leases. After some “tough negotiations,” Dan Barrett decided he was comfortable with waiting out the public process and likely seeing a lower return on the property.

“A lot of people were upset when access was shut off and I didn’t want to see it subdivided, or another disaster over access,” Dan Barrett said. ”They’re really in a position to handle the public,” he said of the Forest Service and FWP.

The Barretts agreed to the appraised sale price of about $2.4 million. The Elk Foundation has until 2020 to raise the money, and once purchased, convey the property to the Forest Service.

“This is a great opportunity with a nonprofit taking the lead, but what’s also great is we’re really in control of the future here. The faster they get the money, the faster we can open the door,” Golie said.

RMEF has raised about $500,000 to date from major donors. The organization will continue to pursue large and small private donations and is pursuing up to $2 million in Lewis and Clark County Open Space Bond.

“We’re in Lewis and Clark County and we really feel like the citizens of Lewis and Clark County will be some of the biggest beneficiaries of this project,” Mueller said.

Connie Cole chairs the Citizens Advisory Committee on Open Lands, which makes recommendations to the county commission on potential open space projects. RMEF submitted an initial proposal to the committee along with a site visit and will go back before the committee with a second level proposal on Nov. 7. The county commission makes final approval of projects and decides funding levels.

“The open space bond doesn’t require public access as part of our criteria, but because it does have public access it’s even more of a gem,” Cole said. “I think on this one it’s one of those particular places in Montana that really need to be protected for the public in perpetuity.”

Mueller also hopes to tap funding from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund; however, the fund recently expired and faces an uncertain reauthorization. Even without those dollars, Mueller says he feels confident about meeting contractual deadlines.

Munoz admires the property for its ecological beauty as well as potential for recreation. Falls Creek starts and ends on public ground, it has no water rights to be diverted, and the falls make a natural barrier that lends itself to restoration of native cutthroat trout.

“It gets to the Dearborn River, so it has both boating access and forest access,” he said.

The layout has everything necessary for development into a trailhead, campground and fishing access site. Under the existing travel management plan, public access would be managed as nonmotorized, and hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders could access trail systems all the way to and over the Continental Divide, Munoz said.

When it comes to elk, Golie believes the access could affect hunting as far away as Lincoln. The district currently holds a herd of 1,000 — about 400 over population objectives — but elk have shifted their migratory patterns over the years. Falls Creek could put hunters where they need to be when winter weather hits the high country, he said.

“Within an hour you can be in the migration path,” Golie said. “This is a key, strategic opportunity that’ll make hunting better and hopefully take some of the burden off these private landowners.”

Information from: Independent Record, http://www.helenair.com

Tempe, Ariz. • Utah’s resounding victory over UCLA to conclude October naturally played into a theme of the Utes' coming back to the Rose Bowl in January as Pac-12 champions.

The Utes' 38-20 loss at Arizona State and junior quarterback Tyler Huntley's season-ending collarbone injury Saturday created another potential return trip in December, amid the reality that the Cheez-It Bowl in Phoenix doesn't come with a parade.

The sequence of events that ended their QB’s year, their four-game winning streak and their command of the Pac-12 South race left the Utes facing two major questions: How big is the drop-off from Huntley to Jason Shelley? How far could Utah fall in the Pac-12′s bowl structure?

The answers will come soon enough for the Utes, who fell out of the AP Top 25 this week. Utah (6-3, 4-3 Pac-12) finishes the regular season with conference games Saturday vs. Oregon and Nov. 17 at Colorado, followed by BYU’s visit Nov. 24.

Kyle Whittingham after the loss to Arizona State. pic.twitter.com/dlCelZVFYd

— Kurt Kragthorpe (@tribkurt) November 4, 2018

The South remains muddled, after a weekend when Utah could have made things quite clear for itself. “This one hurts,” Ute linebacker Chase Hansen said, “but we've got two games [left] and it's still in our hands.”

No, it’s not. Utah needs two wins, plus help from one of Arizona State’s opponents: UCLA, Oregon or Arizona. The bigger issue is whether the Utes can regroup sufficiently behind Shelley. ESPN’s Football Power Index gives Utah a 75 percent chance of winning each conference game, but those calculations are based on past performance, not considering any team’s personnel.

Shelley replaced Huntley late in the third quarter and led a drive to a field goal that made it 21-20, but then he directed two three-and-out series as ASU took control. He had appeared in three previous games, never with the outcome in doubt.

Shelley has played on big stages, notably the Texas Class 5A state championship game as a Lone Star High School junior. He’s also good enough to have beaten out the highly recruited Jack Tuttle for Utah’s backup job, prior to Tuttle’s departure in mid-October. That’s about all anyone can say about his credentials, other than coach Kyle Whittingham’s endorsing Shelley’s “complete command of the offense.”

Utah is bowl-eligible. But if the Utes end up 4-5 in conference play, they would fall into the Pac-12′s lower tier of bowls. That would be a big letdown, and that’s why this month will be even more fascinating than Utah’s past Novembers.

Three takeaways

• Zack Moss will be needed more than ever. In what seems likely to be his last college season, the junior running back is nearing 1,100 yards and remains on track to break Utah’s season and career rushing records. He’ll be especially vital this month, with an inexperienced quarterback. The challenge for Moss and Utah’s offensive line is that defenses will be geared to stop him, to an even greater degree.

• Utah’s secondary was disappointing. Whittingham was more critical of Utah’s run-stopping failures, and it’s true there’s no other Pac-12 receiver like ASU’s N’Keal Harry. Yet the Sun Devils' passing game was far too effective against a Ute secondary that wants to be known as the best in school history. Manny Wilkins went 19 of 24 for 285 yards with one interception (Jaylon Johnson’s third of the season) and ASU had two 100-yard receivers.

• The November curse is real. The late-season chill struck Utah on a 79-degree afternoon. The Utes' Pac-12 winning percentage is historically about the same in October, but Huntley’s injury fits the perception that bad things happen to this program in November. And subtracting five wins over last-place Colorado teams, Utah is 8-14 in November in the Pac-12 era.

Player of the game

Harry. He's a reminder that talent wins in these competitions. Harry caught nine passes for 161 yards and three touchdowns, and seemingly was there whenever ASU needed him.

Runner-up: Moss. The Utes ran only 58 plays, partly explaining his limited carries (18) for 128 yards. ASU made it difficult for him at times, but he broke off runs of 17, 19 and 27 yards. Moss summarized the offense’s day as “caught rhythm, lost rhythm; caught rhythm, lost rhythm.”

What CAN'T this man do 🤔@NkealHarry15 🐐 pic.twitter.com/gfZVIXgzER

— Sun Devil Football (@ASUFootball) November 3, 2018

N'Keal Harry was targeted early and made the most of them in Arizona State's win over Utah. pic.twitter.com/OwqKnSE703

— PFF College (@PFF_College) November 4, 2018

Play of the game

Harry's 61-yard touchdown catch on the first play of the fourth quarter. Even with Huntley sidelined, the Utes had a chance, trailing 21-20. But Harry caught a pass over the middle and weaved to the end zone in just the kind of game-changing play that Utah's coaches feared he would make.

Runner-up: Huntley’s 5-yard TD pass to Samson Nacua, giving Utah a 17-14 lead after having trailed 14-0. Huntley showed good touch, with Nacua wide open. The sadness is twofold, though: The Utes' only lead of the game was temporary, and that pass will stand as Huntley’s last touchdown of the season. Utah’s passing game was not sharp Saturday, but Huntley deserves credit for a memorable October.

Personnel updates

Senior center Lo Falemaka returned as a reserve after a missing all of October with a leg injury. Junior linebacker Francis Bernard got his most playing time of the season and was involved in five tackles, including a solo tackle for loss.

Looking ahead

Once ranked No. 12 in the AP Top 25 after beating Washington, Oregon (6-3, 3-3) has faded. But the Ducks topped UCLA 42-21 on Saturday and have a quarterback-receiver tandem that should trouble Utah. Dillon Mitchell caught eight of Justin Herbert’s passes for 156 yards. The encouraging part for Utah is Oregon gave up 161 yards rushing to UCLA’s Joshua Kelley.

It’s another impressive number for the math whiz.

Former Brigham Young University All-American star and Olympic runner Jared Ward continued his stellar slate of finishes as a professional marathoner, finishing Sunday’s 2018 TCS New York City Marathon in sixth place overall. The 30-year-old finished the race in 2:12.24, the highest-finishing American to compete Sunday.

“It’s the place to do it, right? The New York streets are incredible,” he said in an interview on ESPN afterward. “I was planning on the crowds helping me by the time I got to First Avenue, but it was 6, 7, 8 miles into the race in Brooklyn when I think someone was playing something from ‘Rocky,’ and the crowds were just incredible. I feel like the energy of the city really carried me through.”

Ethiopians Lelisa Desisa (2:05:59) and Shura Kitata (2:06:01) finished first and second, respectively.

Ward finished 12th in the 2017 NYC Marathon a year ago. On Sunday, he bettered his finish from a year ago by over six minutes. It was his best marathon result since the BYU adjunct statistics professor stunned the field at the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, wrapping up a surprise sixth-place finish by running a masterful 2-hour, 11-minute race two summers ago.

Ward’s sixth-place finish Sunday was his fifth top 10 of his marathon career. The Davis High graduate finished 10th at the 2017 Boston Marathon with a time of 2:15:28.

Thank you New York City!! @nycmarathon #PostRaceThoughts pic.twitter.com/P7VtdjYJeU

— Jared Ward (@jwardy21) November 4, 2018

The Olympian dealt with several injuries since his memorable afternoon in Rio. In fact, a lingering hamstring problem forced him to drop out of a race in the Czech Republic in September, and he even entertained the idea of sitting out the NYC Marathon due to injury concerns.

“Just the decision to come out here and be tough,” Ward told ESPN when asked how he was able to persevere Sunday morning. “I think 2017 had enough injuries, it messed with my mind a little bit, too, and this year I just said, ‘Hey, this is kind of where the build-up starts for the next Olympic cycle.’ Even though training hasn’t been perfect, this is the time to go out there and try to be tough and run with these other Americans and try to push as many of us into the top 10 as possible.”

Ward has noted that he has his sights set on an Olympic return during the 2020 Games in Tokyo. And he’s become a hit in the marathoning community in recent years due to his dual careers: running and teaching advanced statistics at his alma mater. After all, Ward’s master’s thesis was based on pacing strategies while running a marathon.

The professor’s brain continues to calculate in real time as he runs with the world’s best. And it’s still working like clockwork.

Back in May, a tweet with pictures of a messy casting room at the Salt Lake City Veterans Administration Hospital went viral. The room was a mess, and that was the story.

It was a dirty room where, earlier in the day, eight casts had been put on veterans. Another patient was assigned to the room before it had been thoroughly cleaned and had to wait 45 minutes for care. This resulted in the rant on Twitter. The gist of the tweet was the VA Hospital is a terrible place for our veterans.

At the same time, in a different area of the hospital, another veteran was having the opposite experience. He wants his story to be told as well. This vet was very grateful and impressed with the level of care he was receiving from the Salt Lake City VA.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, but this Vietnam veteran has nothing but good things to say about the VA in Salt Lake City. My cousin Larry Lee Pyette, age 69, says, “I have nothing but admiration and respect for the care I received while a patient from April 16-July 26.”

He went on to tell his story, emphasizing that the care and respect he received were “second to none.” He was disappointed in the negative news that was widely broadcast during his time in the hospital.

“To think someone would go out of their way to say horrible things and be so negative,” Larry said, “when really they should be being positive and trying to gain the support and funding needed, so every VA can be staffed with great staff as in the Salt Lake VA.”

Larry spent many weeks in surgical ICU after a vascular bypass surgery. While recovering from surgery, he had a heart attack. It was the same day he had planned to drive with his daughter back to Montana.

He credits the VA for saving his life, as he was in “the right place to have a heart attack.”

After this setback, Larry reported that any time a light or buzzer would go off, staff were extremely quick to attend to his needs. Staff from all departments and hierarchies were assuring all patients’ needs were being met.

Larry’s daughter stayed with him for four weeks. During this time the staff was “amazing at making sure the family was in the loop” and took time to explain the diagnoses and plans of care.

When his daughter returned home to Montana to be with her young family, the thorough communication continued. These regular check-ins were greatly appreciated, as the family was unable to be with their father/loved one during his time of need.

In the absence of his own family, the staff at the VA hospital in Salt Lake City was a second family to Larry. Some of the highlights included having a “personal barber” and on multiple occasions volunteers bringing him a therapy companion. The favorite companion Larry was able to spend time with was a baby wallaby.

Another highlight was being escorted outside to attend a motorcycle rally. And when Larry didn’t feel like eating, the staff would bring him his favorite treat, a strawberry milkshake. Those were the times that matter to Larry and to his family.

The VA staff that spent every day with him gave him the energy and spirits to become well enough to return home and spend the rest of his life with his family. To the SLC VA and staff, Larry and his family want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your kindness and compassion have forever touched our lives and will never be forgotten.

Larry went back home to Missoula, Mont., with his family, entered hospice care and died on Oct. 27. Larry served in combat in Vietnam 1968-69.

Wilma Pyette is an energy consultant who lives in Houston.

Boise • Jeff Grimes deserves credit for calling the screen play that went for 59 yards and put BYU into position to upset Boise State late Saturday night.

But the Cougars’ first-year offensive coordinator, along with third-year head coach Kalani Sitake, deserve a good portion of the blame for mismanaging the clock and and making some questionable play calls once BYU got there in the eventual 21-16 loss.

“This one will hurt a little bit,” Sitake said. “I am proud of all our guys. It just sucks that we didn’t win the game.”

Some of the decisions Grimes and Sitake made in the final minute were head-scratchers.

First, the coaches let too much time run off the clock in the final minute before taking a timeout, a decision that came back to bite them when freshman quarterback Zach Wilson was tackled on the 4-yard line as time expired.

“I will have to evaluate it and see when the right time to take a timeout would have been,” Sitake said. “Yeah, I will be able to answer those questions on Monday.”

After Lopini Katoa ran 8 yards to the BSU 5, Grimes apparently called two running plays, and Matt Hadley — responsible for the 59-yard catch-and-run that put the Cougars at the 24 — couldn’t gain a yard on either carry.

“Try to get a touchdown,” Sitake said when asked what BYU’s plan was on those plays that were not only snuffed but cost the team precious seconds on the clock.

As for the plan on the ill-fated final play with seven seconds remaining in which Wilson was sacked for the seventh time, Hadley and Wilson gave these descriptions:

“We went with a two-concept [passing] route,” Wilson said. “Nothing was open. I should have been smart and thrown it out of the back of the end zone.”

Said Hadley: “It was an option for Zach to either tuck it and go, or throw the ball, whatever he felt was the right decision.”

More second-guessing: During the timeout that Boise State called with seven seconds left and the ball on the 2, why didn’t BYU coaches stress to Wilson that he had to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible?

“To be honest, it didn’t cross my mind,” he said after throwing for 252 yards.

“We were trying to get two plays out of that one and we just made some mistakes,” Sitake said. “The team, our mistakes are all over the place. We had some guys who, whether it was defense, special teams or offense, made some mistakes.”

The coaches did, too.

BYU coach Kalani Sitake on the final moments of the 21-16 loss to Boise State pic.twitter.com/0yRVdPALel

— Jay Drew (@drewjay) November 4, 2018

Three Takeaways

• BYU’s red-zone offense still needs a lot of work. The Cougars moved the ball inside the BSU 20 six times and went away with just 13 points — two field goals and a touchdown.

“I think we showed we can move the ball,” Wilson said. “We just gotta finish.”

• Coaches made the right decision when they replaced senior Tanner Mangum with Wilson two games ago. Sure, the 19-year-old was sacked seven times. But the less-mobile Mangum might have been sacked 10 times. Wilson kept several plays alive with his legs, and would have rushed for 90 yards if sacks didn’t count against rushing yardage in college stats.

“He tries really hard. Probably takes too much [on himself],” Sitake said. “And this is true throughout the whole team. Guys try to do too much. …There are a lot of things that he is learning, but I am really proud of how hard he works. He is a playmaker and he is young and a freshman, but he needs to make veteran decisions. That’s what it comes down to. That’s really it. It’s my job as a head coach to teach him that.”

• BYU’s offensive line continues to regress. Wilson has been sacked 12 times in the last two games. Hard to win that way. Holding penalties and false starts also killed or hampered BYU drives Saturday night. The Cougars rushed for minus-5 yards the first half and finished with a meager 96.

“I feel like we are working to make strides every single week and do the best we can,” said Hadley.

Play of the Game

* Boise State’s Tyler Horton forced and recovered a fumble after BYU tight end Matt Bushman caught a 37-yard pass from Neil Pau’u. Bushman made a spectacular one-handed grab but he lost the ball at the 3 and it rolled into the end zone, where Horton pounced on it.

Player of the Game

• BYU cornerback Michael Shelton drew some ire Tuesday when he said playing at LaVell Edwards Stadium was a “downer” because of the lack of energy from the fans. But he backed up his words away from LES. The senior made six tackles, returned an interception 31 yards to set up a field goal, and also returned a punt well into BSU territory that was called back by a penalty.

Up Next

The Cougars dropped to 4-5 and will need to win two of their final three games to get bowl eligible. They play UMass at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., at 10 a.m. MST Saturday before returning to Provo to face New Mexico State on Nov. 17.