Deseret Magazine - December/January 2021

M AG A Z I N E

THE NEW

WEST THE

LEADERS ARTISTS, ADVENTURERS

& ENTREPRENEURS

WHO WILL

CHANGE

THE WEST IN 2022

FEATURING

RYAN SMITH

BY McKAY COPPINS

THE POST-COVID BATTLE OF THE SEXES

ROSS DOUTHAT

BROADWAY’S BACK! DEC 21/JAN 22 ISSUE 10 VOLUME 01

deseret.com $4.95

M AG A Z I N E

SAVE 10% on the largest accommodations in Poipu when you call & reference code: SRC. (808) 240 6600 | info@koloalandingresort.com koloalandingresort.com

Anne-Marie Barton CLASSICAL ROOTS MODERN EXPRESSION

INTERIOR DESIGN AND INSPIRATION AL VIDEOS 801.272.8680

AMB@AMBDESIGNINC.COM

ANNEMARIEBARTON.COM

INSTAGRAM @ANNEMARIEBARTON

AMB D

E

S

I

G

N

CONTENTS

“I think the state’s done a horrible job of branding themselves.

Horrible.”

54

20 CHANGE-MAKERS

OF THE WEST THE LEADERS, ARTISTS, ADVENTURERS AND ENTREPRENEURS REINVENTING THE WEST

46

By Benoît Morenne & Sofia Jeremias

RYAN SMITH HAS A PITCH THE NEW OWNER OF THE UTAH JAZZ WANTS TO REBRAND THE BEEHIVE STATE. NOT EVERYONE IS BUYING.

B Y M c K AY C O P P I N S

ROSS DOUTHAT CONSIDERS THE PANDEMIC’S EFFECTS ON THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

62 O N T H E COV E R :

70 CURTAINS UP! THAYNE JASPERSON, “HAMILTON” AND BROADWAY GET ON WITH THE SHOW.­ by ethan bauer

JA ZZ OW N ER RYA N SMITH P H OTO G R A P H Y BY N I CO L E HI L L G E R U L AT

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

5

SECTION

6 DESERET MAGAZINE

JUNE 2021 6

CONTENTS

M AG A Z I N E

“If I catch my guys blowing powder they’re in trouble.”

LETTER FROM THE FIELD

THE FRENCH DONALD TRUMP A right-wing TV personality in France with political ambitions is ­giving the world major deja vu. by benoît morenne

76

IDEAS —SCOTT ENOS, DEER VALLEY SNOWMAKING MANAGER

IDEAS

THE LIFE-AFFIRMING POWER OF THE FAMILY REUNION

FAKING IT

12

Is the cost of making snow at ski resorts worth the price? by frederick reimers

28

27

Author Nikki Usher has words of caution for the future of journalism. by chad nielsen

anna callaghan

CULTURE

19

THE STORY THAT STARTED SOUND

30

Cooped up from COVID, kids need a long leash to roam and explore.

How one Navajo photographer passed down a history of healing.

naomi schaefer riley

mary mcintyre

80

AN ELEGY TO THE ­C HRISTMAS CARD In honor of the epistolary ­holiday tradition. by ethan bauer

MODERN FAMILY

LEADERSHIP

DOCTOR’S ORDERS

DON’T RUN Is our fear of mountain lions unwarranted — or an alarm bell for the changing West?

lauren steele

THE SUMMER OF THE FREE-RANGE PARENT

BEARERS OF BAD NEWS

MODERN FAMILY

It’s way more than just a picnic.

THE WEST

40

26

Dr. Angela Dunn’s lessons from the pandemic.

THE SOCIALIST AT THE DINNER TABLE

16

How to survive Christmas when Karl Marx is your daughter’s plus-one.

as told to benoît morenne

by jennifer graham

THE LAST WORD

TO MAKE GREAT CHANGE Jenny Ahlstrom talks multiple myeloma and healing in serving others. by lois m . collins

84

BROKEN FAMILIES, REUNITED

18

It takes time and care. But experts say it is possible.

THE WEST

by lois m . collins

ALL IN THE FAMILY An Oklahoma ranch cultivates ­connection for foster families. by naomi schaefer riley

36 MISSING

22

Why do some who go missing get all the attention? by heather hansman

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

7

CONTRIBUTORS

MCKAY COPPINS

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He’s the author of the 2015 book “The Wilderness,” about the battle over the future of the Republican Party. The Brigham Young University graduate appeared on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in the category of media in 2012. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek.

ROSS DOUTHAT

Ross Douthat is an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He’s the author of six books, including “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success” and, most recently, “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” His writing has appeared in The Atlantic and National Review.

HEATHER HANSMAN

Heather Hansman is an award-winning freelance writer who covers the intersection of science, adventure and culture.

She’s the author of “Downriver,” a book about paddling the Green River and the future of water in the western U.S. She has contributed to The New York Times, Scientific American and The Guardian.

AINSLEY ROMERO

ROBERT NEUBECKER

Robert Neubecker is an award-winning illustrator. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

He’s the author of over 30 children’s books, including “What Little Boys Are Made Of,” which won a Kirkus Review Best Books of the Year award.

ANDRÉ DA LOBA

André da Loba is an award-winning illustrator, graphic designer and sculptor based in Brooklyn. A native of Portugal, he sees his art as an invitation and a challenge to change the world. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time magazine and The Washington Post. He has also illustrated several children’s books and anthologies.

8

DESERET MAGAZINE

COPPINS COURTESY MCKAY COPPINS, DOUTH AT BY ABI GAIL DOU THAT, HANSMAN BY HANADY KADER, NEU BECKER BY JOH N CARLYSLE

Ainsley Romero is a multidisciplinary designer creating objects, images and brand experiences focused on community and the magic of everyday life. She was the winner of AIGA’s Command X, an international design competition. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions.

866-501-9598 or NateWade.com

JUNE 2021 9

THE VIEW FROM HERE

FINDING HOME IN FLYOVER COUNTRY

A

s a young writer I got an assignment from one of those glossy magazines that puts celebrities on the cover to write about my family’s ranch in central Nevada, my dying grandfather and his last cattle drive. A photographer flew in from New York to Las Vegas, the nearest airport, a four-hour drive across the desert. “I can’t believe how empty Nevada is,” he said when he arrived. “There’s nothing here.”

He assured me the landscape was beautiful, and he was clearly intoxicated with the romance of cowboy life. But I could also tell he couldn’t wait to get back to a place that wasn’t empty, a place you don’t just fly over.

Back then, I could relate. I love New York and LA. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned I’d rather just visit. Where I want to be is, well, flyover country. Maybe that’s because it’s the land I know best. Or because my ancestors have lived here since it was called Deseret, and their progeny — my aunts and uncles and cousins — are scattered across that territory, from the Tetons to the eastern Sierra, from Mesa to Rexburg.

This magazine covers the people and culture of that region, celebrating everything that makes it unique. Because we live here, we understand that the West isn’t a movie set but a living, vibrant land that’s constantly reinventing itself. This month, we’re showcasing some of the leaders, artists, adventurers and change-makers who are shaping the future here (“The New West,” page 46), starting with Ryan Smith, the billionaire co-founder of Qualtrics, one of Utah’s most successful tech companies, and new owner of the Utah Jazz.

As McKay Coppins writes, Smith is determined to change how Utah is perceived (“Ryan Smith Has a Pitch,” page 54). It’s “a refreshing de-

10

DESERET MAGAZINE

parture from the contrarianism that so many Utahns practice — that strange, pathological impulse to constantly put down their own state as if to signal that they get it, they’re cool, they’re not like those other Utahns.”

There’s nothing more parochial than self-loathing, Coppins writes.

I loved reading that. Smith has chosen to stay where he’s from, embracing everything that makes it special — odd at times, but also wonderfully, singularly unlike any other on Earth. I guess I’ve chosen that, too, and I’m privileged to edit a magazine that chronicles the land I call home in an honest way.

That’s not always possible. Interviewing Nikki Usher, author of “News for the Rich, White, and Blue,” deputy editor Chad Nielsen explores the crisis of trust in American journalism (“Bearers of Bad News,” page 76). Usher finds its roots in a creeping bias driven by the downfall of newspapers in blue-collar areas that has left millions bereft of information about the towns and regions where they live. Meanwhile, the big coastal media outlets thrive by catering to those who can afford to care.

Journalists, too, must adapt. This magazine can’t cover everything that happens in Deseret, but we can tell its stories, grapple with its troubles and make sense of a complicated and evolving landscape — grounded for those who live in the West, wide-eyed and informative for readers from coast to coast.

—JESSE HYDE

BUILT. BETTER.

NEW 4-WAY ENGINEERED STRETCH WOVEN

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE COMPRESSION SLEEVE TO MATCH

LIGHTWEIGHT AND EXTREMELY DURABLE

THE LATEST IN PRO PERFORMANCE GAME-TIME JERSEYS

7 DAY QUICKTURN prolook.com

MAG AZINE

PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER EDITOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR MANAGING EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR EDITOR-AT-LARGE CONTRIBUTING EDITORS CORRESPONDENT STAFF WRITERS

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

ART DIRECTOR DESIGNER COPY CHIEF COPY EDITORS RESEARCH

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

HEAD OF SALES

MAGAZINE

THE

DIVINELY

INSPIRED CONSTITUTION

By Dallin H. Oaks

CAN JOHN ROBERTS

SAVE THE COURT

By Sarah Isgur

ROBIN RITCH JESSE HYDE ERIC GILLETT ARIANA DAWES CHAD NIELSEN HAL BOYD JAMES R. GARDNER LAUREN STEELE MICHAEL J. MOONEY ETHAN BAUER SOFIA JEREMIAS BENOÎT MORENNE MATTHEW BROWN LOIS M. COLLINS KELSEY DALLAS JENNIFER GRAHAM MYA JARADAT D. HUNTER SCHWARZ FENDI WANG IAN SULLIVAN BRENNA VATERLAUS TODD CURTIS CHRIS MILLER WHITNEY WILDE ETHAN BAUER KRISTIN CORDOVA ANNE DENNON BENOÎT MORENNE HANNAH DECKER NICOLE HILL GERULAT RANDY GLASS DAVID HABBEN SPENSER HEAPS ROBERT NEUBECKER AINSLEY ROMERO LAURA SEITZ MACKENZIE STROH ANDREA UCINI SALLY STEED

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER

CYNDI BROWN

PRODUCTION MANAGER

MEGAN DONIO

OPERATIONS MANAGER

BRITTANY MCCREADY

Deseret Magazine is published 10 times a year by Deseret News Publishing Co., with double issues in December/January and July/August.

The Deseret News’ principal office is 55 N. 300 West, Suite 500, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Subscriptions are $29 a year. To subscribe visit pages.deseret. com/subscribe.

Copyright 202122 Deseret News Publishing Co. All rights reserved.

Printed in the USA.

THE

END OF

TRIBALISM

By Jon Meacham

A CRISIS OF TWO

CONSTITUTIONS

By Charles R. Kesler

THE

JULY/AUGUST 2021 ISSUE 06 Volume 01 deseret.com $4.95

CONSTITUTION ISSUE

DM_ISSUE 06_covers_a.indd 1

12

DESERET MAGAZINE

6/15/21 12:14 PM

D E S E R E T, proposed as a state in 1849, spanned from the Sierras in California to the Rockies in Colorado, and from the border of Mexico north to Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming.

Informed by our heritage and values, Deseret Magazine covers the people and culture of that territory and its intersection with the broader world.

OPENING SHOT

FIRE AND ICE

DAVID NEWTON AND CAMILLE LOWE EXPLORE THE ICE CASTLES IN MIDWAY, UTAH, IN 2021.

THE WINTERTIME DESTINATION REOPENS IN JANUARY. PHOTOGRAPHY BY P HOTO

BY S P E N S E R H E AP S SPENSER HEAPS

14

DESERET MAGAZINE

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

15

MODERN FAMILY

THE SOCIALIST AT THE DINNER TABLE HOW TO SURVIVE CHRISTMAS WHEN YOUR DAUGHTER INVITES KARL MARX TO THE PARTY

BY JE N N I F E R G R A H A M

F

or a long time, I thought the biggest — and most troubling — difference between my eldest daughter and me was how we feel about horses.

I’ve been obsessed with them since childhood. She asked, “Do I have to?” when offered riding lessons. But we worked it out — meaning she doesn’t ride and never will and I’m over it. A mother’s love overcomes most everything, especially if it saves her some money.

Lately there’s an even more distressing divide between us: My daughter, now 27, doesn’t like capitalism. These days, she prefers socialism.

This is a shocking development in my parenting career.

She came home at the start of the pandemic, toting, among her other possessions, “The Marx-Engels Reader.” For Christmas last year, she gave everyone in the family a copy of “The Communist Manifesto” — ordered from Amazon with unintentional irony. Everyone was excited but me, and they would have all cracked them open and started reading right there under the Christmas tree had I not distracted them by presenting everyone with holiday gnome socks.

I have no idea what became of the other three copies once the gifts were organized and put away. My manifesto sits now on the bookshelf, smirking at me. Even unread, I feel like it’s winning. Although it’s anathema to me, I can’t get rid of it any more than I can get rid of my children’s kindergarten artwork.

Recently, another daughter, a freshman in college, came home and said, “No one likes capitalism anymore.” She says this in a house paid for by capitalism, filled with things bought by a capitalist. Between you and me, it hurts. But I go ahead and open up the conversation.

“Under capitalism, it’s every man for himself,” she says when I try to engage her. “Capitalism dehumanizes everyone because money is more important than human beings. It legit comes down to human greed.”

I point out gently that her transactions with her favorite restaurant down the street — a sushi spot run by a local family — represent capitalism in its simplest form: voluntary exchanges between individuals that improve the lives of each party. For this she has an answer that is a onesize-fits-all rebuke to every argument in favor of capitalism: “Jeff Bezos.”

Kid’s got a point.

To be fair, my mother and I haven’t agreed on nearly anything since I turned 16. We belong to different political parties and different religious denominations, and she prefers Estée Lauder while I like Clinique. Still, we never once had a disagreement about whether the underpinnings of 16

DESERET MAGAZINE

the nation’s economic system were moral and sound. Unlike my children, I have not once uttered the phrase “Eat the rich.”

There is much to be admired about the zeal of youth, and the determination of every generation to overthrow the assorted idiocies of their parents and improve their own lot. The baby boomers have been there and done that. In fact, the baby boomers practically invented teenage rebellion with their shocking rock ’n’ roll music, long hair and hot pants.

They, too, were rebels with causes: civil rights, Vietnam and free speech.

Moreover, the anti-capitalist impulse is nothing new, and it’s just as likely to be inspired by Henry David Thoreau as by Karl Marx.

Thoreau was the age of my oldest daughter when he first went to Walden Pond to live in a 10-by-15-foot hut. He, too, decried the hamster wheel of the capitalist workweek, believing that people should order their lives so that they work one day each week and take six off.

His first foray into transcendentalism began with him moving into the spacious house of a friend (Ralph Waldo Emerson) and ended with him moving back in with his mom and dad, who’d been chugging along on the capitalist train, making the finest pencils in New England while their boy was thinking deep thoughts in the woods. (The pencil trade would eventually provide Thoreau with the funds to self-publish his first book.)

Truth is, most of us eventually turn out alarmingly like our parents, which is why the Progressive Insurance “Dr. Rick” advertising campaign is so funny. In the commercial, Dr. Rick coaches young people on how not to do things their parents do — like texting with one finger or planning to leave a football game in the third quarter. “Do we really need a sign that tells us to ‘Live, laugh, and love’?” he asks, taking a wall sign from a young woman and putting it in the trash.

The company’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Charney, told The Washington Post that he built the campaign around a psychological concept called “introjection,” which is the human tendency to adopt the ideas and values of people around us. Psychologists used to believe that kids started becoming more like their parents when they have children, but now they think it starts when they buy their first house. Which is something my kids have yet to do because of, you know, Jeff Bezos.

While I wait, I may not be able to talk my children out of socialism, but I know how to make a deal. I’ll tell my daughters that I will read every word of “The Communist Manifesto” — twice — if they will read Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom.”

If all else fails, I’ll take them shopping.

ILLU STR ATION BY H A N N A H D E C KE R

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

17

MODERN FAMILY

BROKEN FAMILIES, REUNITED BRINGING AN ESTRANGED FAMILY BACK TOGETHER TAKES TIME AND CARE. BUT EXPERTS SAY IT’S POSSIBLE.

BY LO I S M. CO L L I N S

F

because children can be stuck in a very difficult place with a sibling amily is the first and perhaps strongest influence on a child’s where they never learn to manage differences. life, providing role models and a support system. Still, no un Political differences are an issue in so many families because politics breakable thread is stitched into hearts to keep people connected. Famhave become so extreme. I’ve heard from people who have a sibling who ilies do come apart. has mental health issues and they don’t want to get involved. They don’t The word for this is “estrangement,” and it means no longer being part know how to handle it. of a close-knit unit. It’s no coincidence the words “estrangement” and “strangers” share the same root.

Coleman: The common assumption is if an adult Fern Schumer Chapman knows not just the child cuts ties with the parent, that parent must word, but the bewilderment and pain of the exhave done something egregious. That’s not always perience. Her only brother, Scott, cut ties with the case. It’s one pathway. Others are mental illness her for close to 40 years. Joshua Coleman knows “SIT DOWN on the part of the adult child, addiction issues. … it, too. As a psychologist, he spends much of his TOGETHER. Divorce is huge — especially “gray” divorce, later time trying to help aging parents figure out why LISTEN WITHOUT in life. New girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives their now-grown children have chosen to beINTERRUPTING, can create problems. Finally, a highly individualistic come strangers to them. Can such families be resWITHOUT culture like ours can cause the child to see the partitched? Maybe.

CHALLENGING ents more as individuals with their own liabilities The two authors separately published books EACH OTHER’S than as part of the family unit. And sometimes chilthis year, offering expert advice and research while STORIES.” dren who are too close don’t know any other way to sharing their personal experiences. Coleman wrote feel separate than to reject the parent.

“Rules of Estrangement” about parents and adult The good news is a higher percentage of parchildren. In “Brothers, Sisters, Strangers,” Chapents are closer to their adult children than prior man recounts her quest to be a sister again. generations. But that may burn the relationship, In recent interviews, Deseret Magazine asked raising parents’ expectations for a close lifelong relationship the child the two writers why families become strangers — and how they can may not want. reconcile.

A more subtle thing is the way the moral framework of family has kind of shifted away from “honor my mother and my father,” and focused WHAT LEADS TO ESTRANGEMENT? on the child’s perspective: something that promotes my happiness, my growth, my identity.

Chapman: In my family, we didn’t have a close connection as children.

Later, we traveled in different orbits and seemed not to share values or have much in common. Little by little, we had less to do with each other HOW IS SIBLING ESTRANGEMENT DIFFERENT? — and eventually nothing.

When I started this book, I did not realize there are many risk factors Chapman: It affects self-esteem and how you see yourself. It affects for estrangement. One is family trauma. Parental favoritism is a big one friendships and other social relationships, because you start to wonder: — when one child is the golden child and the other one is the scapegoat.

My own brother doesn’t want anything to do with me; who will? I lost It can be different lifestyle choices, different values, straying from what’s a whole branch of the family. I was no longer a sister, a sister-in-law. My called the “family myth.” You see a lot of estrangement with sexual orichildren had no cousins. entation or religious choice. Money is a big one.

Brothers and sisters are our first playmates, and they instill in one Poor communication skills contribute. Model good communication, another necessary social qualities such as tolerance and generosity and 18

DESERET MAGAZINE

ILLU STR ATION BY A N D R É DA LO BA

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

19

MODERN FAMILY

20

DESERET MAGAZINE

loyalty. They affect relationships we have later, such as with friends, colleagues and lovers.

For the fortunate, sibling relationships may be the longest you have, even 80 to 90 years, outlasting friendships, marriages and, of course, your relationship with your parents.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, underway since 1938, found a close relationship with a sibling, particularly during college years, was a reliable indicator of emotional health later. Lots of studies show siblings matter — that adolescents with a strong relationship with a sibling had higher levels of self-esteem, better academic performance, more chance of being a well-adjusted adult, less loneliness and lower levels of depression.

DO HOLIDAYS AND THE START OF A NEW YEAR MAKE PEOPLE MORE APT TO WANT TO RECONCILE?

Coleman: If adult children have positive memories, they may be more motivated to reconcile for the holidays than if they have more sadness or regret. Others might feel pressured into it by parents or extended family. That can backfire.

WHERE DOES THE ROAD BACK BEGIN?

Coleman: The most important way to start is an amends letter. Essentially, the parent takes responsibility and seeks to understand the adult child’s perspective. If the adult child complains about things they can’t relate to or don’t remember in the same way, it’s far more helpful to say, “I wasn’t aware that this was hurtful to you, but I’m glad that you’re letting me know and I’m committed to doing better going forward.” Not to explain, not to blame, but always to show empathy and take responsibility.

There are certain accusations you cannot endorse, like being falsely accused of molesting. If those are false, do not act like they happened. With emotional abuse, neglect, it’s easier to empathize. A parent can say respectfully, “I can see that felt bad to you.”

Chapman: Sit down together. Listen without interrupting, without challenging each other’s stories. Experts agree reconciliation is largely impossible without genuine listening. Acknowledge the other person’s hurt and alienation and assume they have trustworthy intentions.

When each party can accept the other person’s perspective, and neither one feels devalued or shut out, you have to stress and act on your desire to create a mutual bond. One of the hardest parts is letting go of anger.

I also heard from respondents who said that they didn’t have to do any of this, that they simply both decided to move forward.

WHAT IF THERE ARE DIFFERENT VIEWS OF WHAT HAPPENED?

Chapman: That’s something you have to expect because each of us has our own perception. The point of this process is to try to understand each person’s perspective and not shut them out because you don’t agree.

Coleman: Try to find the kernel of truth in the child’s complaints. “You’re always unavailable,” “You’re always critical.” You don’t want to get into the woods: “I always was,” “I never was.” You’re far better off saying, “It sounds like the times that I wasn’t available to you were really hurtful and upsetting to you. I’m really sorry. I could see how you would have wished that I could have done things differently.”

A huge disparity may be because the child needs that narrative to protect them from a much more shame-inducing narrative: If you’re not to blame, maybe I was born defective.

IS RECONCILIATION LIKELY?

Coleman: I have worked with parents who wrote a really great amends letter and the kid said, “I feel like you really finally are getting it.

Let’s do family therapy, let’s talk more.” Just as often, the adult children may not respond.

I don’t want parents to assume always it’s because they’re doing something wrong. ... For a lot of reasons, kids may not want to reconcile, no matter how perfectly the parent reaches out.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We all have narratives about the past, and sometimes those are wildly different. A lot of what is now called abusive behavior in earlier generations wasn’t. But parents are parents forever; they have to take the initiative. A parent who doesn’t take the high road isn’t going to have a relationship. The majority of adult children who cut off their parents report feeling better.

For parents, it’s all downside: shame, regret, sorrow, guilt, anger, being excommunicated from the community of other parents and grandparents.

“IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. WE ALL HAVE NARRATIVES ABOUT THE PAST, AND SOMETIMES THOSE ARE WILDLY DIFFERENT.”

Chapman: The two parties must want this. It may help to propose parameters for the relationship, perhaps banning certain topics. You can seek common ground and shared experiences and memories to rise above differences.

And you can have an exit strategy.

Many do lapse back. I worried, is (my brother) going to cut me off again? I don’t feel that now. We are not the closest, but we have a sustaining connection. We support each other.

That is the gift of reconciliation.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

21

MODERN FAMILY

ALL IN THE FAMILY AN OKLAHOMA RANCH CULTIVATES CONNECTION FOR FOSTER FAMILIES

BY N AO MI S C H A E F E R R I L E Y

D

There are also a basketball court and a soccer field, a playground and a esie’s eyes grow wide as she peruses the menu at Cattlemen’s pool complex, a pond where the kids can fish, and a barn with 17 horses Steakhouse, a popular destination for tourists and cowboys for equestrian therapy. near Oklahoma City. The eight-year-old girl doesn’t get to go out for Now the Terrys’ oldest son is 18 and just finished high school. But they dinner often — with nine other children in her family, it’s logistically haven’t stopped growing their family. Since they moved to the ranch, and financially challenging. But she’s anything but intimidated by the they’ve adopted another five brothers and sisters, and they’re fostering range of options. another boy. Dinner at Cattlemen’s with 10 kids is more serene than you Desie first came to stay with Ashlee and Matt Terry when she was might expect, even after we had to wait an hour for a table. They repay eight days old, as a “Home for the Holidays” emergency placement. the setback with kindness, asking polite questions and making conversaChild services brought her right after Thanksgiving in 2012, while they tion. For Desie, the patience pays off. “I’m going to start with the shrimp figured out what to do with her. Instead, she never left. She was the cocktail,” she announces. ­Terrys’ fourth foster child. Their first came in 2011 — sisters Evie and Piper — followed by their biological sister Bella a few months later. By 2014, with four daughters, three bedrooms and only one shower, they decided they didn’t have the space for more. “I said that P E P P E RS RANC H opened in 2002 as a home for MORE THAN 70 PERCENT OF when God provided more bathrooms, we would reabused and neglected boys, on 160 acres of donated SIBLINGS IN open our home,” Ashlee says. land. After a few years, things seemed to be going FOSTER CARE ARE God seemed to answer that prayer when the OK for the boys, but their sisters were just being SEPARATED. Terrys were offered a spot at Peppers Ranch, a dropped off at a local shelter. More than 70 perONE REASON: IT’S foster community in Guthrie, about 30 minutes cent of siblings in foster care are separated, even HARD TO FIND FAMILIES THAT HAVE from Oklahoma City. The ranch harnesses an though keeping them together generally reduces THE CAPACITY TO old-­ fashioned understanding of family, neighbehavioral problems and increases the chances TAKE IN GROUPS OF borhood and community to solve the problems both will adapt to their foster homes and perform SIBLINGS. of a new generation of displaced children. There better academically. One reason: It’s hard to find they could live in a newly built house, paying only families that have the capacity to take in groups of a couple hundred dollars in rent and receiving a siblings. So Peppers Ranch decided to try somesmall stipend in addition to what the state offered thing different. for foster care, if they were willing to open their home to at least five Starting in 2009, the community adopted a family model, offering foster children. homes to couples who were licensed to do foster care. Today, there are So in 2015, the Terrys moved to a community set amid farmlands 16 homes on the property (with plans for more), all larger than 3,000 at the end of a dirt road that’s prone to flooding. The landscape feels square feet. The typical unit has four bedrooms, a large living area and sparse; each family has a backyard equipped with all the trampolines an industrial-size kitchen and pantry. The newer ones even have hookand play structures you would find in a typical suburban neighborhood. ups for two washers and dryers as well as larger garages for parking



22

DESERET MAGAZINE

C H I L D R E N O N A T R A M P O L I N E A T P E P P E R S R A N C H F O S T E R C O M M U N I T Y, G U T H R I E , O K L A H O M A

s­ uper-size vans. The entire community has an annual budget of about $1.5 million, all from private donations and grants. Locals also donate furniture, clothing and other necessities.

Hundreds of volunteers help maintain the grounds and run programs for the kids. Each family also pitches in, including feeding the horses when the trainer is not around.

Foster parenting can be overwhelming, especially with multiple children in the home.

Weekly therapy appointments, visits with biological parents, and meetings with social workers and court dates can tax even the most organized person. But Peppers Ranch brings at least some of those services home, along with a PHOTOGR AP H Y BY LAU R A S E I TZ

learning center for after-school tutoring. The ranch also offers art therapy, dance therapy, a swim team and a variety of other extracurricular activities, each for a small fee.

The community requires at least one parent to work full time, but the subsidized housing often makes it possible for the other parent to stay home. With so many kids, some with behavioral and emotional challenges, it is hard to outsource child care. In families with older kids, mothers sometimes work part time from home during school hours.

The arrangement is a relief for parents like Dustin Burpo, a pastor at a nearby church. He and his wife have eight children. “We’ve got a

house to stay in, a nice house that has plenty of space for our large-capacity living,” he says.

“It’s a weight off my shoulders, knowing that I’ve got a place for my kids.”

Outside, most of the families give their kids freedom to roam. Matt Terry says that Peppers Ranch feels like an old-fashioned neighborhood. It’s certainly small enough for everyone to know everyone else.

Shelly Blankenship, who has fostered around 80 children at Peppers Ranch since 2011, compares it to the neighborhood where she grew up, across the street from her grandmother and down the street from her aunt.

“You couldn’t get away with anything,” she DEC 2021/JAN 2022

23

MODERN FAMILY

A S H L E E T E R R Y A N D H E R C H I L D R E N AT D I N N E R I N T H E I R H O M E AT P E P P E R S R A N C H

says. When she sees kids misbehaving at Peppers Ranch, she tells them, “I don’t think you need to be doing that.” They might ask if she is going to tell their mother. “Do I need to tell her? If you’re going to quit and act right, then I don’t have to tell her anything. We’ve already taken care of it.”

Still, foster and adoptive parents often make a more difficult calculation about giving their children freedom. Should you let a kid wander knowing they have been traumatized by other adults? Are there psychological and behavioral problems that could pop up if something scares them or surprises them? How will other adults respond? And will their fellow parents blame them if something goes wrong? “You have behaviors for a child and you think that something is wrong with me as a parent,” says Kristin Burpo, Dustin’s wife. “You just feel judged, even in a church community.”

Here, every family understands, and veteran foster parents often mentor the newer ones. The mothers meet at least once a 24

DESERET MAGAZINE

month to talk about issues they are facing with their children, where to go for help, and how to deal with the emotional toll that fostering is taking on them, their marriages and their other children. Most research shows that about half of all foster parents quit within their first year.

Kristin Martinez understands why. Fostering can be an emotional roller coaster, from watching a child’s heart break at repeated court dates as their biological parents struggle to get their lives together, to letting that child go forever once they do.

Martinez, who has one biological child and six adopted children, remembers the day she took in a 16-year-old girl. “I never had a teenager before. I could immediately go to other neighbors, and they were able to provide me with great information and great resources.”

That doesn’t make fostering easy. Some days are overwhelming. “There’s somebody here to understand that,” Martinez says, “when you’re having a really hard day and

you’re in tears” — because they have literally experienced what you’re going through.

 does have an artificial feel.

Current families meet with potential new families to decide whether they can move in.

They can only stay as long as their homes are open to foster children, even on a temporary basis. Some of the kids talk about missing their friends from families who stopped doing foster care after a few years and left the community.

For the sake of continuity, there is a “Grandma” program in which older people, who have either moved on from fostering or who simply want to help out, can live in one of a few small apartments in the community.

They form relationships with the kids, inviting them over to bake cookies or helping them with homework. They host play dates to give the moms a break and organize art projects for the older kids.

P E P P E RS RANC H

A G U T H R I E P U B L I C S C H O O L B U S AT T H E R A N C H A N D A S H L E E T E R R Y W I T H D A U G H T E R D E S I E

She’s taking a group of the teenagers on a One of the new grandmas, Kim Matrip to a camp a few hours away a couple of gallanes, moved here from California after days after we meet. her son and daughter-in-law came a few This is not an entirely original idea. For years ago. She’s retired but ­energetic — and ­example, in an article called experienced with “It Takes a Multigenerahorses. She keeps tional Village to Raise Fosa stash of carrots ter Kids,” the authors dein her refrigerator scribe communities where in case one of the VETERAN FOSTER PARENTS OFTEN foster families live in close kids comes by and MENTOR THE NEWER proximity to older adults. wants to feed them.

ONES. AND MOTHERS The programs, funded in ­Magallanes rememMEET AT LEAST ONCE part with public dollars, bers when she was A MONTH TO TALK offer “intergenerational art a child “going to my ABOUT ISSUES THEY ARE FACING WITH and other classes, weekly grandparents’ house, THEIR CHILDREN. community dinners, and things that I now a community garden, where realize were chores, young and older residents were fun. Hanging can meet and strengthen clothes on the line ties.” and picking berries Last year, writing for The Atlantic, David and learning how to bake.” Being a grandBrooks suggested that extended families and mother at Peppers Ranch is “just being antightly connected neighborhoods could reother person these kids can hang out with.”

place the nuclear family. “Americans are hungering to live in extended and forged families, in ways that are new and ancient at the same time,” he writes, calling the loss of the nuclear family, “a chance to allow more adults and children to live and grow under the loving gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes, and be caught, when they fall, by a dozen pairs of arms.”

There are certainly enough arms here.

Still, these children have often come from environments with grandmothers, aunts and neighbors — yet none were responsible or capable enough to be their primary caretakers.

Peppers Ranch is built on a different idea, the notion that children ultimately need nuclear families — stable parents, biological siblings — as well as a community where they can support each other. It seems to be working.

NAO M I S C H A E F E R R I L E Y I S A R E S I D E N T F E L L OW AT T H E A M E R I C A N E N T E R P R I S E I N ST I T U T E , A D E S E R E T N E WS C O N T R I B U T O R A N D T H E AU T H O R O F “ N O WAY T O T R E AT A C H I L D : H OW T H E F O ST E R C A R E S YS T E M , FA M I LY C O U RTS, A N D RAC I A L AC T I V I STS A R E W R E C K I N G YO U N G L I V E S.”

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

25

LEADERSHIP

DOCTOR’S ORDERS SINCE THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC BEGAN, DR. ANGELA DUNN HAS LEARNED A LOT ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND HEALING

AS TO L D TO B E N O Î T M O R E N N E

A

s the former state epidemiologist of Utah, Dr. Angela Dunn, 40, found herself at the helm of informing the public about the COVID-19 pandemic last year. While many raved about her concise and jargon-free media briefings (Gov. Spencer Cox wore an “I (Heart) Dr. Dunn” T-shirt at her last media briefing), Dunn also faced many naysayers and even threats. But through it all, she continued to emphasize information over politics.

In her new position as the executive director of the Salt Lake County Health Department, she reflects on what she’s learned about communication, leadership and bringing people together — especially when it’s tough.

W H E N I WAS YO UN G ,

my father would chastise me when I ended a question with that kind of uptick where you’re ending every statement as if you’re asking a question. My parents prioritized clear communication. I had to say “Dunn’s residence, Angela speaking” every time I answered the phone. It probably was the start of my understanding that the clearer you can really capture what it is you want, 26

DESERET MAGAZINE

the more that sets you on the right path. After going into the medical field, I learned how to

WE AS LEADERS SHOULD SEEK OUT PEOPLE WHO ARE OPEN ENOUGH TO DISAGREE WITH US IN A RESPECTFUL MANNER.

break down very complex ideas into simple terms so that my individual patients could understand them.

I have weaknesses, of course. One of the key attributes of a true leader is understanding their own weaknesses and gaps and then filling their leadership team with individuals who fill their own gaps and weaknesses.

It takes a lot of humility for a leader to say, “Yeah, I’m the executive director. But you

know what? I am not awesome.” We as leaders should never seek people who just fluff our feathers. We should seek out people who are open enough to disagree with us in a respectful manner.

I value a true team approach where everybody’s input is sought after and valued, no matter where they fit into the organization — from front desk staff to deputy director.

To ­really serve the community in the way we want, it’s important that everybody on the team has a voice for how that will happen. If you want an organization that thrives on innovation, loyalty and consistency, it requires making sure that everybody is proud of the way the organization is going.

“Leadership” is not a job title. Leadership is how you present yourself and act within your own circles. The best thing we can do in this trying time is to release judgment, listen to those who are around us and try to understand their needs and what they’re saying. If we want to be a unifying force within our own social networks, it’s going to take someone standing up and saying, “Let’s see where they’re coming from.” That could go a long way.

PHOTOGR AP H Y BY S PE N S E R H E A PS

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

27

THE WEST

FAKING IT IS THE COST OF MAKING SNOW AT SKI RESORTS WORTH THE PRICE?

BY F R E DE R I C K R E I ME R S

T

hough deer valley resort’s snowmaking crew is perfectly capable of covering the resort’s slopes with a blanket of light, dreamy powder, the practice is strictly forbidden. “If I catch my guys blowing powder, they’re in trouble,” says Scott Enos, Deer Valley’s snowmaking manager. The reason: Increasing the air pressure in the snowmaking system to blow such light snow dramatically increases electricity use. “That’s really expensive snow.”

Instead, the majority of snow they make is dense, lumpy stuff that creates a base layer capable of withstanding millions of scraping ski turns — and sticking around all season long.

“When you squeeze it into a snowball it should turn gray, shed drops of water and become extremely dense,” Enos says. In other words, it wouldn’t be fair in a snowball fight.

Knowing how to make ideal snow for a resort, and do it without wasting money or water, has taken Enos 30 years to perfect. He’s got a toolbox of three types of snow guns — some more energy efficient, others better at high altitude or in strong wind, or even at making snow at air temperatures above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. His most advanced units are fully automated: With a few clicks of a mouse, Enos and his crew can dial up the desired snow type on a one to 10 scale from base snow to powder.

“I can turn individual guns on or off from my phone driving home from work,” says Enos.

28

DESERET MAGAZINE

Deer Valley’s arsenal includes some 250 snow guns total, not to mention 40 miles of pipe and 1,150 hydrants. Workers operate the system 24 hours a day whenever temps are cold enough from October to January to coat some 725 acres — or more than one-third of the skiable terrain at the resort — with human-made snow.

To make it, Deer Valley uses about 240 million gallons of water a season.

What Enos calls “Deer Valley’s insurance policy” is similar to snowmaking systems paying

THESE DAYS, A FAIR PERCENTAGE OF “THE GREATEST SNOW ON EARTH” COMES FROM MACHINES.

dividends at 11 of Utah’s 14 ski resorts. Snowbasin has a 350-acre operation while Park City’s blankets 500 acres. These days, a fair percentage of what Utah’s license plates boast is “the greatest snow on Earth” comes from machines.

Most skiers would agree that human-made snow is better than no snow at all, and nearly everyone would agree that Utah’s ski industry provides cultural and health benefits that are at least as important as the billions of dollars in spending it provides the state. However, snowmaking comes with considerable costs in terms of water and electricity use. In light of the intertwined threats of climate change and drought, is it a practice Utah (and other Western states) can afford?

Utah resort managers know snowmaking is a lifeline, says Patrick Belmont, professor of watershed sciences at Utah State University and one of the authors of a recent study of the effects of climate change on Utah’s ski industry. “They know that the quality of their famously light snow is decreasing,” he says of the nine resort representatives the researchers interviewed for their August paper in the journal Mountain Research and Development. “They also realize that guests aren’t that picky. What’s most important to them is that there’s snow on the ground.”

The numbers bear this out. The 2017-18 Utah ski season logged some of the lowest snow totals in 74 years, but ski visits were down just 10 percent from the year before. According to Ski Utah, the resorts’ marketing collective, the season still generated $1.32 ­billion in CO NTI NUED ON PAGE 32

P HOTO GRA P HY BY SPENSER HEAPS

A M E R I C A N S K I R E S O RTS H AV E I N C R E A S E D T H E I R S N O W M A K I N G C A PAC I T Y BY 6 0 P E R C E N T O V E R T H E L A S T 2 0 Y E A R S

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

29

ROCKO MENZYK/ALTA SKI AREA

SECTION

30

DESERET MAGAZINE

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

31

THE WEST

CON TINU ED F R OM PAG E 2 8

total skier and snowboarder spending in the state. Despite the drought, it was the Utah ski industry’s second most lucrative year, thanks, undoubtedly, to snowmaking.

T



he first ski resort in the world to use human-made snow was Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, in Liberty, New York, in 1952. Park City started experimenting with snowmaking in 1963, its first year of operation.

When Deer Valley opened in 1981, it had already installed a snowmaking system. Today, Utah’s reliance on snowmaking parallels the rest of the industry. According to the National Ski Areas Association, 91 percent of American ski areas use snowmaking, and resorts have increased their snowmaking capacity by 60 percent over the last two decades. For the current season, eight Utah resorts — including Alta, Eagle Point and Nordic Valley — have announced upgrades to their snowmaking operations, and Powder Mountain is working on acquiring water rights to implement one.

Water to fuel Utah’s snowmaking systems comes from a variety of sources. Snowbasin’s comes from wells it’s drilled into an aquifer.

Park City’s is siphoned from the Spiro Tunnel mine shaft, built in 1916 and extending for three miles beneath the ski slopes. Alta’s, similarly, comes from the Wasatch Drain Tunnel, built in 1912 to drain groundwater from the silver and copper mines in Little Cottonwood Canyon. How much water they are allowed to use is regulated by the state Division of Water Rights, or by whoever sells the resorts their water. Salt Lake City Public Utilities, which famously owns nearly every drop of water in both Big and Little Cottonwood canyons, could theoretically cancel Alta’s snowmaking contract at any time.

It’s almost inconceivable that it ever would, though, because ski resorts are so central to the city’s economy and identity.

Additionally, most resorts have reservoirs to collect their own spring runoff, recycling it for the following winter. In fact, ski resorts view snowmaking as a nonconsumptive use of water.

It is pulled from the watershed at a time when it isn’t used for agriculture and then spread on the ground when most plants are dormant. It is stored there for the winter, they say, and then melts back into the watershed it ­originated

32

DESERET MAGAZINE

S N O W A C C U M U L AT I O N I N T H E S TAT E I S O C C U R R I N G L AT E R A N D L AT E R I N T H E FA L L

TEMPERATURES ARE RISING. THAT MEANS MORE DAYS WHEN PRECIPITATION WILL FALL AS RAIN INSTEAD OF SNOW AND FEWER DAYS WHEN SNOW CAN BE MADE.

from along with the natural snowfall. (In Utah’s intensely litigated water allocations, the latter is an important point. Deer Valley, for example, has struck an agreement to purchase water derived from both the ­Weber and Provo rivers, as runoff from the resort’s snowmaking flows to both watersheds.) “Snowmaking is like having a dam, but without the environmental consequences,” Robin Smith, president of SnowConsult, a ­Colorado-based snowmaking consulting business, says.

That isn’t strictly true, say others, pointing out that snowmaking incurs evaporation and sublimation of water — anywhere from 15 percent to 40 percent, according to a threeyear study published in 2018 by the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.

Even though water lost to snowmaking in the state is undoubtedly less than the water lost to overwatered lawns in the Utah summer heat,

“you can’t say that snowmaking is a nonconsumptive use of water,” says Emily E. Lewis, an attorney specializing in Utah water usage at Salt Lake City firm Clyde Snow.

The bigger long-term issue for snowmaking may be the rise in temperatures associated with climate change. A University of Utah study indicated that around the world, high-elevation locations are warming more quickly than those at lower elevations. Since 1980, at all 14 Utah ski resorts, the average low temperature has increased by around 4.7 to 12.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which means more days when precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow, and fewer days when snow can be made. Several of the resort managers interviewed reported that snow accumulation is occurring later and later in the fall, which means the traditional start date of Thanksgiving and the peak visitation of Christmas are increasingly in jeopardy.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

33

THE WEST

SNOWMAKING BURNS HUGE AMOUNTS OF ELECTRICITY

Furthermore, the study’s climate projections predict that by 2100, minimum temperatures are expected to rise by up to 10 degrees between December and March in northern Utah.

“When we started this work, I expected snowmaking to be an important adaptation strategy that would significantly extend the viability of ski resorts,” Belmont says. “Now, I realize it’s making things worse.” The viability of that lucrative but increasingly marginal Thanksgiving-to-Christmas window is paramount for an industry that injects $20 billion annually into the U.S. economy, but that shortterm profit could bring significant losses down the line. Snowmaking burns huge amounts of electricity — to run the fans, to pump the water, to pressurize it, and in some systems, to precool it. According to SnowConsult’s Smith, snowmaking systems tend to be the largest consumer of electricity at any given resort.

Many Utah resorts are making strides to run their snowmaking with renewable energy. Alta has installed solar panels on-site and installed micro-hydro systems. Snowbird built a new natural gas power plant this year that reduces the resort’s dependence on coal-­generated power, and whose heat byproduct warms a majority of its lodging facilities. Brighton announced that it was reducing its emissions by 18 percent this year thanks to the purchase of renewable energy credits. The resort pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

34

DESERET MAGAZINE

Park City and Deer Valley have made the biggest commitments to date. Both have invested in an 80-megawatt solar farm west of Salt Lake City that will supply 100 percent of their energy needs by 2023. Such efforts are a start, says Belmont, but if the temps aren’t low enough to make snow, it’s all for naught.

As for water use, water attorney Lewis says that the increased snowmaking inevitably does INCREASED SNOWMAKING INEVITABLY DOES IMPACT THE STATE’S INCREASINGLY SCARCE WATER RESOURCES. “HOW MANY STRAWS CAN DIP INTO THE SAME GLASS?”

impact the state’s increasingly scarce water resources. “How many straws can dip into the same glass?” she asks. Ultimately, the public sets the priorities for our water allocation, and it is becoming increasingly clear that we aren’t going to have enough water to do everything we want to do. Right now, she says, some 70 percent to 80 percent of water in Utah is used by agriculture. “Is that a better use than making snow for

skiing or watering lawns? That’s a decision society needs to make. That’s without even mentioning the ecological needs of the natural environment. The future of Utah’s water is going to be a bunch of controversial trade-offs — do we want to use it to support people flying in from New Jersey to go snowboarding, or do we want it to grow marginal alfalfa in Price?”

I



n the meantime, Enos, Deer Valley’s snowmaker, does what he can to reduce electricity use while still creating a quality ski experience for the resort’s guests. He aerates his snowmaking storage ponds in early fall, which reduces the energy needed to cool water when snowmaking starts. He uses Snomax, a bacterial additive that helps water crystalize into snow at warmer temperatures and produces a higher volume of snow from the same amount of water, which also reduces the machines’ run time.

He also periodically replaces older snow guns with more energy-efficient automated units.

Those have their disadvantages, too, though.

Like with allocating Utah’s dwindling water resources, there are trade-offs — in the short and likely long term. While skiers and economists alike are thankful now for the state’s snowmaking systems, ultimately, that snow might prove too expensive in more ways than one.

JUNE 2021 35

PHOTO: RO CKO MENZ YK/A LTA S KI AR EA

THE WEST

MISSING SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE GO MISSING IN THE U.S. EVERY YEAR. NEWS COVERAGE IMPACTS WHO IS (AND ISN’T) FOUND

BY H E ATH E R H A N S MA N

O

n September 11, 2021, Gabby ­Petito was reported missing. Her family had last heard from the 22-year-old the last week in August while she was on a road trip with her fiance, Brian Laundrie. At the time, she was leaving Utah and headed for Grand Teton National Park. Eight days after she was reported missing, her remains were found in Teton County, Wyoming. Laundrie, who had not cooperated with police, was considered a suspect (his remains were identified in October at a reserve in his home state of Florida).

It’s a story that dominated the news cycle.

Petito’s name was mentioned 844 times in a ­single week on national television, according to a count by The Washington Post. Users on social media — particularly TikTok and ­Instagram, where Petito had been actively sharing details of the van trip — became fascinated by the case, upping the coverage through nontraditional media channels. No matter where you were on the internet, the attempt to find Gabby and solve her case was there, too.

But what about the case of 24-year-old Daniel Robinson — a young Black man ­ around the same age as Petito? He was traveling through a similar desert landscape when he disappeared on June 23. His last known ­location is Buckeye, Arizona, where he was working as a field geologist. His father is still searching for him, trying to get the Buckeye police to stay on the case (not to mention the national news). “I feel like there’s a lot that wasn’t answered for me regarding my son’s 36

DESERET MAGAZINE

case,” David Robinson told ABC News. “I’m still searching for those answers and I’m going to keep trying until I get them.” A simple ­Google search about Robinson turns up a fraction of the coverage Petito garnered. Many of the articles about him also mention her.

The same is true of Lauren Cho, who went missing in California in June. Her case didn’t gain national attention until Petito went missing and comparisons were made, culling headlines

HOW DO WE ENSURE THAT ANY FAMILY WHO LOSES SOMEONE HAS A CHANCE OF FINDING THEM?

such as “Search for missing Lauren Cho of NJ continues as Petito case brings light to missing persons.” Since, Cho’s remains have been confirmed found in the desert of the Yucca Valley.

Each of these are confusing, heartbreaking tragedies. Young bright lives lost and families without answers. And a lingering question about

the media: Why do missing white women grab the nation’s attention like no one else does? 





E X P E RTS C AL L T H IS attention disparity “missing white woman syndrome.” Peabody Award-­ winning journalist Gwen Ifill coined the term in 2004, putting a name on a phenomenon a lot of people were noticing: Straight, white women were getting a disproportionate amount of coverage in missing person and homicide cases. And that coverage shaped how victims of all races were perceived and how their cases were solved.

It started as a social science hypothesis, but now as researchers across disciplines are digging into the numbers, they’re finding that it’s qualitatively true: When it comes to homicides and missing people, white women — particularly conventionally attractive, young ones — get significantly more attention than any other demographic group, even though they’re not disproportionately more likely to be missing.

They also receive more follow-up coverage, and the language used to describe them is more likely to be positive. We tell stories about pretty, white girls and then we keep telling them. And that media coverage and law enforcement attention lead to solved cases.

Experts are saying that needs to change. It’s not that attention shouldn’t have been paid to Petito’s tragic circumstances, but that other people’s lives and safety should be taken as ­seriously as hers.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

37

ROMA KAIU K/U NSPLASH

THE HUMANOID/UNSPLASH

THE WEST

M A RKI E SHEA W I L LI AMS

ST ER LIN G P R IN Z E R ED STA R

D A N IEL R O B IN S ON

BILLINGS, MT LAST SEEN 9.14.21 AGE 14

BILLINGS, MT LAST SEEN 09.11.21 AGE 17

BUCKEYE , AZ LAST SEEN 06.23.21 AGE 24

For instance, in the period between when Petito was reported missing and when she was found, three Indigenous people — Markie Shea Williams, Sterling Prinze Redstar and Cloelle Buck Elk — were reported missing in Montana. None of them received anywhere near the amount of coverage Petito did.

Men, members of the LGBTQ community and Black, Indigenous and people of color all suffer from the lack of coverage. Emily Grant — a research scientist at the University of Wyoming whose study of two decades of crime rates in Wyoming was published in January 2021 — 38

DESERET MAGAZINE

says she found that 51 percent of white homicide victims during the 20-year period had at least one newspaper article written about their case compared to just 18 p ­ ercent of female Indigenous homicide victims. “When stories are not reported they become invisible to the public.” 





IF IL L GAV E name to missing white woman syndrome, she kicked off an awareness of skewed perception, but it takes time for the research to catch up. It is doing so now.

WH E N

Zach Sommers — a legal scholar who studies crime, race and media — was one of the first people to quantify the disparity in coverage.

He says he had a flashbulb idea to dig into the data after walking through a building where a bank of TVs was showing the news. “National news was showing coverage of a white, blond sorority girl who had gone missing, and I thought, ‘She looks a lot like the other news stories I’ve seen about missing people.’ ” Sommers found that the phenomenon was developed enough to have a name but couldn’t find empirical evidence that it existed. “I’m a quantitative person, so I thought, ‘What does the data show?’ ” he says. In 2016, he overlaid FBI data with news reports to try to quantify the difference in coverage. “I wasn’t surprised that there were disparities, but I was very surprised at the extent of the disparities.”

His data showed that white women constitute one-third of the U.S. population but make up almost half the number of missing person cases covered by the media. The numbers jumped by 17 percentage points when he drilled down to who got additional coverage.

That coverage has significant trickle-down impacts on whose cases stay front of mind for law enforcement, especially in marginalized communities. Grant found that only five of the 710 Indigenous people reported missing in Wyoming in 2020 were recorded in the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), which is a clearinghouse for information for missing people. Coverage often translates directly to closure.

It’s not just the number of times certain victims are portrayed; it’s also how they’re portrayed that leads to action and attention. ­Danielle Slakoff, assistant professor of criminal justice at Sacramento State University, who focuses on media and crime, has studied the patterns of how female crime victims of color are depicted and says that Black and Latina victims are often described as risk-­ taking or living in an unsafe environment.

Grant calls it “character framing” and says there’s a significant difference in how people of different backgrounds are talked about, how they’re put in context, and whether they’re portrayed in a positive or negative light. “Character framing helps the reader identify with the subject and gives them clues about if they are good or bad or worthy of empathy,” she says. She found that articles about white people were more likely to have positive character framing. “The articles about them

told you that, for example, they were a mother, they had a job in the community, they went to church, they loved hiking, they had a smile that would light up a room, they have a family that cares about them, they have someone looking for them who wants them to come home, that they are missed.”

Slakoff says that how victims are portrayed when they are covered in the news is a deep root of the problem, and it’s entangled with prejudice. She says that in victimology — the study of crime victims — there are tropes about ideal victims. Decades of movies, news stories and true crime tales have socially en-

IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN WHEN PETITO WAS REPORTED MISSING AND WHEN SHE WAS FOUND, THREE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WERE REPORTED MISSING IN MONTANA. NONE OF THEM RECEIVED ANYWHERE NEAR THE AMOUNT OF COVERAGE PETITO DID.

forced that image and the narrative feeds itself and leads to more stories. “Young pretty white girls get clicks,” Slakoff says.

So how do we untangle those threads of disparity and ensure that any family who loses someone has a chance of finding them and gaining closure?

Both Sommers and Slakoff say this might be a turning point thanks to a combination of pressures and societal awareness. Slakoff says it feels like the response to the Petito case, including the Petito family’s announcement that they were starting the Gabby Petito Foundation to “help all the people that are missing,” is changing the content of the conversation about missing people. She says this — making the journalists and police officers who are often catalysts for crime news stories aware of these disparities — is the first step toward changing policy and practice.

And when it comes to missing white woman syndrome, Sommers says even starting to talk about it is a step. “If people don’t see the

disparities, change won’t come,” he says. He wants to see a diversity of perspectives in law enforcement and in newsrooms, because that impacts editorial decisions and which stories get published. Law enforcement and media feed each other, so there needs to be more diversity on both sides for cases to be covered equitably. He also said that the stories readers choose to read or click on make a difference in what gets published in the future. 





ME DIA COV E RAGE IS O N E piece of the tricky puzzle to stopping and solving violent crime, but it can be a big one — especially when it opens the lens of empathy and awareness.

Grant says she’s been surprised and encouraged by the uptick in attention and conversations around missing people and how much it’s increased even since her study came out in January. She hopes it precipitates all kinds of changes and strengthens law enforcement’s commitment to all kidnapping and murder victims. Most of all, she hopes that it helps families who have faced the catastrophic heartbreak of a loved one go missing find closure. Families like Jelani Day’s, who have been calling on federal authorities to investigate Jelani’s death after his body was found in the Illinois River in early September.

Jelani went missing on August 24. At that time, his mother, Carmen Bolden Day — much like Daniel Robinson’s father — asked local police and federal investigators to intensify their search for Jelani to the same degree of the search for Gabby Petito.

“I want them to look for my child like they’re looking for her,” she said tearfully in a local TV interview. “He is not a nobody. He is somebody — and I want him to come back home.”

It was a heartbreaking ask for help to bring justice to her son. But on a deeper level, her words are also the touchstone of the bigger point Bolden Day was making: Gabby Petito does not deserve less, but her son and others like him deserve more.







NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE

thehotline.org NATIONAL MISSING AND UNIDENTIFIED ­PERSONS SYSTEM

namus.nij.ojp.gov DEC 2021/JAN 2022

39

LETTER FROM THE FIELD

THE FRENCH TRUMP MEET THE RIGHT-WING TV PERSONALITY WHO COULD BECOME FRANCE’S HOTTEST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

BY B E N O Î T MO R E N N E

A

chant echoes off the walls outside a Romanesque church in Normandy, deep voices clamoring in French: “Zemmour President! Zemmour President!” A slender man of average height, Eric Zemmour grins broadly as he stops to shake the hands jutting from behind steel barricades, more like a politician than a bestselling author and television personality. He wears a charcoal suit, a blue tie and a blue scarf, stylish if not telegenic, balding with wispy hair, hollow cheeks and prominent ears. That hasn’t prevented comparisons to another TV star who once dabbled in politics on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Since his first book came out in the 1990s, Zemmour has become France’s premier provocateur. A far-right polemicist turned TV host, he effortlessly meshes references to Napoleon, Marcel Proust and Charles de Gaulle with stinging attacks directed at immigrants, the #MeToo movement and political correctness. He’s argued the antisemitic Vichy regime protected France’s Jews. He has described migrants as rapists and said Africans are intent on submerging Europe, demographically and culturally. His laments for a vanished era of French grandeur and dire predictions of a declining France — the country, he believes, is already engaged in a civil war — have struck a chord with nationalist and disenfranchised voters.

He’s in Touques, a picturesque town near the coast of Normandy — middle class and visibly homogenous — as part of a nationwide tour to promote his latest book. But the crowds, body40

DESERET MAGAZINE

guards, police and TV crews are potent reminders that Zemmour, 63, isn’t merely here to sign copies under the church’s wooden ceiling.

He’s openly exploring a presidential run and, in just a few weeks, he has upended French politics, drawing comparisons to Donald Trump and his insurgent candidacy of 2016.

Now, polls project that should he decide to run, Zemmour could garner enough votes to

“THE FRENCH TRUMP, IT’S YOU.” ZEMMOUR DOESN’T CONTEST THE POINT. HE SEES THE TRUMP FORMULA AS A RECIPE FOR WINNING HIS COUNTRY ’S PRESIDENCY.

face off against centrist incumbent Emmanuel ­Macron in the second round of the presidential election in the spring, even without the backing of a mainstream political party. Obsessive media coverage of his blunt rhetoric has sent political adversaries scrambling to mount a response. To his critics, he’s a polished version of Trump, a skilled populist exploiting France’s growing polarization for political gain. To his defenders, he’s France’s last hope. Whether

he’s elected, Zemmour has already ushered in a new era of transgressive politics, says Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Radical Politics. “He has no limit.”

 A few days after the book signing, camera crews from CNews, a French TV channel inspired by Fox News, will train their cameras on Zemmour as he walks the streets of Drancy, the impoverished suburb northeast of Paris where he grew up. What has happened there, in Zemmour’s view, is emblematic of the sweeping changes France has seen since his own parents immigrated from Algeria in the 1950s. In 2017, about 30 percent of Drancy’s 70,000 residents were born abroad, mostly in Africa. He sees mosques, halal butcheries and women wearing Islamic veils as visible signs that suburbs like Drancy have become “foreign enclaves under the rule of Allah and drug lords,” he writes in his new book, “France Has Not Said Its Last Word.”

Zemmour traces France’s woes in part to immigration policies enacted four decades ago. He argues that they contributed to a swelling of the immigrant population to 6.8 million people in 2020, or about 10 percent of the population, up from 7.4 percent in 1975.

Most came from France’s former colonies in Africa, recruited as cheap labor, then brought their families across the Mediterranean Sea. In essays bearing declinist titles like “The French

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

41

TH IBAUD MO RITZ /S IPA VIA A P IMAG E S

SECTION

Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is a leading and preventable cause of death in the U.S.

IF YOU… YES

NO

taking a break due to leg pain.

YES

NO

Have pain, numbness, or cramping in your legs or feet.

YES

NO

Have been treated for neuropathy and are still experiencing symptoms…

You may have Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)—a life threatening condition. However, if caught in time, PAD can be treated without the need for invasive surgery or general anesthesia.

one of our providers, your family, friends and loved ones will thank you for it. Most insurance and Medicare accepted.

(866) 668-8677

pad101.org

cicmedical.com

Joel Rainwater, MD • Ryan G. O’Hara, MD • Michael Switzer, MD • Brian Evans, MD 42

DESERET MAGAZINE

LETTER FROM THE FIELD

New Zealand and El Paso, and championed by Suicide” and “French Melancholy,” he argues Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.) that today’s immigrants make no effort to adapt.

Zemmour keeps hitting this alarmist note “New arrivals are those imposing their way of because it resonates with voters, says Jacques life and customs to a French population who de Guillebon, the editor of L’Incorrect, a conmust submit or leave,” he says from Drancy. servative magazine that has backed the poten As the country has grown increasingly multial candidate. “We’ve had 40 years of rather ticultural, it has grappled with what exactly uncontrolled immigration,” he says, and as of it means to be French. Under the motto of late, France “doesn’t “Liberty, equality and integrate or assimilate’’ fraternity,” the republic newcomers. Some fans pledges to treat all citin ­Touques echo this izens equally as long as sentiment, describthey embrace a coloring Zemmour as a blind identity. This prinZEMMOUR HAS straight shooter unciple weighs heavily on SPECIFICALLY afraid to tell it like it all facets of life — French TARGETED AFRICANS, DESCRIBING YOUTHS is. “A large majority of authorities are forbidden FROM THE MAGHREB French people, what from collecting the kind AS “THIEVES,” we call ‘silent France,’ of data on race that the “MURDERERS” AND has found someone U.S. government uses to “RAPISTS.” that talks like them,” guide public policies. It’s says Hervé ­Retailleau, a universalist ideal that a 56-year-old consome ­ believe holds the sultant, holding the nation together, while author’s book tucked ­ others warn that it conunder his crossed arms. ceals wide disparities.

With these hard-line views, Zemmour Zemmour turns that principle on its head, is outflanking Marine Le Pen, the far-right saying that French natives are being diluted by leader of the National Rally, a popular party a burgeoning pool of foreigners who ­trample that has failed to carry her to the Élysée Palthis sacrosanct principle — for instance, by ace. While she has worked hard to tone down giving their children foreign names. He has the xenophobia and racism the party has long specifically targeted Africans, describing been associated with, hoping to attract more youths from the Maghreb as “thieves,” “murmainstream voters, Zemmour’s intransigence derers” and “rapists.” He has argued that police on immigration could allow him to siphon stop people of African or Arab descent more off some of her electorate, says de Guillebon. often than the general population because Zemmour, who’s of Jewish descent, bemoans “most drug dealers are Blacks and Arabs,” even the loss of Christian values, which also makes as police experts and academics have shown him an attractive candidate to blue-blooded the persistence of racial profiling. For his comconservatives. ments, he has been convicted twice of inciting hatred (once for inciting religious hatred, once for racial hatred).

Fears of unbridled immigration are rooted in France’s colonial past, says Camus, in a lingerZemmour’s life bears little resemblance to ing resentment toward immigrants whose foreTrump’s. His father ran an ambulance business bears — from countries like Algeria — once and his mother was a housewife. A gifted child, fought for independence from the country they he went on to study at the prestigious Sciences now choose to call home. Distrust focused on Po university in Paris, eventually becoming a Islam was also fueled by a string of terror atcolumnist at Le Figaro, the country’s marquee tacks perpetrated by jihadists since 2012, many conservative daily. He became a fixture on talk of them French citizens. He cites a recent poll shows in the early 2000s, assailing writers and showing that a majority of French people now politicians alike with irreverent quips and debelieve in the “great replacement,” a theory enveloping a cult following. Yet he has embraced dorsed by Zemmour that claims African Muscomparisons with the former president. In lims could one day replace Europe’s white and his new book, he recounts a meeting with Christian population. (The idea has surfaced Rosine Ghawji, a Franco-­American woman in the manifestos of mass killers including from and founder of Working Mothers for ­Donald



Trump, where she told him, “The French Trump, it’s you.”

Zemmour didn’t contest it, likely because he sees the Trump formula — using divisive rhetoric, zeroing in on immigration and lambasting the liberal elite — as the “recipe to winning the presidential election,” says Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at Sciences Po. “He thinks one can become president of the French republic by explaining to people that he doesn’t have a program and wants to save France.”

His ideas haven’t changed much over the years, but Zemmour was able to reach an even broader audience after CNews gave him a prime-time TV slot in 2019. He used the time to deliver protracted rants against cancel culture, feminists and Muslims. The channel dropped him after the state regulator moved to limit his broadcast time, a restriction that is typically reserved for declared candidates.

Geoffroy Lejeune, editor of Valeurs Actuelles, a conservative magazine that supports Zemmour, says that what Trump and Zemmour share is that “they’re taking on political correctness frontally — confronting it in a radical way — and it’s working.” (The magazine was recently convicted of making racist insults over the depiction of a lawmaker as an enslaved African.)

Also like Trump, Zemmour is an ardent critic of globalization, free trade agreements and social liberalism, and a proponent of the nation-state. Some in France now see him as the antidote to industrial decline. Many of them also supported the Yellow Vests, a protest movement over economic inequality that rocked France in 2018-19 and exposed the growing economic disparities between thriving cities and stagnating midsize towns known as “peripheral France.” Many are dissatisfied with Macron and fear the country has reached a dead end, Cautrès says. “It’s a context that is heavily conducive to the emergence of disruptive personalities” like Zemmour.

In Touques, Raymond Pigeon, a 66-yearold retiree, stands patiently in the sun, waiting for the author to arrive. He doesn’t usually vote, but says he will cast a ballot for Zemmour if he chooses to run. A lot can change between now and the first round of voting in April, and French elections have been unpredictable in the past. Macron was a former banker and economy minister who’d never held public office when he was elected in 2017. But Pigeon, who drove 50 miles to see Zemmour, says the outsider candidate gives him hope his country can be saved. “He’s given us a good kick in the butt,” he says. “He’s told us, ‘All is not lost.’ ” DEC 2021/JAN 2022

43

THIS IS THE PLACE FOR

We have 11 perfect venues for your event.

THISISTHEPLACE.ORG/RENTALS 44

DESERET MAGAZINE

YOUR PERFECT EVENT

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

45

46

DESERET MAGAZINE

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

47

HAMDI ULUKAYA YO G U R T M O G U L

AARON APPELHANS N E W S H E R I F F I N TOW N

ago, the Chobani founder and CEO made a stunning announcement: The company’s 2,000 employees would receive shares worth up to 10 percent of its value. Today the yogurt maker could be worth as much as $10 billion, so when it goes public in the coming months, some factory workers could become millionaires. This includes employees at the world’s largest yogurt-making plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. Ulukaya has poured hundreds of millions into the facility, which ­doubles as a research and development center.

But he’s also heavily invested in workers. Rather than avail himself of the state’s cheap labor costs, he’s moved to pay them at least twice the federal minimum wage and offer benefits rivaling those at blue-chip companies. A Turkish Kurd who left his country due to Turkey’s repression of his ethnic group, Ulukaya has also hired hundreds of refugees: The company says 19 nationalities are represented in its two U.S. factories. Such moves have gained Ulukaya strong allies in the region, including Shawn Barigar, president and CEO of the Twin Falls Area Chamber of Commerce. “Chobani’s investment in Twin Falls,” says Barigar, “has been the gift that keeps on giving.”

FIVE YEARS

DEB HAALAND GUARDIAN OF ANCESTRAL LANDS

STARTIN G IN in the 19th century, the De-

partment of the Interior was instrumental in uprooting centuries-old tribes from their land and meddling in Indigenous culture. Now, that same department is headed by one of those it once sought to eradicate. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico, climbed through the ranks of the Democratic Party to become, in 2018, one of the first two Indigenous women ever elected to the U.S. Congress. As secretary of the interior, she’s poised to strengthen Native nations’ sovereignty and investigate Indian boarding schools, where many Native children died. When President Joe Biden restored Bear Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, two national monuments that are sacred to Native Americans, many saw her influence within the Cabinet. Haaland is sure to leave her mark on the West, says Eric Henson, an adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard and an enrolled tribal member. Contested water rights, droughts and wildfires all fall under her mandate. “It really is more than just symbolism,” he says, “having someone like that having a seat at the table.”

48

DESERET MAGAZINE

I N F E B R UA RY 2021, when Appelhans was

sworn in as sheriff in Albany County, where 92 percent of the population is white, he became the first Black sheriff in Wyoming. It was a time of great scrutiny for local law enforcement.

Three years earlier in Laramie, the county seat, a deputy shot and killed a man with a history of mental illness — a reminder that the role of sheriff in southeast Wyoming is about a lot more than just law enforcement. In addition to wildfire response and search and rescue, it’s about mental health checks and substance abuse mitigation. Appelhans intends to work closely with hospitals and treatment programs so that people don’t just end up in a detention center. Appelhans is intent on addressing distrust in his community, on dissolving barriers between the police and the policed; if you call the Albany County Sheriff ’s Office, Appelhans is the person who picks up the phone. “We ­really can change somebody’s life,” he says, “and it’s a huge responsibility.”

LIZ CHENEY DANIEL SWAIN

T H E C O W B O Y S TAT E ’ S R E A L M AV E R I C K

W H E N TH E Wyoming representative voted to impeach former President Donald Trump C L I M AT E C O M M U N I C AT O R for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, she paid a price: She was ousted from SWA IN HAS found a unique kind of fame House Republican leadership, despite a deeply explaining the impacts climate change has on conservative voting record. Cheney has stuck communities across the West. He holds a joint to her guns, insisting that the valley between ­appointment at UCLA and the National CenTrump and real conservative values is wide. ter for Atmospheric Research, but his work Her refusal to back down has inflamed a foralso includes spending a good portion of his day midable 2022 reelection fight. Nearly 70 peron social media. He gathers information across cent of Wyoming voters threw their support disciplines, chats with firefighters as they hold behind the former president in 2020, and mondown a fire line and sifts through the data to ey from out-of-state donors keeps pouring turn it into a Twitter thread. Educating us all in for Cheney’s Trump-endorsed opponent, on these matters serves more than our need Harriet Hageman. (Trump ally and Silicon Valto scroll. Without a good grasp of science it’s ley ­mogul Peter Thiel recently cut a check to impossible to craft solutions to the problems Hageman’s campaign.) Still, Cheney holds the plaguing the West. And without understandsupport of some old-guard Republicans, ining the main causes of, say, wildfires — climate cluding former President George W. Bush. The change, urban expansion into wildlands, forest outcome of the race may be a management — policymakers might throw tax bellwether for the future of dollars solely at stamping out arsonists. (Swain conservatism in the West — recently had to correct the media on the misand whether traditional conception that arson plays an outsize role in GOP principles can the cause of blazes.) “My goal is to help ­people win the day over sort of access the level of collective understanding,” he says.

“All of the solutions are globWH A T S E T S B U N D YTrumpism.

A P A R T AMONG al in scope. But most of the impacts are local.

AMMON BUNDY LAND USE MUTINEER S I N C E becoming embroiled in two armed standoffs with Bureau of Land Management agents — at the Nevada ranch owned by his father, Cliven, in 2014 and at Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016 — Bundy has turned into a folk hero in certain quarters of the far right and something of a roving consultant, advising ranchers on property disputes, all while running a long-shot bid for Idaho governor. A Latter-day Saint, Bundy “truly believes that he’s being divinely directed to protect America and the Constitution,” says Betsy Gaines Quammen, the author of “American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God & Public Lands in the West.” What sets him apart among anti-­ government circles is that “he is earnest, relatable and measured in ways that others are not,” she says. This doesn’t make him any less dangerous than militias, however. “I don’t think he will be violent himself,” she says. “I worry about

those he inspires.”

AN T I GOV E R NME N T C I R C L E S I S T H A T “ H E I S E A R N E S T , R E L A T A B L E AN D ME A S U R E D I N WA Y S T H A T O T H E R S AR E NO T . ” T H I S DOE S NO T , HOWE V E R , MA K E H I M AN Y L E S S DANG E R OU S T H AN M I L I T I A S .

AMMON BUNDY, LAND USE MUTINEER

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

49

S E ARN E S T , HA T OT HE R S , MA K E H I M .

AMMON BUNDY, LAND USE MUTINEER

WH I L E S OME R I G H T - W I NG OU T L E T S AND P U ND I T S H A V E C R I T I C I Z E D AN D L AMB A S T E D S P E NC E R C OX , T H E P E OP L E HE ALEX HONNOLD G OV E R N S L I K E T H E J OB H E ’ S DO I NG ; T H E F I R S T - GTREAVRI TMY D E F I E R G OV E R NOR H A S C ON Tvan EN L Y around L I V I NS G IIN S your andT bumming R E C E I V E D T H E A PthePWest ROV A ofL red O in search rockFor granite to to be aU subculture OV E R 6 0 P E RC E N Tscale used OF T A Hreserved N S for . only

the most hardcore climbers. But now that the West’s outdoor culture and commerce have expanded, telling your friends and family that you’ll be taking time off to drive around in your Sprinter van won’t elicit quite as many raised eyebrows. While many forces have changed the way people know and see the West, one man has helped spur change in a particularly flashy way.

Honnold stunned the world when he ascended El Capitan, the 3,000-foot granite wall in Yosemite Valley, without a single rope — a climb lauded as one of the greatest athletic feats of all time. His ascent, and the 2018 documentary “Free Solo,” which chronicled his journey, helped revitalize climbing as a sport and roSENTINEL OF manticized the climbing lifestyle in the western THE MONARCHS U.S. If you feel you’ve seen more Sprinter vans on the highway, their cargo holds full of shaggy T HE P O P U L ATI O N of the Western monrock jocks, you may have Honnold, who calls arch butterfly, a wildflower pollinator and Las Vegas home, to blame. Without a doubt, protein source for birds and other animals, has his yen for scaldeclined 99 percent since the 1980s. The loss is ing walls withprimarily due to the disappearance of milkweed, T H E F I L MS OF C H O É Z H AO outL a safety which the butterflies consume as caterpillars in IN Twhere E Rthey R OG AT E AND E E X AM I N E harnessRhas the fields once thrived.

Restoring made an milkweed has become Taylor’s mission.

Official“ T H E L E G AC Y O F T H E S T O R I E S otherwise ly, she’s founder of Utah Friends of Monarchs WE H A V E T O L D OU R S E L VE S niche sport and a research associate for the Southwest MonA BO T T she’s H E“butterfly WElady,” S T part , ofO theF T E N arch Study.U Unofficially, mainstream the Johnny Appleseed of the fluttering-winged D R AMA T I Z I NG T H E F R I C T I ON world. and herEcolleagues helped esB EShe TWE N Thave HO SE Sconsciousness.

TOR I E S — T HE tablish monarch way stations across the region.

M Y T H O F T H E WE S T , I F YO U Most recently, Intermountain Healthcare called W I toLaskLfor— AND E A L I T Y ” CHLOÉ ZHAO, Taylor her help to create aR monarch CINEMATIC VISIONARY migration path from each of their hospitals.

Garden by garden, Taylor is working to reverse the course of wildlife degradation. “If you plant it, they will come and we’ve proven it.”

SPENCER COX, A GENTLER GOP-ER

L N EWS A S L L C OAC H CHE D AF F .

THE 1 3 S T AF F E R S

WHITNEY WOLFE HERD T H E B U Z Z Y M AT C H M A K E R WO LFE HERD wants to find you a boyfriend. And a girlfriend. And a best friend.

And a business partner. The 32-year-old CEO and founder of Bumble has turned the online dating app she launched in 2014 into a brand worth billions. A Salt Lake City native, Wolfe Herd has carved out a place in a crowded market with an ingenious idea: What if women made the first move? On the app they have 24 hours to engage in a conversation after they’ve matched with a man, or the match goes away.

For men, using the app is “a way of signifying that you’re open toward women taking a little bit more control,” says Amanda Miller, a sociologist at the University of Indianapolis. Bumble claims more than 42 million monthly users and, as of 2019, it was the most popular dating app in two Western states, Oregon and Washington, according to a PC Mag survey. But Wolfe Herd’s clout now reaches well beyond the tech world. Last year, her company successfully backed a Texas law that made sending unsolicited lewd pictures a misdemeanor.

50

DESERET MAGAZINE

RACHEL TAYLOR

ANNITA LUCCHESI C A R TO G R A P H E R OF THE MISSING

ADAM SKLUTE

T HIS MUCH is known: The murder rate of

DA N C E TRANSFORMER

American Indian and Alaska Native women is nearly three times that of non-Hispanic white women. And up until recently, there was very little media coverage and too few attempts to truly understand the scope of the problem. In 2015, Lucchesi set out to change that. She created a list, which became a database, of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the U.S. and Canada. And she collected the data in a way it never had been before, centering victims’ families and survivors of violence as the experts, and incorporating tribal language, desecration of victims’ bodies after they were killed and proximity to extractive industries. Three years later she released the report, which covered 71 cities across the United States. It was a watershed moment. “For the first time we had members of Congress speaking about the issue,” she says. “We had national media outlets covering the issue.” States have since created task forces to better address violence against Indigenous women, and, in April 2021, the Department of the Interior launched a Missing & Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

LO N G B E FO R E the murder of George Floyd led to a national moment of reckoning on race, Sklute set out to make ballet more inclusive. As the artistic director of the Salt Lake City-based Ballet West, Sklute has moved to hire dancers of color, break down racial stereotypes in productions and audit the ensemble’s practices and procedures. With Sklute at the helm, the company has done away with skin lighteners used to “whiten” dancers performing classical roles in “Swan Lake” or “Giselle.”

It has also ditched pink tights and shoe straps to allow dancers to wear garments that more closely match their skin tone. Additionally, Ballet West started a panel discussion looking at racism in classical ballet and, alongside 15 other companies, has committed to do more to attract young dancers of color. Sklute says he’s also working to broaden the pool of students at Ballet West Academy, which trains professional dancers. “I dream of a day, a time when my company will have no one racial majority,” he says.

CHLOÉ ZHAO

KYRSTEN SINEMA THE CIPHER OF ARIZONA F E W P O L I TI C I A NS defy labels like ­Sinema,

who grew up in a Latter-day Saint family but is openly bisexual, started her political career in the Green Party but switched ­allegiances to the Democrats, and, after her election to the Senate in 2018, backed half of the bills brought to a vote by Republicans. That political plasticity might explain how she’s become so powerful. She’s blocked major items in President Joe Biden’s agenda, including a ­multitrillion-dollar package that would help fight climate change and beef up social benefits for millions. In doing so, she’s riled her constituents and offered pundits a puzzle: What does she want? And why does she seem so keen on foiling the progressive base that helped her flip a seat long held by Republicans? “Her actions are likely to hurt Democrats running for office across the country next year, including in Arizona,” says Emily Kirkland, executive director of Progress Arizona, a grassroots organization that supported Sinema’s Senate run. “Most importantly, her actions will hurt hundreds of millions of people affected by the policies under debate.”

C I N E M AT I C V I S I O N A R Y

ZHAO IS painting the West in a different

c­ olor, one film at a time. In “The Rider,” an Indigenous cowboy learns that a way of life is only as important as the character of those who participate in it. In “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” she delves into the vicious circle of poverty that entraps members of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South

Dakota. And in “Nomadland,” which won an Oscar for best film, a drifter played by Frances M ­ cDormand departs Nevada for a pilgrimage around the western U.S. to find herself. Zhao, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who is originally from China, has talked about her fascination with the Old West, and her movies are in the continuity of previous

films about life there, says Andrew Nelson, the chairman of the department of film and media arts at the University of Utah. But what sets her films apart is that they “examine the legacy of the stories we’ve told ourselves about the West, often dramatizing the friction between those stories — the myth of the West, if you will — and reality.”

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

51

ANN MIURA-KO

HANSJÖRG WYSS

T R A N S F O R M AT I V E I N V E STO R

BENEVOLENT LAND GRABBER

ON LY A B O U T 5 percent of venture capi-

SPENCER COX

S E A R NAEGSE NTT ,L E R G O P - E R H A T INO OCTOBER T H E R 2020, S in the run-up to his , MAelection, K E CoxHappeared I M in an ad with his guber. natorial opponent, Democrat Chris Peterson, AMMON BUNDY, LAND USE MUTINEER to make a plea

for civility in political campaigns: “We can disagree without hating each other” and “Let’s show the country there’s a better way,” Cox said. While Peterson never had much of a chance of winning in deep-red Utah, the novelty of two pols standing together was a notable departure from the partisan rancor that’s become de rigueur in politics nationwide. The move led one international media outlet to applaud Utah’s conservatism, praising the Latter-day Saint right for not following “white evangelicals’ descent into grievance politics.” And while some right-wing outlets and pundits have criticized him, the people Cox governs like the job he’s doing; he’s consisL N EWS A the S approval of over 60 percent tently received of Utahns.

Says L L C OAC H Republican political consuland lobbyist LaVarr Webb, “I think Cox C H E Dtant would do well to demonstrate his conservative A F F . principles, even while maintaining his moderT H E ate1 tone.”

3 So far, he’s been doing just that.

S T AF F E R S 52

DESERET MAGAZINE

F E W P H I L A N TH R O PI STS have made as talist partners in the U.S. are women, and less big an impact on land conservation in the West than 3 percent of venture capital is invested as Wyss. In the past decade, the Swiss billionin companies founded by women. The indusaire, who made a fortune selling his medical try may remain a boys club, but Miura-Ko, device company to Johnson & Johnson in 2012, once touted as the “most powerful woman in has bought hundreds of thousands of acres of startups” is out to change that. As a partner natural habitat, funded conservation projects at Floodgate, a venture capital firm in Silicon and helped train the next generation of enviValley, she was a key early investor in tech comronmentalists. From Wyoming, where he lives, panies like Lyft, altering the way Americans he oversees The Wyss Foundation, which partmove through the world. Based on that track ners with local communities and nonprofits to WH Eable S I G Hpreserve T -W I NG record I sheLwas to OME co-found and R launch wildlands and waters. He bought back All Raise, a company that supports women in federal oil and gas leases in Wyoming OU T L E T S AND P U ND I T S H A V E in wildlife venture capital. In May 2021 she told us she migration areas and contributed $35 million to C R I T I C I Z E D AN D acquire L AMB AS T E D credits her background in math modeling for timberland in Montana, among other S E NC ER C technical OX , com-T Hefforts.

E “Hansjörg P E OP E created HE herP ability to invest in highly WyssLhas a lasting G OVButEthe R true N Skey toLtransforming I K E anT Hconservation E J OB E western ’ S United panies. legacy inHthe industryIfrom within, said, diversity.

Banks, chief conservation DO NG ; sheT HisE F “I’ve I R SStates,” T - says T EDavid RM seen what different voices can do to improve officer of The Nature Conservancy, which has G OV E R NOR H A S C ON S I S TENT L Y decision-making.” received funding from Wyss. Wyss has pledged R E C E I V E D T H E A PtoPdonate ROV A Lof hisOfortune F to protect $1.5 billion 30 percent of the planet’s surface OV E R 6 0 P E RC E N T O F U T A H N Sby 2030 . — one of the single largest commitments in histoSPENCER COX, A GENTLER GOP-ER ry for conservation by an individual.

KALANI SITAKE SPORTS PIONEER O N E O F the BYU head football coach’s big-

gest achievements has little to do with assembling the best players. It has to do with staff diversity, the lack of which has plagued college football since its early days. Sitake made news WH A T S E T S B U N D Y A PD A R T AMONG AN I - the first Tonga-born NCAA when T he became EFENDER OF football head 2015.

T H E U N H O U S E D T H EEC R OM EBACK GOV NME N ETX E CC I R C L E S I S T H A T “ H E I ScoachEin A RHe Nimmediately EST , made moves to bring in a diverse staff: The R E L A T A B L E AN D ME A S U R E D I N WA Yfollowing S Tyear,Height A Tout ofO13Tpeople H ESitake RS MANY ELECTION-LOSING politicians quickly SOA R I N G housing costs in the West mean ARtheEpublicNO THuntsman. . ” The T Htwo-I S thatDOE S findNO T ,at riskHOWE V Eas R , andMA Kwere E of H I ItM picked coaches staffers color. leave eye. Not more people themselves of behas served him well.

Sitake managed to rekinterm governor of Utah has managed to stay coming homeless.

Some cities have answered AN Y L E S S DANG E R OU S T H AN M I L I T I A S .

AMMON BUNDY, dle the Cougars’ flame andUSE helpMUTINEER them leap back relevant, despite a failed run in the 2012 Repubby prosecuting those sleeping in the street.

LAND to a No. 11 ranking last year, their best since lican presidential primary and a gubernatorial This included Pamela Hawkes. She was cited 1996. For a few weeks, the team even clung to reelection defeat last year. In early 2021, Hunts12 times by Boise police between 2006 and the No. 8 spot. Sitake credits his success to all man parlayed his extensive experience as a po2007, even when packed shelters wouldn’t in the BYU ecosystem, from the players to the litical leader and ambassador to China and Rustake her in. With five other plaintiffs, she chalcoaches and the fans. “We emphasize and try to sia into a tailor-made gig: He’s now vice chair of lenged police enforcement codes, prompting develop a culture based on love and learning,” policy at Ford, with a reported $1 million annuthe U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cirhe says. “Everyone makes a difference and has a al salary. Huntsman’s tasked with advising CEO cuit to rule in 2018 outlawing sleeping outunique and diverse story.”

Jim Farley on issues ranging from electrification doors on public property amounted to unconto sustainability. Ford has committed to spend stitutional and cruel punishment. The ruling $30 billion on electric cars, a massive pivot for affected ordinances in California, Oregon, the second-largest automaker in the U.S. And Washington, Montana, Nevada and Arizona, Huntsman could play a role nudging the Biden in addition to Idaho. Earlier this year, the city administration toward developing the EV inof Boise agreed to settle and invest $1.3 million frastructure necessary to make electric cars in homelessness programs and made sleeping in mainstream, says Sarah Wright, the executive legalKwhen shelter space A F T E R K A L A N I S public I TA E no MAD E is available.

N A T I ON A L N EWS A S director of Utah Clean Energy, a nonprofit that Once they no longer have access to shelters, T H E F I R S T T ONG A - B O R N H E AD F OO T B A L L C OAC H promotes renewable energy. Huntsman has “a “What is it that people are to do?” asks Marc I Nopportunity THE A Alead , in H E I MMEtheDmission I Acoordinator T E L Yat L A UNC H E D major to helpNC our country Schlegel-Preheim, making electric vehicles available and affordCorpus Christi House, a day shelter E F F OR T S T O B R I N G I N A D I VinEBoise.

R S E S TAF F . able to all Americans,” she says.

“I feel like there’s a recognition of that reality.”

JON HUNTSMAN JR.

PAMELA HAWKES

I N H I S F I R S T Y E A R , E I G H T OU T OF P E OP L E H E P I C K E D A S C OAC H E S AN D WE R E O F C O L OR .

KALANI SITAKE, SPORTS PIONEER

THE 1 3 S T AF F E R S

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

53

54

DESERET MAGAZINE

NICOLE H ILL G ERU LAT

RYAN SMITH HAS A PITCH

THE NEW OWNER OF THE UTAH JAZZ WANTS TO REBRAND THE BEEHIVE STATE. NOT EVERYONE’S BUYING

BY

MCKAY COPPINS DEC 2021/JAN 2022

55

S E’ TH ER

I’M JU ST

TA H

T U

I’M JU ST I’M

56

DESERET MAGAZINE

S HA FKAT A NOWAR, DE S ERE T N EWS

U

I

DWYANE WADE, APPLE CEO TIM COOK, RYAN SMITH AND ASHLEY S MITH, COURTSIDE DURING A UTAH JAZZ GAME, OCTOBER 2021.

like, in grind mode,” Ryan Smith tells me as he shovels pad thai out of a takeout container. We are sitting in a glass-walled conference room on the Provo campus of Qualtrics, the software company he co-founded with his dad and took public in early 2021. It’s been a chaotically busy day for Smith and he’s trying to squeeze in a late lunch, but the multitasking has proven tricky. Employees keep popping in and out with quick questions and cryptic updates; his phone dings and buzzes; his signature is required on this document, and that one, and oh just one more.

Smith, the 43-year-old doyen of Silicon Slopes and new owner of the Utah Jazz, has a lot on his plate on this particular August afternoon — an NBA franchise to rebuild, a

high-profile tech summit to plan, a $27 billion company to run. But he puts all that on hold and zeroes in when our conversation turns to an unexpected object of ire: Utah’s Office of Tourism.

“I think the state’s done a horrible job of branding themselves,” he tells me, his laid-back lilt suddenly taking on a harder edge. “Horrible.”

This, it turns out, is something of a sore spot for Smith. The way he sees it, Utah has existed unfairly in the national imagination for far too long as a punchline — strange and square and goofy and backward. “We’ve been the easy state to pick on,” he says. State officials, rather than presenting a potent alternative to the tired stereotypes, have spent millions of dollars on an advertising campaign designed, effectively, to remind people that Utah has national parks. As someone who lives on the other side of the country, I have to concede he has a point: If your only knowledge of Utah came from its commercials, you’d think the state consisted entirely of various majestic rock formations.

“I mean, the campaign is ‘Life Elevated,’” Smith says wearily, referring to the state’s tourism slogan. “Really? Yeah, we know, we’re at 4,000 feet. Where are we going?”

It’s a question that animates Smith more than any other. Like many of his tech-­ billionaire peers, he is prone to excited riffs

FOR HIS STATE IS AUDACIOUS. MORE UNICORN STARTUPS. WAY MORE DEVELOPMENT. FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES RELOCATING IN DROVES, FOLLOWED BY MILLIONS OF TRANSPLANTS.

TH

TA

H

T U

I’M JU ST

ers and pitchmen have tried. Smith, with his scene is overflowing with new venture capital. rare-­sneaker collection and his penchant for To hear Smith tell it, Utah is on the verge of skateboarding around the office, is a distinctly becoming a global hub of business, technology, 21st-century iteration of this figure. Tall and sports and culture. The future he envisions for trim, with aHE bouncy quiff of hair and aFOR wardhis state is audacious. More unicorn startups.

THE FUTURE ENVISIONS robe ofIS expensive hoodies, he looks like a PixWay more development. Fortune 500 HIS compa-STATE AUDACIOUS. MORE ar character in athleisure. He is also inclined nies relocating in droves, followed by millions UNICORN STARTUPS. WAY toward name-dropping: Over the course of of transplants. He sees Hollywood studios MORE DEVELOPMENT. FORTUNE our interviews, he casually mentioned confilming big-budget movies in Salt Lake City.

500 COMPANIES RELOCATING versations he’s had with “Rich” (that would He sees the Jazz attracting tens of millions of FOLLOWED be Richard Branson, founderBY of Virgin), basketball fans across Asia and Europe.IN DROVES, TRANSPLANTS. “Mila”OF (the actress Mila Kunis), and “Barack” There’s a certain levitative qualityMILLIONS to the (Barack Obama, the 44th president of the way Smith talks about this stuff, and it can United States). be hard to separate the serious plans from When he bought the Jazz last year from the the rich-tech-guy hype. But anyone who has Miller family — old-school Utah stalwarts who followed Smith’s expanding empire in recent made their fortune in car dealerships — it felt years has seen how invested he is in putting emblematic of a broader changing of the guard. his home state on the map. He flies in A-list The state’s new establishment is younger, richcelebrities and ex-presidents to speak at puber and more connected to the global elite than lic events, and sits courtside at Jazz games with any class of leaders that’s come before. And they Dwyane Wade, the former NBA All-Star that may be better positioned to finally win Utah the he brought into the team’s ownership group. prestige and recognition it’s always craved.

He’s also made a point of pushing back against But not everyone is on board with their perceptions of Utah as intolerant and regresvision. For all of its recent aesthetic transforsive — wearing Pride T-shirts to games, and mation, many in Utah are still governed by a sponsoring a scholarship program for students small-c conservatism. Detractors fear that if of color. “No one’s trying to show the highSmith and his peers get their way, the state will lights of Utah,” he told me. Smith is trying to be overrun with fleece-vested finance bros and fill that void.

Silicon Valley expats. They warn of a Utah di He acknowledges that he would benefit perluted of its focus on family, faith and frontier sonally from a modernized, rebranded Utah. frugality, and defined increasingly by workaThe faster the state can shake its outdated holism and decadent consumption. perception as a national backwater, the easier In some ways, the tension at the heart of it will be to recruit superstar players to the Jazz Smith’s project is the same one that’s defined and top-flight executives to Qualtrics. But his Utah for a century and a half: Can he remake the desire to reintroduce Utah to the world is also state while preserving what makes it distinct? motivated by something deeper.

I’M

a story that Smith likes to tell about himself, a kind of creation myth. He was 17 years old at the time and, by his own account, a spectacular screw-up. His parents had divorced when he was in the ninth grade, and he’d spent much of his youth checking off the boxes of cliched teenage rebellion. He stopped studying and picked up poker; he grew his hair long, dropped out of high school and followed the Grateful Dead on tour. He soon made plans to move to South Korea with a couple of buddies. It was supposed to be a grand adventure.

Instead, their jobs and housing fell through as soon as they arrived in the country, and they were forced to call home for help. His friends’ parents promptly bought them return tickets, but Smith’s dad refused to bail him out. If he wanted to come home, he was told, he’d have to figure out how to pay for the $2,000 flight himself. Looking back on the experience now, Smith is slightly mystified by his dad’s decision — “As a parent, I’m like what ... was he doing?”

— but in the moment, Smith took it as a personal challenge.

Scrambling for survival, Smith found a job at a school on the outskirts of Seoul making $7 per hour. He stashed his stuff two miles away in a goshiwon — a cubicle-sized room that Korean students use to study — and slept most nights in a sleeping bag at the school.

He subsisted almost entirely on ramen, and spent the long walks back and forth between the school and goshiwon contemplating what kind of a person he wanted to be. “That’s what I was wrestling with every day,” he told me. “Are you going to give up? Are you going to give up? Are you going to give up? You have every reason to give up right now.”

The story takes a number of twists and turns, but suffice it to say: He did not give up. A providential encounter with some ­Latter-­day

I’M JU ST

THE FUTURE HE ENVISIONS FOR HIS STATE MORE This instinct isn’t new. Every generation on The Future of (fill inIS the AUDACIOUS. blank): telework, STARTUPS. WAY MORE of Utahns since the pioneers settled in Salt socialUNICORN media, sports marketing, etc. He likes DEVELOPMENT. FORTUNE 500 Lake Valley has harbored certain city-on-apretty mountains as much as the next guy, but hill he believes there’s much more to Utah than the COMPANIES RELOCATING INaspirations. The desire to sell the world on Utah exceptionalism is embedded in the storyDROVES, that’s being told.FOLLOWED The economy is boomBY MILLIONS state’s DNA, and a long line of proselytizing. The population is exploding.

The tech OF TRANSPLANTS.

ER E’ S

THE FUTURE HE ENVISIONS IS AUDACIOUS. MORE UNICORN FOR HIS STATE STARTUPS. WAY MORE DEVELOPMENT. FORTUNE COMPANIES RELOCATING IN DROVES, 500 FOLLOWED BY MILLIONS OF TRANSPLANTS.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

57

THE WAY SMITH SEES IT, UTAH

THE FUTURE HE ENVISIONS FOR

HAS EXISTED UNFAIRLY IN THE

HIS STATE IS AUDACIOUS. MORE UNICORN STARTUPS. WAY MORE

NATIONAL IMAGINATION FOR FAR TOO LONG AS A

DEVELOPMENT. FORTUNE 500

PUNCHLINE—STRANGE AND

COMPANIES RELOCATING IN

SQUARE AND GOOFY AND

DROVES, FOLLOWED BY

BACKWARDS.

MILLIONS OF TRANSPLANTS.

JE FFREY D. A LL RE D, DE SE RE T NE WS

SHAFKAT ANOWAR, DESERET NEWS

THE WAY SMITH SEES IT, UTAH HAS EXISTED UNFAIRLY IN THE NATIONAL IMAGINATION FOR FAR TOO LONG AS A PUNCHLINE — STRANGE AND SQUARE AND GOOFY AND BACKWARD. Saint missionaries and a kindness from strangers at a critical moment convinced him he THE WAY SMITH SEES IT, UTAHcould stick it out in Korea. He made friends, HAS EXISTED UNFAIRLY IN THEfound a home, rediscovered his faith. By the time he returned to the U.S., Smith was ready NATIONAL IMAGINATION FOR FAR to begin his life in earnest — first a mission TOO LONG AS A his church, then college and marriage and PUNCHLINE—STRANGE AND for a tech startup that would make him a billionSQUARE AND GOOFY AND aire by 40.

BACKWARDS. When Smith tells this story in speeches and interviews, it is usually in service of some broader rhetorical theme — overcoming adversity, perhaps, or God’s penchant for working in mysterious ways. But the experience also THE WAY SMITH SEES IT, UTAHreveals HASsomething fundamental about Smith EXISTED UNFAIRLY IN THE NATIONAL — a stubbornness that goes a long way toward IMAGINATION FOR FAR TOO LONG AS Awould come later. Tell him he explaining what can’t do something, and he might spend the PUNCHLINE—STRANGE AND SQUARE rest of his life trying to prove you wrong.

AND GOOFY AND BACKWARDS. That stubbornness is what fueled Smith’s yearslong quest to buy the Utah Jazz, the team he had rooted for since he was a kid. When he first floated the prospect to the Miller family, he was told emphatically that the team was not for sale. Undeterred, he made a project of befriending the family. He became a major sponsor of the Millers’ cancer charity, and expressed admiration for the way they had run the franchise.

He also introduced Gail to his wife, Ashley, who became a kind of secret weapon in the charm offensive. A native of Las Vegas and a trained ballet dancer, Ashley has a warmth and an ability to talk about her priorities that connected with Gail. She also made clear that she would be running the Jazz alongside her husband. “I felt reassured that they had the same feelings about what it was all about, and that they espoused the same values,” Miller told me.

When the Millers did start thinking seriously in 2020 about selling the team, Smith was the obvious choice. It wasn’t until the opporDWYANE WADE AND RYAN SMITH (TOP) SPOKE PUBLICLY ABOUT THEIR AMBITIOUS REBRAND OF THE JAZZ DURING THE ANNUAL SILICON SLOPES SUMMIT IN OCTOBER 2021. SMITH HAS PAIRED HIS OWNERSHIP OF THE NBA TEAM WITH A tunity was in front of him that he paused to NUMBER OF PHILANTHROPIC EFFORTS, INCLUDING A 5 FOR THE FIGHT UTAH JAZZ JERSEY INITIATIVE. consider whether he actually wanted to take it.

Ashley recalls a long, sleepless night at the kitchen table, where the two would talk 58

DESERET MAGAZINE

TH I’M JU ST

I’M JU ST

TA

U

racist — behavior that has long tinged the reputation of the Jazz fan base. During the 2021 playoffs, when three Jazz fans were caught harassing the parents of Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant, Smith acted quickly: He banned the fans from Vivint Arena, publicly apologized to the Morants, and gave the family courtside seats, a car service, and hotel rooms for the duration of the series. Morant’s father was so impressed that, after his son’s team was eliminated, he said he would be rooting for the Jazz.

To those who are impatient for social progress in Utah, these gestures might feel like baby steps. But to Ashley — the kind of person who listens to self-improvement podcasts on 2X speed and fills notebooks with quotes that inspire her — there is power in forward motion, even when it’s halting and difficult.

“The situation with the fans — I’m not glad that happened,” she says. “But sometimes, to get people to listen takes those uncomfortable moments.”

As they’ve gotten busier in recent years, the Smiths have worked to ensure that their family remains their top priority. Both of them grew up with divorced parents, and they know how fragile a marriage can be. They are in the process of renovating a building on the Qualtrics campus to include side-by-side personal offices for the two of them. The offices will sit above a dance studio that Ashley runs, and will allow

has always had a sense of destiny about its rightful place in the world, defined by lofty ambitions that often seem hopelessly out of reach. In the beginning, the mission was explicitly religious, as exiled pioneer settlers labored to turn their scrap of inhospitable desert into a divinely ordained utopia. The project required a certain amount of creativity — modern scholars credit the settlers’ decision to cluster homes in planned villages surrounded by shared farmland as a triumph of urban planning — but they were driven by the zeal of true believers. “We are not going to wait for angels,” Brigham Young declared. “We intend to build up Zion on the Earth.”

When I mention this history to Smith, he gets excited and immediately begins reframing it in terms he can relate to. “No, Utah is a startup,” he says. He pauses for a moment and then says it again, as though trying to feel how the words taste in his mouth. “I mean, if you

U

through the pros and cons of buying the team, then break to pray and pace around their Orem home. Eventually, Ashley told me, they drilled down on the uncomfortable question of their motivations: “I said to Ryan, ‘This can’t be about ego. If this is about pride and ego, this will destroy us.’”

That epiphany had a clarifying effect. Once they acknowledged the bad reasons to buy the team, the better ones started coming into view.

“It’s the biggest media platform in the state outside of the church,” Ashley told me. “A lot of people are listening and watching.” The Smiths decided they would use the team to tell a new story about Utah — the one nobody else was telling. “We want people to be more curious about Utah because … the people are accepting and loving and unified. We want that story to get out.”

Ashley was quick to acknowledge that Utah isn’t perfect; the best way to improve the state’s perception might simply be to improve its reality. She and her husband have donated money for Encircle, a Utah-based nonprofit that supports LGBTQ youth, and under their direction last year the Jazz gave away one full-ride college scholarship to a student of color for every game the team won. (The program was a hit and they’re running it back this season.)

They’ve also signaled a zero-tolerance policy for the kind of ugly — and sometimes

H

T

MELISSA MAJCHR ZAK

GAIL MILLER — WHO WITH HER LATE HUSBAND, LARRY, HAD OWNED THE UTAH JAZZ SINCE THE 1980S — PASSED THE LEGACY ON TO A NEW GE NERATION OF OWNERSHIP, RYAN AND ASHLEY SMITH, IN 2020.

I’M

I

them to check in with each other throughout the workday.

That commitment to family is one of the things that drew Gail Miller to the Smiths. A year after selling her NBA franchise, she told me she has no regrets: “They’ve brought a lot of glitz and glamor to the Utah Jazz, but I think basically their value system is very strong.”

“I do hope, though, that (Ryan) will remain grounded,” she added: As his profile and status grow, “it would be easy to let all that influence you and make you think you’re something that you’re not. He’s a good person. I’d hate to see any of that compromised.”

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

59

O W SMITH REPRESENTS A REFRESHING DEPARTURE FROM THE CONTRARIANISM THAT SO MANY UTAHNS PRACTICE THAT STRANGE, PATHOLOGICAL IMPULSE TO PUT DOWN THEIR OWN STATE.

SMITH AN D WADE AT A JAZZ GAME IN EARLY 2021.

60

DESERET MAGAZINE

ditional way in the NBA that owners think of small markets versus big markets,” Adam ­Silver, the NBA commissioner, told Sports Business Journal earlier this year. “Ryan has made it clear that he doesn’t accept that way of looking at it.

Technology has been a great equalizer.”

For now, Smith is still contending with the traditional challenges that face teams like the Jazz — most pressingly, convincing superstars who could play anywhere to move to Utah. He admits it’s not easy, but in conversations with players he’s identified some key selling points.

“It’s clear that if someone has a family, there’s not a better spot,” he told me. Smith is also uniquely positioned to help veteran players who are thinking about life after basketball take advantage of Utah’s booming tech economy. These factors might help explain why Mike Conley, the 34-year-old All-Star and

married father of three, chose to extend his contract this offseason. “But what do you do if you’re 19, without a family, and you want to go out at night?” Smith says. “I mean, LA is pretty appealing.”

What Smith doesn’t say but seems to believe is that this is a temporary problem. Utah might never have a beach to sell, but as money floods into the state and developers rush to keep up with the stampede of coastal transplants, LAlike amenities will naturally follow. If Smith worries at all about what might be lost in all this growth, he doesn’t let on. At one point, I toss out a hypothetical meant to be jarring — 20 million people living in Utah — and he treats it like a foregone conclusion. “Oh,” he replies casually, “it’ll happen.”

He might be right — but is that what Utahns want?

JE FFRE Y D. A LLRE D, DES E RET N E WS

actually think about it, Utah is a full-on startup.” I start to say something but he cuts me off.

He has decided the idea agrees with him. “The startup of Utah,” he proclaims grandly.

And maybe it’s a stretch but there’s something to the idea. The hallmarks of Silicon Valley startup culture — innovation, adaptability — have long been central to Utah’s story. Most notably, its success has rested on a relentless, almost deluded optimism.

Smith is the ultimate Utah optimist, a trait that’s on full display in his stewardship of the Jazz. Not content to remain the owner of a scrappy small-market team, Smith believes he can turn “Utah” — which most people outside of the U.S. know little about — into a high-value global brand. As the NBA becomes less geographically rooted and more tailored toward expanding its international fan base, Smith plans to position the Jazz to compete with legendary teams like the Lakers and the Celtics. The first phases of the plan are already in motion: Redesign the uniforms, crank out cool merch, generate Twitter hype around the team’s young stars. Whether any of this will actually lead to teenagers in Shanghai wearing Donovan Mitchell jerseys is an open question.

But Smith is, as ever, optimistic.

He has spent his brief time as an NBA owner trying to convert the rest of the league to his vision. On Zoom calls with the league’s board of governors, he has become known for his evangelizing on this subject. “There’s a tra-

O W T N EA ER M S

in the NBA frequently become magnets for

criticism from fans, and Smith has been no SMITH REPRESENTS A ESHING DEPARTURE FROM THE exception.

But the increasingly polarized reRARIANISM THAT SO MANY UTAHNS TICE THAT STRANGE, PATHOLOGICAL action to him in Utah has little to do with the SE TO PUT DOWN THEIR OWN STATE.

performance of the Jazz, which pulled off the best regular-season record in the league last year. Instead, he’s hearing from a noisy chorus of traditionalists — on the right and left — who are afraid of what he’s turning their state into.

Some of the criticism has come, predictably, from conservatives who accuse Smith of yoking their beloved franchise to progressive political causes. Earlier this year, the Jazz’s minority scholarship program incurred an angry backlash in the right-wing media, with Fox News host Tucker Carlson deriding it as “totally immoral” and “racist” for excluding white students. More recently, Republican Congressman Chris Stewart announced that he was boycotting Jazz games this season because the team is requiring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to attend games. “In a world where so many things have turned contentious or divisive, the Jazz were an opportunity to bring us together,” Stewart wrote on Facebook. “That’s why I will miss them.”

Smith’s defenders would argue that these are not inherently “divisive” positions. Supporting vaccines and giving away scholarships does not exactly make you Che Guevara, after all. But the pushback isn’t coming only from the right. Smith’s expansive vision for Utah is

also bumping up against a loose coalition of conservationists, environmentalists and general nature lovers, who fear the havoc a massive influx of new residents will wreak on their state’s topography. It’s not uncommon to see “UTAH SUCKS DON’T MOVE HERE” bumper stickers on the Subarus and Priuses parked in Salt Lake City.

Smith sees a lot of the criticism as generational. “The state’s gone young,” he tells me.

The governor is a baby-faced Twitter addict who wears sneakers and slim-cut jeans. The business community is led by tech entrepreneurs who contract drones and film crews to create Utah hype videos they can use to recruit out-of-state employees. “We’ve worked really hard to be an arm of state branding,” Smith says. “Some people like that, some people might not.”

I ask him who doesn’t like it.

“Well, I think it’s back to the group that’s like, ‘Hey you young kids …”

“Get off my lawn?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

He is trying to be diplomatic, but it’s clear that he takes a certain amount of glee in provoking his critics. That conservative-media pile-on over the scholarship program? “If Ann Coulter is against something,” he said in an interview earlier this year, “that’s probably a pretty good sign.” The complaints about the vaccine requirement? Smith has no time for it.

He proudly tells me about a tweet he posted the night before that triggered Utah’s anti-vax minority: “Scratching my head at those who believe the recent rain is an answer to prayer for a drought ... but that the vaccine is not for the pandemic.”

“As soon as we posted that, it was like —” he makes exploding noises and uses his hands to simulate a bomb going off.

Smith insists that he’s not trying to fundamentally alter Utah’s identity. He struggles to articulate exactly which ingredients are essential to the state’s secret sauce. (Is it the entrepreneurism? The high levels of civic trust? The religious influence?) But he doesn’t want to lose any of it. “We don’t have a content problem,” he tells me. “We have a packaging problem.”

To illustrate this, he routinely tweets uplifting quotes from Latter-day Saint general authorities with the hashtag #SundayThoughts. But instead of using religious titles — “Elder” or

“President” — in the attribution, he simply uses their first and last names. With altered packaging, the quotes get retweeted by professional athletes and celebrities.

In some ways, Smith represents a refreshing departure from the contrarianism that so many Utahns practice — that strange, pathological impulse to constantly put down their own state as if to signal that they get it, they’re cool, they’re not like those other Utahns. To Smith, who has traveled the world extensively, this type of haterism is even more parochial and embarrassing than blinkered boosterism.

“This is the only place I’ve ever seen where people will choose to live here and have a bad attitude about it,” he says. “I don’t know, those are the people I don’t want in my life.”

But Smith also embodies the growing distance between Utah’s elite and the rest of the state. When Utahns hear him talk enthusiastically about bringing international renown to the place they call home, some will detect a certain paternalism. They don’t want 20 million new neighbors. They don’t want Utah to look like California. They don’t want their home team’s lovably chaotic color scheme (that kaleidoscopic mix of purple and gold and orange and yellow) to be replaced with stylish blackand-white uniforms that look like they belong in a Tom Ford ad.

I thought about those people in October, as I watched coverage of Smith’s 2021 Silicon Slopes Summit. The event was a success by any measure. For two days, celebrities and CEOs shuffled on and off the elaborately outfitted stage in Salt Lake City. Apple CEO Tim Cook, the event’s headliner, heaped praise on Utah’s tech scene: “What I look for when I go places is people who want to change the world … and that’s what I see here.” Afterward, Smith accompanied Cook to a Jazz game, where they sat courtside with Wade.

It was a glimpse at the Utah that Smith is trying to build — a scene that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, and that may well become commonplace in the decades to come. It also felt, in that moment, almost inevitable, whether his fellow Utahns liked it or not.

Back at his office, Smith had made it clear to me that no amount of resistance would slow him down. “I always say the hashtag for everything we’re doing is #kickingandscreaming.”

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

61

62

DESERET MAGAZINE

THE D EC ADENCE VARIANT C A N T H E PA N D E M I C ’S N E G AT I V E E F F E C TS O N T H E N U C L E A R FA M I LY B E R E V E R S E D ?

BY

ROSS D OU TH AT I L LU ST RAT I O N BY R O B E RT N E U B E C K E R

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

63

of the novel coronavirus in the winter of 2020, the American family seemed to have passed from crisis into decadence. The crisis began in the 1960s, with the cultural revolutions that ushered in a period of breakage, division and dissolution for the two-parent model of family life that had previously prevailed. But more recently the story changed, and instead of a crisis, the challenge was increasingly that fewer people were forming families at all.

B E FO R E T H E A DV E N T

THE YEARS OF CRISIS

64

DESERET MAGAZINE

encompassed several trends. First, the divorce revolution that began in the 1960s and peaked in 1980, when almost half of marriages seemed to be ending in divorce. Second, the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing, which climbed more slowly than divorce and peaked later, in the first decade of the 21st century. Finally, other related indicators of crisis — abortion rates, teenage pregnancies — which followed a similar pattern, with peaks in the early ’80s and ’90s, respectively.

In each case, though, after peaking, the indicators of crisis either stabilized or began to decline.

By the Great Recession, only the rate of unmarried births was still rising — and in the 2010s that trend, too, reached a plateau and even dipped a bit, even as the other indicators were dropping more dramatically.

The apparent ebbing of the crisis was obviously good news. But it was achieved, in part, through a cultural shift away from family altogether, and into an age of singlehood and sterility — in which marriage rates continued to fall, birthrates dropped toward record lows, and there seemed to be a growing alienation between the sexes, such that not just commitment and childbearing but even dating and casual sex entered a period of recession.

This was the fundamental pattern when COVID-19 arrived on American shores. And in 2020, the patterns were accentuated. Marriages were understandably postponed, dating obviously suffered and the birth dearth became a baby bust. On the other hand, already existing families were more likely to stick together, with divorce rates dropping despite all the unique stresses of being confined much more than usual with your spouse.

So COVID-19 took both sterility and stability and deepened them — for a year. But what about the post-COVID world? What can we expect to happen to family life after the pandemic — whenever “after” finally arrives?

For the sake of speculation, let’s consider three possible futures, each of which would build on some trends and tendencies in our society at the moment.

S CEN A RIO 1:

DECADENCE DEEPENS

is what you might call the “decadence deepens” scenario. In this future, we will look back and recognize that the pandemic took trends inimical to family life and turbocharged them.

ONE POSSIBILITY

It closed down the real world, throwing everyone deeper into virtual spaces whose addictive embrace is one plausible factor driving the retreat from marriage, family and even sex.

It made traditional in-person dating all but impossible and parenting particularly difficult, not just with school closures but with the guidance that older relatives keep their distance from their children and grandchildren. It simply removed an extended period of normalcy from the rising generation’s life arc

— six months for some, a year or even two for others — with the possible consequence that milestones delayed will become milestones foregone. An extra dose of postponement for a generation that was already postponing marriage and childbearing to the edge of its reproductive years could have ripple effects long after the pandemic is finished.

Then, too, the pandemic was particularly difficult for declining institutions that, for now, still play a crucial role in matchmaking

alongside the steadily growing online dating market. It isn’t just that institutions like churches and colleges and various kinds of community organizations had to close temporarily. It’s that the consequences of those closures, for budgets and membership and morale, could hasten their dissolution over the next 10 or 20 years. All kinds of real-world forms of community, already weakened under pre-pandemic conditions, will have their decline accelerated — pushing people more and more into virtual spaces and virtual marriage markets that, on the evidence we have, aren’t doing a particularly good job of pairing men and women off.

Or alternatively, these forms of community will survive but with increasingly skewed gender ratios, with the pandemic hastening the withdrawal of men, in particular, from various forms of organized social life. You can see this right now in college-enrollment statistics, where the pre-pandemic female advantage has suddenly become a yawning 60-40 split. In my decadence-deepens scenario, you would expect the same pattern to show up in other areas as well — with pandemic spending, however necessary, encouraging more working-class men especially to drop out of the workforce; with women returning to church in larger numbers than men; with the overall population of socalled NEETs — young people “not in education, employment or training” — taking on an ever-more-male skew.

At the end of this scenario lies an America that resembles countries on the Pacific Rim in certain ways — with men withdrawing from the dating market in alarming numbers, video games and virtual entertainments substituting more and more for social life, and birthrates dropping from our pre-pandemic fertility rate of 1.7 to 1.4 or even 1, the half-replacement-­ level rate of South Korea. But with the added twist that America has its own particular social pathologies — opioid and alcohol abuse above all — that would be inevitably interwoven with demographic decline. And here, too, it’s easy to imagine the pandemic as a dark accelerant, since we already have the numbers showing opioid deaths rising to new highs across the COVID-19 year.

So that’s a pretty dark picture: The coronavirus era as a gateway into more online, more alienated, more purposeless and more DEC 2021/JAN 2022

65

SECTION

66

DESERET MAGAZINE

addicted forms of young-adult life, with wider gaps between the sexes adding to the problem, and fewer marriages and kids as the inevitable result.

S CEN A RIO 2:

THE WAKE-UP CALL

a brighter picture. Call it the “wake-up call” scenario, where everything I’ve just described, everything grim

N O W L E T ’ S PA I N T

that happened to young people and parents and families during the pandemic, becomes a reason to rebel against pre-pandemic trends and forge a different way of life.

In this scenario, the experience of being thrust deeper into online worlds against one’s will could lead to a willful rush back into physical reality once the threat of the coronavirus completely lifts. Take something like online pornography: There are studies suggesting that, not surprisingly, porn searches spiked during early lockdowns in Western countries.

But a recent longitudinal study in the United States actually showed a decline in porn use over the longer term of the pandemic. So perhaps there is a kind of exhaustion with the virtual that sets in once virtual life becomes too dominant. And perhaps this could lead, over the longer run, to a revival of exactly the institutions and cultural habits that the ­decadence-deepens scenario envisions fated to permanent decline.

Similarly, the heightened experience of isolation could encourage a stronger sense of urgency among young people when they return to life in full. Perhaps an impulse toward casual hooking up at first, in the style of the “hot vax summer” that was promised before the delta variant came along, but then also an urgency in forging friendships and relationships, creating households and homes plunging into marriage and child rearing ahead of the schedule that pre-COVID-19 life would have set for them.

Right now, any surge in weddings or birthrates — and there is some evidence, already, of a fertility bounce back — would mostly reflect people already on track toward wedlock or baby-making playing catch-up for the lost year. We presumably wouldn’t know for several years if there’s any general acceleration toward commitment.

But there is suggestive data in other places where this kind of wake-up call might hap-

pen. For instance, the trauma of schools being closed or relocated exclusively toward Zoom has clearly led, in some cases, to greater parental engagement with their kids’ education: more homeschooling, more movement to private and parochial schools, more educational startups. If these patterns were sustained, instead of COVID-19 simply collapsing institutions and overburdening parents, you could end up with newer and better institutions, new forms of community and collaboration, that make life better for families than in the pre-pandemic status quo.

Likewise, the pandemic-era movement toward greater remote work need not represent a greater imprisonment in the virtual if it also makes family life more livable — reducing commutes, increasing time at home and making it possible for professionals to spread out geographically beyond high-cost, child-­ unfriendly megacities.

Even the specter of workforce dropping out, which in the decadence-deepens scenario is a signifier of alienation and stratification and male-female disharmony, could represent, in other cases, a healthy rebalancing for families. Some parents homebound during the pandemic may have discovered that they prefer spending more time with their kids, and they may adjust their post-pandemic lives accordingly, choosing part-time work or single-earner arrangements that reduce the workforce rolls but actually benefit family formation and stability.

Here the Japanese comparison might be reversed. Part of what makes East Asian societies so unfriendly to family formation is

THE PANDEMIC HAS SHIFTED THE RISING GENERATION’S LIFE ARC WITH THE POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCE THAT MILESTONES DELAYED WILL BECOME MILESTONES FOREGONE. so-called “workism,” a culture that makes long hours in the office and professional advancement the measure of all things. So if the COVID-19 experience leads to a partial retreat from American-style “workism,” that retreat might help halt the slide toward East Asian levels of fertility.

S C E N A R I O 3:

FAMILY POLARIZATION

optimism, after the dose of pure pessimism to start. Now let’s consider a third scenario, one somewhere in

T H AT ’ S P U R E

between, some of whose contours you can see hinted at in “The Divided State of Our Unions,” a new report by Brad Wilcox, ­Wendy Wang, Jason Carroll and Lyman Stone, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institution.

As that report’s title suggests, this is a scenario of family polarization, where decadence deepens for some and the wake-up call happens for others, and the division tracks already existing divides in American culture — divides of ideology and religion, geography and social class.

It’s easy to imagine how this would play out.

Parents who have the resources to respond to public school failure by opting into private school or starting new homeschooling co-ops will end up having more kids. Parents who had to juggle service-sector work with supervising kids on Zoom will not. Young professionals who suddenly find more options for where to live, thanks to telecommuting and geographic dispersal, will marry and start families sooner; young men who become even more detached from college or church or community will marry later or not at all. People who work for industries that have boomed during the pandemic — digital companies above all — will feel more secure in their future and make personal choices accordingly. People who work in the industries most shadowed by fears of infection or most disrupted by supply-chain problems, or in communities most affected by the COVID-19era surge of drug use and ­overdoses, will make personal choices that reflect their sense of tenuousness or accelerating collapse.

Or just to focus on personal rather than social experience, it might be that people who already had children during the pandemic and feel like they proved their own capabilities and resilience will be more likely to have more children in the post-COVID-19 future than currently childless people for whom parenthood seems much more challenging now, knowing what kind of disasters can fall upon that s­ ociety, than it might have otherwise.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

67

Among single Americans making $100,000 or more a year, for instance, there was a sharp COVID-19-era increase in the desire to get married and interest in having kids held steady. Among single Americans making less than $50,000, on the other hand, there was a more modest increase in the desire to marry, and a sharp decrease in the desire for kids.

Among frequent churchgoers, the desire to marry rose and the desire for kids was about even — about as many people reporting wanting to have children more thanks to the pandemic experience as reported wanting to have them less. Among Americans who never or seldom attend church, the desire to marry held even, and about three times as many people report wanting kids less post-COVID-19 as report wanting them more.

Likewise, Republicans were about even in how many wanted kids more as opposed to less, while Democrats were more than twice as likely to report a diminished desire for kids.

Meanwhile, there wasn’t a huge gender divide in responses, but low-income men stood out for their family unfriendliness, with more than half of single men making less than $50,000 reporting that they didn’t want to have children.

Thus, for now, the report concludes, rich, Republican and especially religious Americans emerged from COVID-19 with a relatively greater interest in marrying and having children. By contrast, the middle class and the poor were relatively less interested in family formation. Likewise, Americans who identify as Democrats or independents, and those with no religious ties were less interested in forming a family after COVID-19 hit.

The partisan valence of these trends, it should be noted, are not set in stone. Affluent and well-educated Americans are trending Democratic while downscale white men are trending Republican, so the fertility advantage for religious conservatives could be gradually offset by the tendency of higher-income white Americans to want more kids than their lower-­ income white peers.

It’s also possible to see a fertility divide opening wider within both political coalitions, with the rise of telecommuting and virtual 68

DESERET MAGAZINE

work making it easier for affluent suburban liberals and exurban conservatives to have kids, while rural, white conservatives and inner-city, minority Democrats become, under somewhat different pressures, less likely to marry and start families or have an extra child.

uating generational cycles of poverty for the sake of a modest income boost.

On the other hand, the danger that inspired conservative welfare reformers 30 years ago — in which government subsidies contribute to skyrocketing out-of-wedlock and teenage fertility for the lower class — seems increasingly remote. Instead, today’s most notable trend is something new in our history: growing childlessness among the poor and least-educated, A POLITICAL AND which promises some immediate benefits to CULTURAL RESPONSE poor people spared the expense of children, but at a potentially disastrous long-term cost, where singlehood and isolation define middle However exactly these trends shake out, and old age for populations that lack nonfamilthough, the strong possibility that COVID-19 ial forms of social support as well. will both accelerate the decline of childbearing In that context, risking some slight increase and make family formation more class-bound in out-of-wedlock births to encourage family requires a political and cultural response. formation overall might be worth it, even from Politically, it should lend greater urgency a social conservative perspective — making the to the debate over family policy currently case for a straightforward family benefit strontaking place in Washington, D.C., and convert ger than it would have been in, say, 1996. more politicians — R ­ epublicans, especially — Personally, I suspect there is a to a recognition path to compromise on this questhat the retreat AN EXTRA tion, where a family benefit could from family life DOSE OF be tied to work for parents of young is one of our soPOSTPONEMENT children but offered without strings ciety’s most urFOR A GENERATION to parents of infants, allowing poor gent challenges.

THAT WAS ALREADY women to opt out of the workforce As for what POSTPONING temporarily but not permanently. kind of answer MARRIAGE AND But the most important thing policy should ofCHILDBEARING is to prioritize the family as an fer, the sharpest COULD HAVE important place for public indebate right now RIPPLE EFFECTS vestment — to convince liberals is over whether LONG AFTER THE to care about the birthrate and support for famPANDEMIC the marriage rate as fundamental ilies should be IS FINISHED. indicators of social health, and to unconditional or persuade conservatives that polilinked to workcymaking can help build the founforce particidation for any kind of domestic renaissance. pation, and COVID-19-era trends offer some On the cultural side of things, meanwhile, ammunition for both sides. On the one hand, the particular problem of low-income men if we’re afraid of a future where men especially points to the place where it seems most imaren’t making headway, slipping away instead portant to think anew about our situation: into drugs or video games or NEET life, then Namely, the problem of the increasing social you can understand the fear of some conseralienation of the sexes — which is linked to vatives that guaranteed, no-strings money for the fact that outside of a few elite professions parents — meaning, in single-parent housemen are falling behind women everywhere, holds, for mothers — could effectively subsiand that the social settings which should idedize this male indolence and absence, perpet-

ally bring the sexes t­ ogether have increasingly skewed gender ratios — is making pairing off, by definition, almost impossible for a growing pool of women.

This is a particularly important problem for college campuses, which, in a secularized society dominated by later marriage, remain one of the most important nononline places where young adults can fraternize their way toward relationships and marriage. In a world of 60-40 female-male sex ratios on campus, not only will that fraternization inevitably leave many women out in the cold, it will also encourage a kind of sexual entitlement among the men who do show up on campus, making the sexual marketplace more toxic and much

less likely to lead to commitment, monogamy and happiness.

Ideally, in-person romantic cultures should avoid some of the problems that plague online dating — the winner-takes-all tendency in who gets swipes and messages; the bias toward casual encounters and against commitment created by apps that need long-term customers, not happily married ex-users. An in-person romantic culture with almost two women for every man, on the other hand, will re-create some of those pathologies and add others of its own.

Obviously hitting a perfect gender ratio can’t be the primary goal of institutes of higher learning — or of other places, like churches, where similar dynamics may apply. But in

a world of low fertility and sexual recession, the people in charge of important institutions need to reckon with the crucial role they play in socialization and mating, and the danger of socialization that leads to alienation of the sexes from one another instead.

Meanwhile, the wider culture needs to reckon with the question of whether flipping the pre-1990s dynamic — where men with more education regularly married women with less — will have an effect. Assuming, especially, that some of the men avoiding college are doing so for good economic reasons and finding more employment and money in skilled trades, is there a way to successfully bring such men together with women who have gone through the socialization patterns of a college education? (The fact that the latest bestselling Sally Rooney novel imagines a romance between a female novelist, who conspicuously resembles the author, and a warehouse worker is at the very least an interesting cultural data point.)

Lurking behind all these issues is the biggest question of all: What does a healthy masculinity look like after the sexual revolution, deindustrialization, secularization, #MeToo and so many other transformations? And no less important, what kind of healthy femininity could evolve to match it?

That question has been sharpened by the COVID-19 era, and I don’t see anything in the events of the last two years that suggests any certain answer. But if you want to solve the decadence of the American family, the alienation of the sexes is the crucial underlying problem, and there will be no lasting solution until we figure out models of manhood and womanhood that can once again successfully unite.

R O S S D O U T H AT I S T H E AU T H O R O F “ T H E D E C A D E N T S O C I E T Y: A M E R I C A B E F O R E A N D A F T E R T H E PA ND E M I C .” T H I S E S S AY U P D AT E S A P R E S E N TAT I O N T H E A U T H O R G AV E AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F V I R G I N I A I N S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 A N D WAS F I R ST P U B L I S H E D BY T H E I N S T I T U T E F O R FA M I LY S T U D I E S. I T ’S R E P U B L I S H E D H E R E W I T H P E R M I S S I O N.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

69

SECTION

70 DESERET DESERET MAGAZINE MAGAZINE

Broadway’s return sparks unique joy.

Just ask H A M I LT O N ’ S

THAYNE JASPERSON STO RY BY

ET H A N B AU E R

PH OTO G RA PH Y BY

MAC K E NZIE ST RO H

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

71

A

string of pearl-like lights invites guests to the Richard Rodgers Theatre, a stone-walled throwback of a venue named for one half of the most successful duo in the history of the American stage.

Rodgers and his longtime writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein, produced much of our contemporary canon, from “Oklahoma!” to “The King and I” to “The Sound of Music.”

Tonight, one of the latest additions to that canon — Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” — will take the stage. And with half an hour until curtain, the line to get inside stretches from the building’s 46th Street facade all the way through an adjacent parking garage, with the very last of it spilling onto 45th. A young woman turns the corner into the garage and, upon seeing that the line wraps around the building, shrieks and smiles. Tonight, even this would-be annoyance looks beautiful.

Somewhere inside, Thayne Jasperson squeezes into a pair of knee-high leather boots right about now. With veins bulging from his arms and a face that looks far younger than his 41 years (riding a bicycle 100 blocks to and from the theater every day can have that effect), he’s been here since the beginning, since the show’s first workshop in January 2014, since its Broadway debut a year later, and throughout its rapid evolution into a stage-transcending cultural phenomenon. His main role is Samuel Seabury, a British loyalist who picks a (brief) fight with Alexander Hamilton, but Jasperson maintains a constant presence as part of the show’s ensemble. He sings, he dances and he acts — all skills born of his childhood in the West.

Originally from Provo, he moved to Wyoming at six months old and, by the time he was eight or nine, had taken up piano, musicals and even clog dancing. “All of my friends made fun of me, saying it was for girls,” he says with a sting you can still feel all these years later. He quit for a while, aside from mandated school musical performances and the occasional song at church. But he came back to theater full 72

DESERET MAGAZINE

time around his 21st birthday. He found work in a Jackson Hole Playhouse production of “Oklahoma!” then as a member of Salt Lakebased Odyssey Dance Theatre. He appeared in the 2006 Disney Channel movie “High School Musical,” competed in 2008’s season of “So You Think You Can Dance,” and made his Broadway debut in 2012’s “Newsies” before impressing the casting directors of “Hamilton” with renditions of “Dear Theodosia” and “Washington on Your Side.” The role he earned was small, but he clung to it. Even before the pandemic shuttered Broadway, he was already the only original cast member left.

The same forces that called him back to perform now call to the audience, with holiday travel offering many outside the New York metro area their first chance to revisit Broadway theater since late 2019. The pandemic ­ensures that attendance will still feel different — but perhaps not different enough to matter.

Back outside, workers in lime-green jackets instruct the people in line to have their IDs and vaccine cards ready. Both are prerequi-

E VEN B EFORE THE PANDEMIC SHUTTERED BROADWAY, JASP ERSON WAS A LREA DY T HE ONLY ORIGINAL C AST MEMBER LEFT. sites for entry, a reminder that the 15-month shutdown is still fresh. “Hamilton” has only been open since September, “The Book of Mormon” since November and many other Broadway staples, like “Dear Evan Hansen,” remain closed. The ones that have reopened remain precarious; within a week, Disney’s “Aladdin” reopened, shut down, opened again and shut down again after discovering breakthrough COVID-19 cases among the cast.

The next curtain, ­Jasperson knows, isn’t guar-

day, as he was getting dressed, he and the rest of the cast got an email telling them the day’s show was canceled. “Oh great,” Jasperson thought. Maybe they would be back for the weekend.

A few days became a few weeks became a few months or, as Jasperson puts it, “this elongated thing. And you know,” he adds with a laugh, “I was kind of excited.”

Broadway performers don’t get many breaks, so after a month of downtime in New York — including a brief bout with COVID-19 — Jasperson headed West to Utah, where he spent almost all of the pandemic. “I love Utah,” he says. “I seriously think it’s the greatest place in the world.” He used his newfound freedom to teach choreography and hone his piano playing, eventually putting on solo performances.

As the lone remaining original cast member, he feels the weight of preserving the show’s original integrity and purpose. His efforts felt worthwhile on opening night. “The audience was wild,” he says. “They just wanted to stand and clap after every number.” Three weeks later, my seat neighbor at the show, 60-year-old Sue Blumenfeld, projects the same enthusiasm.

She’s in town from Chicago for a real estate convention, and she couldn’t resist the allure of “Hamilton.” The last performance she saw live, she tells me, was a Mumford and Sons concert

ja s p e r s o n ( o p p o s i t e) a nd “ h a mi lto n ” p e r fo rmers ta ke t h e stag e ( be low )

COU RT ESY H AM ILTON T HE M US ICA L

anteed — despite him and the rest of the cast undergoing testing three times per week and wearing masks whenever they’re not onstage.

New York itself follows a similar model, with pretty much every restaurant requiring proof of vaccination to get through the door.

Jasperson is already onstage, snapping and dancing with the rest of the cast when the lights dim and the spotlight finds Alexander Hamilton at center stage. “Alexander Hamilton,” he sings, introducing himself to viewers.

The audience cheers.

And cheers.

And cheers.

The show pauses. The actors stand frozen, waiting for the enthusiasm to temper. They know to pause; they’d practiced the pause. Because since the show reopened, this has been happening every night. “It kind of took me back to the days when Lin was in the show,” Jasperson says. “He would always just have outrageous applause.” This wasn’t the norm before the closure.

Back then, Jasperson says, people would clap for Hamilton’s introduction, but “just a normal amount.” What had become routine became uprooted in mid-March. The first inkling of trouble was when the cast was told after an otherwise-ordinary performance not to take pictures or sign autographs after the show, which is normally standard. The next

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

73

COURTESY HAMILTON THE MUSICAL

“ha mi lton ” r et urned to b ro adway i n Sep t e mber 2 021

in March 2019, and as a lifelong t­ heatergoer (37 years strong, she’s proud to say), she felt overdue. When I ask her before the show whether it finally feels real, now that she’s sitting in the velvety chair surrounded by the chatter of a full house, she offers an enthusiastic “Yeah!” as though, like me, she’s realizing that this is finally happening.

To be sure, Broadway still isn’t its full self.

Right around the corner, at the discount sameday ticket booth in the heart of Times Square, a teller acknowledges that while it’s picking up, it’s not what it once was. “It’s slowly coming back along with the shows,” she says before a long exhale. “I’m just glad to be back at all.”

Blumenfeld concurs. After Jasperson has donned his regal robe for his brief moment as Samuel Seabury and the intermission has arrived, she offers an observation: “It’s just wonderful,” she says. “Or maybe it’s just live theater.” ─

─

─

waits in the orchestra conductor’s pit ahead of Act II. In moments like this one, in the still blackness of a curtain about to go up, he can’t help but feel blessed to be here,

JASPERSON

74

DESERET MAGAZINE

making his nine-year-old self proud. “I’m so grateful to be able to do what I love as a career,” he says, “because not many people get to do that.” That love starts with the craft; the mastery and precision and rigor required to perform at this level, day after day after day. But it also involves connecting with the audience.

It’s tempting to view the audience-­performer relationship as one way, but ­Jasperson doesn’t see it that way. “You feel their energy. It’s a mutual connection,” he says. “You get to see them feel.”

This is what Jasperson loves most about his job. He’s lost track of how many performances of “Hamilton” he’s done, but it’s well over 2,000, and seeing people connect with the material never loses its power. As the stage goes dark, then lights up for the post-show bows, that’s always where his mind goes after the gratitude and the sigh of relief for a job well done — to the faces in the crowd. “It makes me feel honored that I get to be able to do something that they love and they’re inspired by,” he says. “It’s a beautiful feeling.”

Case in point: At the show’s conclusion, Blumenfeld turns to me with an admission.

She and her husband lost their son. Seeing

Hamilton and his wife grieve their own son’s loss, therefore, dredged up painful memories.

But that just made the experience that much more powerful. “Just unbelievable,” she says as she departs into the anonymity of a crowded Manhattan night. Jasperson still shares that same sort of awe.

But he also isn’t sure how long he’ll keep going. Questions about whether he should still be here have surfaced more and more lately. He prefers to phrase them in religious terms. “Am I on the journey that God has for me?” he asks.

“Sometimes I wonder — was it to come back to do “Hamilton”? Or was it to stay in Utah and choreograph and sing in concerts?” His future mirrors Broadway’s own — uncertain and certain at once. He doesn’t know if he’ll still be around this time next year. With the pandemic still present, no one knows what Broadway will look like in a year. But he knows he’ll still be working in the arts, and everyone knows Broadway will still be around in some capacity. In this way, his Broadway story is America’s Broadway story. “The Sound of Music,” “Oklahoma!” and other classics have endured for a reason.

Just as he will endure.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

75

IDEAS

BEARERS OF BAD NEWS AUTHOR NIKKI USHER ON AMERICAN JOURNALISM AND ITS DEPENDENCE ON THE LIBERAL ELITE

BY C H A D N I E L S E N

M

y first job was a paper route. Each morning I’d wake before dawn to the thump of papers on the porch, then I’d kneel on the living room carpet to roll up each copy, reading the headlines as I went. Some were local, others national, but the news always felt important. Rolling through our California subdivision — on a bike or the open tailgate of our family Suburban — I practiced tossing papers close to each door, and safe from bushes or sprinklers. In my own small way, I felt I was helping my neighbors to stay informed and prepared to engage in our democracy. Back then, few would have argued the point.

Those memories make today’s reality more poignant. American journalism is in crisis. The economics are grim, driven by the failure of ad revenue, the demise of print and the dramatic reinvention of the information marketplace.

As newspapers have lost money — an estimated $35 billion in advertising revenue from 2006 to 2018 — they’ve cut newsroom jobs in half, gutting the ability to uncover news and tell compelling stories. And now even local papers find themselves competing for attention with behemoths like The New York Times and CNN, but also Netflix and Instagram. It’s a losing battle, but even more tragic is the crisis of trust.

In her recent book, “News for the Rich, White, and Blue,” author Nikki Usher examines an industry that has lost touch with the country it serves. She describes a 2016 “lobster and scotch” party at The Washington Post, 76

DESERET MAGAZINE

celebrating the paper’s move to K Street — known for its concentration of political lobbyists — under a new owner, Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos. That image of beltway reporters in power suits contrasts as sharply with the demographics of smaller newsrooms as it does with the rest of the American landscape, but Usher finds her counterpoint in upstate New York, where Trump signs and book sales herald an impending election victory that her friends in the media couldn’t see coming.

IF YOU DEPEND ON READERS WHO ARE WILLING TO PAY, YOU’RE GOING TO THINK ABOUT PLEASING THEM. THAT DISTORTS THINGS.

been lost. Now an associate professor of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-­ Champaign, she set out to deconstruct the forces that have reduced the fourth estate to a partisan chess piece.

Usher recently discussed the resulting book in an interview with Deseret Magazine.

WHY DO YOU THINK JOURNALISM IS WORTH STUDYING AND WRITING BOOKS ABOUT?

News frames the way that many of us understand the world. Even when a citizen journalist is entering the scene, they’re doing so with an idea of what’s important to share. Studying the media tells us about our culture and its challenges, its limitations and its systems of power. I can’t think of anything more important than studying who sets the terms of how we understand reality.

TELL US HOW YOU GOT HERE, AFTER YOUR PAST LIFE AS A JOURNALIST.

As cries of “fake news” spread, Usher saw something different in the growing segment of Americans who don’t trust the media or see themselves in its coverage. A self-described “failed reporter” — despite stints at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune — she, too, mourned what had

I was working as a reporter during the birth of Wi-Fi and the mobile web and became interested in the way technology shapes journalism and vice versa. There was a lot of uncertainty, and I wanted to figure out what we could do to make the news industry more economically sustainable. In 2010, I started my first book. For six months I went into The New York Times and watched people work, as the

ILLU STR ATION BY A N D R E A U C I N I

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

77

SECTION

78 DESERET MAGAZINE

­ ublication went from being a print-focused p outlet to a digital one. For my second book, I focused on the rise of hacker journalism and data journalism. These days, I’m thinking more about politics and inequality and how they’re related to journalism. Because as this crisis has gone on, it’s become clear that some people in certain places have been more affected than others, and that tends to track along structural inequalities across race and geography.

WHAT SPARKED YOUR INTEREST IN THIS CURRENT LINE OF RESEARCH?

In the fall of 2016 I started noticing support for Donald Trump in areas that weren’t particularly red. I noticed signs for Trump on a drive to upstate New York, and at the airport his books were outselling Hillary Rodham Clinton’s. I kept trying to tell friends who were national journalists that something was wrong, that the polling numbers might not be accurate. When Trump won the election, the situation came into full relief, and it showed that where you’re geographically situated could impact the kind of journalism you produce.

HOW DOES THE CONCENTRATION OF JOURNALISTS IN PLACES LIKE NEW YORK INFLUENCE THE STORIES THAT GET TOLD?

In the media industry, a lot of people have hopes and dreams that center around working in big cities. You’ve reached a major goal if you’ve ended up in New York, D.C., or Los Angeles. When I lived in D.C., if I hadn’t kept up with the news in the last two hours, then I couldn’t keep up with the jokes people were making. The people who surround you shape what you think is important, and they shape the decisions journalists make. This is important for two reasons. First, attention to national news media has grown. Some people pay more attention to national news than to local news, and that’s been spurred partially because of the popularization of cable television. The other side of that is the decline of local journalism. The newspapers that used to chronicle community life have become increasingly less demanded by audiences and less vibrant.

The ones that end up surviving are these large national news organizations. If we want to get

hold of the underlying issues causing distrust in journalism, we need to have conversations about this, because otherwise the division is going to get worse.

WHY DO THESE CHANGES IN THE MEDIA ECOSYSTEM LEAD TO NEWS SPEAKING MORE TO WEALTHY, WHITE LIBERALS?

The ad-supported revenue model is broken.

If you can’t turn to ads, you have to turn to readers, and certain demographics are more likely to subscribe. One group might subscribe to local news because they feel it’s a civic duty, and another class of cultural elites that tend to cluster in cities are willing to subscribe and pay for high-quality national news like The New York Times or Washington Post. You need to get the market that’s going to pay and double down on that focus. You’re going to really think about pleasing those people, and you’re creating bait for your subscriber base. At the Chicago Tribune, for example, there’s outsized coverage of high school football teams in wealthy, white suburbs. That distorts things.

There’s also a huge group of people who are not going to be invested and are not going to support institutional journalism. The people that distrust the media are overwhelmingly concentrated in red, rural places. An October 2021 Gallup poll found that 11 percent of Republicans trust the news media whereas 68 percent of Democrats say they trust the news.

JOURNALISTS ASSERT SUPERIORITY WHEN THEY CLAIM TO BE UNIQUELY OBJECTIVE. THEY ’RE HUMAN LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. IT MAKES IT SEEM LIKE THEY ’RE HIDING SOMETHING. PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW WHAT TEAM THEY ’RE ON.

IS THERE SOMETHING THAT THE NEWS INDUSTRY COULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? WHAT CAN WE DO TO FIX IT?

The biggest mistake was presuming that local news organizations had a hold on local audience attention. There were also a lot of assumptions about what audience behavior would look like in a digital environment. We can’t do anything about that. But the digital ads ecosystem is problematic because it favors large tech companies, like Google and Facebook, that not only control the pipes to get ads to people, but also the data on consumers. We can’t put everything back to the way it was, but meaningful data privacy and antitrust laws might be the best way to at least level the playing field a little bit.

These solutions also don’t rely on government subsidies, or rich people giving money to newspapers.

CO N T IN UED O N PAGE 82 DEC 2021/JAN 2022

79

CULTURE

AN ELEGY FOR THE CHRISTMAS CARD CAN THE HOLIDAY TRADITION STILL FULFILL A VALUABLE SOCIAL ROLE?

BY E TH A N B AU E R

T

Depending on how you define a Christmas card, they could date back his december, robert martin will travel to San Diego and beto 15th-century Germany or early 20th-century Kansas City. Their precome young again. That’s the plan, anyway — one that formed cise origin, however, isn’t as important as recognizing the many modern earlier this year when the former BYU student had lunch with two of forms Christmas cards have taken. his brothers in Provo. They hadn’t celebrated Christmas as a family since There’s the single photo with the “Season’s greetings from the their mom and dad died in the ’90s. “I really think we need to start doing Smiths!” caption; there’s the family newsletter; there’s the greeting this again,” Rob, now 66, told them. As the oldest of eight, he felt obligatcard variety; and there’s the homemade type Rob makes from coned to honor the way things used to be; the way things should be. Starting struction paper and glitter. by reviving a family tradition.

Rob’s mom, Mary, used to tack the variety of cards their family re Growing up in Kansas City, Rob and his siblings would slice construcceived onto green or red ribbons with double-sided Scotch tape, then tion paper with safety scissors and sticky their fingers with Elmer’s in hang the ribbons up on the wall near the family’s the name of assembling handmade Christmas cards.

Christmas tree.

They’ve done so ever since, but not all together. Life Back then they numbered around 100. Rob has scattered the Martins across the West, making keeps that tradition going, but the numbers have their holiday tradition hard to maintain. But Rob THE NICHE THAT dwindled to between 50 and 75. believes it can unite generations, can socialize the CHRISTMAS CARDS ONCE OCCUPIED Victoria Venturi, founder and CEO of young into the family lore. They’ll gather and tell IS A NICHE NO MORE. Portland-­based greeting cardmaker Paper Epiphstories about going to the Lake of the Ozarks as kids.

BUT THEY STILL anies, says Christmas cards still account for about They’ll laugh about the time cousin Donnie nailed OFFER SOMETHING 10 percent to 15 percent of her wholesale card the door to the outhouse shut with Uncle Ab inESSENTIAL. sales, but there’s been a definite decline in generside. Or the time Rob’s brother, David, picked up a ic boxed Christmas card sales. “Thirty years ago, stray cat that turned out to be a skunk. All the while seasonal was king,” she says. “Greeting card comknowing that beneath the joy of reliving the past, an panies waited all year for Q4. And that’s just really uncertain future for their family hobby simmers. not the case anymore.” Today’s Christmas card consumers, rather, are For many, Christmas cards have outlived their utility. With the prolooking for something nongeneric, something very personal. “We find liferation of video chatting, texting, blogging and social media, there’s no that our consumers are purchasing with somebody specifically in mind,” longer the need to keep friends and family updated in a yearly letter. she says. “I think that’s where we see the big shift.” Where social media In the early 2000s, Americans mailed about two billion Christmas allows — even encourages — presenting a facade to the world, Christcards annually, according to data provided to MarketWatch by Hallmark. mas cards can be a space for sincerity and vulnerability.

By 2015, those numbers had plummeted to 1.18 billion (although over the Their physical presence is one aspect of that argument, even for folks last three years there has been a steady uptick). The same factors causing like 65-year-old Eileen Hansen, who admits that over the years her Christtheir overall decline, Rob insists, make them more important than ever — mas card exchanges have largely succumbed to the influence of phone calls and could explain their recent resurgence. The niche they once occupied and email. “I like the tangible card in my is a niche no more, but they still offer something essential — and rare.

CO NTI NUED ON PAGE 82 80

DESERET MAGAZINE

ILLU STR ATION BY A I N S LE Y R O M E R O

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

81

AN ELEGY FOR THE CHRISTMAS CARD

BEARERS OF BAD NEWS

CO N TI N UED FROM PAG E 8 0

CON TI N U E D F R O M PAG E 79

hand,” she says. “It’s just much more personal than an email that I could copy and paste.” It reminds her of her youth.

When she would run up the driveway from her mailbox and plop down at her kitchen ­table to enjoy the day’s surprise reminder from some faraway person that they’re thinking about her.

“It just makes me feel like someone cares,” she says. Alona Perlin, 53, feels the same way. She lives alone, aside from her Shih Tzu, Princess, in Brooklyn. She sends Christmas cards describing their adventures every year, and getting cards in return helps her feel less alone. “Somebody’s thinking of you,” she says. “And that’s a very uplifting feeling, that they’re taking the time to write to you and pick out a card for you.”

Rob, Eileen and Alona all joined a Facebook group dedicated to sharing Christmas cards with new people, along with about 1,700 ­others. Most members of the group are middle-­age or older.

That helps explain why Rob’s so excited for his family gathering in San Diego this December.

It’ll feel for his family, he hopes, like Christmas felt for him as a kid — warm and cheery and hopeful and new amid so many reasons to feel jaded.

Rob wants his nieces and nephews and their descendants to recognize, at the very least, the potential of Christmas cards. He wants them to see what they can accomplish when done right.

How they can connect with their past over red and green construction paper, with their memories of Mom hanging the cards around the tree and Dad reading the Nativity story from the family Bible on Christmas Eve. Many of the people who’ve joined the Facebook group, including Rob, Eileen and Alona, are looking for that same thing: connection. It feels like we’re always busy, Rob agrees; like we’re always distracted and lonely. But, as A ­ lona observed, sending Christmas cards takes effort. It requires writing, printing, buying, making, mailing. It forces us to do something as annoying to our silicon sensibilities as licking envelopes and visiting the post office. Rather than a bland slab of paper, that’s what you’re really sending when you send a Christmas card: your time. And that’s one holiday gift in short supply.

WHAT ARE THE DOWNSIDES TO HAVING THE WEALTHY OR THE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT JOURNALISM?

82

DESERET MAGAZINE

Dependency on government funding is a dangerous way to go because it quickly becomes political. With philanthropy, it depends on the individuals’ investment philosophies and the interests of the donor class. When we look at philanthropy funding, almost none of it flows to local journalism, specifically reporting that focuses on the poor. A lot of it funds coverage of the environment and health, and investigative journalism. But the same problems that are built into elite journalism are tenfold here. We’re talking about the elites making decisions about what we want to invest in.

IN THE BOOK, YOU WRITE ABOUT THE TROUBLE WITH BUNDLED NEWS. TELL US MORE ABOUT THAT.

Bundling is when you have to buy an entire product to get the one thing you wanted. So you’d have to buy the entire newspaper to get the sports section, or watch a 30-minute local news program to see that one image of your kid.

Now we can get the stories we want on demand because the internet unbundled the news.

Journalism covers a lot of different areas.

Are there areas where we don’t need professional journalists? In Chicago, an outlet called City Bureau trains people to cover meetings.

Citizens learn to take notes, and then those are filtered to reporters. That way, journalists don’t have to focus on incremental coverage, like attending every school board meeting. We just don’t need them for that anymore, not with archived livestreams. If we can disaggregate the functions of journalism, it may be easier to support the more costly functions, like investigative journalism. And if that’s what we care most about, then philanthropy may be enough.

OBJECTIVITY IS STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A LOST ART. OR WAS IT ALWAYS A MYTH?

Journalists assert their superiority when they say they’re being objective and claim they’re able to stand back and take assessments without their own experiences getting in the way.

They’re saying there’s something special about their unique ability to do that, when in fact, journalists are like everybody else.

Objectivity and neutrality are often conflated, and that neutrality creates a sort of “both-siderism” which makes it harder for people to understand what they’re supposed to take away from the content. It also makes it seem like journalists are hiding something.

People want to know what team journalists are on, and it’s kind of suspect that we don’t know, that they pretend not to be on a team.

The other critique is that objectivity proceeds from a white default position, because anybody with a marginalized identity can’t just enter a scene and not have who they are shape how people are going to talk to them, or how they’re going to experience what they’re seeing. It’s very different for a Black journalist covering Black Lives Matter knowing that a police victim could have been them, or a close relative, or their kid, versus a white journalist who has never had to worry about being pulled over.

SO WHAT’S THE PATH FORWARD FOR JOURNALISM?

Nobody’s ever agreed on everything, and we want people to be skeptical of information.

We need to recognize that people are making decisions based on their identities, and that they aren’t necessarily the rational, critical actors participating in the public sphere that economists and political scientists would like to believe they are. They’re humans with feelings. The danger is that people who are different, particularly politically, now have an antipathy towards each other. We need to think about why that’s happening, and whether we can fix that in some way. Or, we just have to accept the reality that half our audience doesn’t trust the news media and figure out how we can proceed differently.

JOIN OUR TEAM HELPING BUILD, IMPROVE, AND CONNECT THE WEST SINCE 1952

SAND, ROCK & LANDSCAPE PRODUCTS

READY-MIXED CONCRETE

ASPHALT & PAVING

CONSTRUCTION SERVICES

www.stakerparson.com | THE PREFERRED SOURCE | 801-731-1111

THE LAST WORD

JEN N Y A HLST RO M

TO MAKE GREAT CHANGE A MULTIPLE MYELOMA SURVIVOR FINDS HEALING IN SERVING OTHERS

BY LO I S M. CO L L I N S

W

ith her family by her side, Jenny Ahlstrom has spent 11 years pushing far beyond the confines of her comfort zone, learning skills and undertaking challenges for which she never felt prepared. At 54, the Sandy, Utah, wife and mother of six hopes she’ll have years more to experience new firsts.

That dream started with cancer.

The Ahlstrom family had moved to Mexico, where her husband, Paul, an entrepreneur and startup expert, had been asked to help create a venture capital industry. While on vacation back in the United States, she saw a doctor about physical complaints she’d pushed to the background during the busy, exciting time.

The news was devastating: She had holes throughout her spine and pelvis — probably cancer.

Specialists soon provided a name. The then-43-year-old had multiple myeloma, a relatively rare form of blood cancer that typically strikes people in their 70s. Back then, few lived longer than two years.

She spent the next six months in America undergoing tandem stem cell transplants using her own healthy cells, while family and friends rallied so Paul and the kids could stay in Mexico. He traveled back and forth to be with her when she was sickest. Then she moved back to Mexico and

84

DESERET MAGAZINE

traveled periodically to Houston for treatments. After months of that, they moved back to the United States.

Somewhere in that chaos, they decided to approach the cancer diagnosis like a startup company and create something unique, a foundation to see if they could help researchers find a cure using a database platform and software suite they call HealthTree. The myeloma portion is MyelomaCrowd by HealthTree and they plan to add coverage for other diseases, like acute myeloid leukemia.

Deseret Magazine asked Jenny Ahlstrom what she’s learned about building resources for patients and researchers and if a potentially deadly disease can bring welcome lessons.

WHAT MADE YOUR FAMILY TACKLE THIS SO DIFFERENTLY?

My brother-in-law David was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia six years prior to my diagnosis. He lived a year, and it was a terrible year. Everybody jumped in to help — we were helping fix his house so he could come back, we were helping in his care, we were sitting by him in the hospital because his medication gave him hallucinations. We were all in but we weren’t all in in the right way, I think. We didn’t know how to navigate it.

P O RT RAI T BY R ANDY GLASS

A cancer like myeloma is a panic attack and your life changes and all of a sudden you’re in the hospital permanently … . There wasn’t a lot we could have done for him, because they just didn’t have many treatment options, but we learned the hard way that you have to have a specialist on your team and educate yourself about everything.

We learned to be proactive, that we probably had skills that could contribute to better research. We went hyper patient advocate when I was diagnosed.

TELL ME ABOUT HEALTHTREE.

HealthTree is the new name of our foundation; it was already the software tool we created under my nonprofit MyelomaCrowd. To avoid confusion, we’re transitioning everything under HealthTree branding. It helps multiple myeloma patients find treatments and pushes research for a cure using crowdsourcing.

HealthTree is like a patient data portal where you get tools to navigate your disease and can accelerate research at the same time.

No one’s done this before. This is a lifetime relationship with the patient. We show personHOW HAVE YOU HELPED CHANGE THE alized treatment options ranked in order of WAY MULTIPLE MYELOMA IS TREATED? how myeloma experts would potentially treat them. We built logic on the back end with the When I was diagnosed, it was like, as a patient help of myeloma experts — 25 contributed — this is what I need: I need a specialist. I need so we can show clinical trials you are personways of getting up to speed on this disease imally eligible to join. Instead of 450, you have mediately. I might need a coach or mentor. maybe 50 or 30 relevant to you.

Myeloma comes and goes. You’re constantWe’ve aggregated patient-reported outcomes ly making decisions about your care. It’s like so you can see what to a chess game with your expect for side effects. life. You have to be straPatients can contribute tegic about the things what helped theirs and you choose, when you do THE DRUG HE TRIED we can say 95 patients them, how you do them.

WAS APPROVED tried this and it worked With my brother-in14 YEARS LATER; 86 percent of the time. law, he tried an off-label THAT’S HOW SLOW We have built in a redrug during his care that RESEARCH WORKS. searcher portal so we can bought him six more WE SAID, “WHAT CAN PATIENTS DO TO post survey and study months. We realized that SPEED THINGS UP?” questions from academinformation was lost to ic researchers for free. other patients globally.

We’re trying to accelerThe drug he tried was ate the pace of research approved 14 years later and help researchers defor his indication; that’s velop new hypotheses. how slow research works. We said, “What can Next year, we’re building the researcher porpatients do to speed things up?” A lot of tech tal side where they can submit a question and companies said, “Give us all your health data see raw data come back in a more formal way. and we will do something cool with it later.”

We’ve done several pilot studies, like a COVID But that’s a massive trust issue. study, where we had 1,100 patients recruited in We had this hypothesis that if we built a tool four weeks. In any academic study, but especiallike this and invited a trusted patient communily with a rare disease like this, that’s shocking. ty that we built to participate, they would. And What’s unusual is that we have tech experthey did. We did a 50-city tour in 2018 with a tise, and we really looked at my disease like we prototype and visited with over 860 myeloma would a startup because my husband has a lot patients. Our four boys sat next to elderly peoof startup experience. I wasn’t scared of tech ple and worked with them on their computer to because I had worked at IBM and had that enter their data to see where barriers are. background. We said we don’t know how to do The biggest questions were who are you, this, but we’re gonna figure it out. Now we have why are you doing this and what are you doa software suite, a coaching portal and a health ing with my data? We overcame those obcare university portal. We have a curriculum jections because we were myeloma patients and 100 myeloma experts who contributed. ourselves. We were doing it to accelerate a Some experts say, “Don’t be a Google doccure; we don’t sell data or information, which tor.” You know what? That’s where patients would destroy trust.

are going. You might as well give them accurate, up-to-date resources. Our myeloma coaches are volunteers who have helped over 900 patients so far in a pretty new program.

We have a news platform so patients can stay up to date, but in patient-friendly terms. We have a podcast and live meetings.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM HAVING MULTIPLE MYELOMA?

It’s never fun to have a terminal disease, but I learned that it’s super fun to serve other people. I love doing the advocacy work; it helps me manage my own situation in a much better way. I love helping people who are in a time of life when they’re struggling really significantly.

I’ve learned to be more forward and brave.

It’s become kind of our family business.

Some of our kids help with video production on the university side and other things for the foundation. That’s been really fun. It’s a winwin for everybody. Patients have never been given the tools to participate in research, or to navigate their disease.

WHAT LESSON HAS IMPACTED YOU MOST?

It made me recognize the need for a sense of purpose in life. If you don’t have a core sense of why you’re here and what you’re supposed to do while you’re here, you have a harder time living this life.

I think everything we’ve tried has been something I thought I couldn’t do, but have done. I started building out the website in the beginning. I didn’t know how to do that. I had never hosted a podcast before. I had never created a coach program before. I had never been a product manager of a software tool before. We found great people to help us do things. And marketing/PR skills I didn’t think I would need after I got them at BYU? I use them all the time.

ANY LAST WORDS?

I would just say that you can use bad things for your good. Regardless of what happens in your life, it can become a positive. I wish I had a more poetic way of saying that. I don’t really care about small inconveniences anymore. Or small irritations. I look at the bigger perspective and how can we make great change in our world.

I think cancer has made me brave and has allowed me to try to do things I would have never, ever tried before.

DEC 2021/JAN 2022

85

PARTING SHOT

“We have an end in sight, and it’s not like this is forever.”

THE LAST RIDE A JACKSON HOLE INSTITUTION TAKES A FINAL BOW

BY C H R I ST I A N SAG E R S

Babe Humphrey came to Jackson Hole in the 1970s knowing he needed at least 20 acres to build his risky business venture. The local real estate office offered him a half-acre lot. “We need 20 acres,” Humphrey shot back. “A one-half acre plot is out of the question.” The agent laughed. Only 3 percent of the land in Teton County, Wyoming, is privately owned.

Determined, Babe went directly to local ranchers to pitch his business idea: an old-fashioned chuck wagon supper topped off by a rollicking cowboy music show. The Earl Hardeman Ranch gave him a chance.

They cordoned off the acreage with an arrangement that Hardeman would get a cut of the profits, and Babe got to work building his dream: the Bar J Chuckwagon.

Now, after nearly half a century of selling songs with side helpings of beans, brisket and Western wit, the Bar J outfit has decided to hang up their hats. This year is their final tour, with stops in Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska and Utah.

86

DESERET MAGAZINE

P HOTO GRAPHY BY JUSTI N WAN

GIVE EMPOWER CREATE

HOPE

Learn more about our work at MothersWithoutBorders.org/hope