In an era of hardening political polarization, one of the most divisive issues is how to prevent the gun violence that our society faces day in and day out. We can’t even get started on a solution because gun-rights advocates fear that people concerned about gun violence want to take away their guns and people concerned about gun violence think that gun-rights advocates don’t care about public safety. Neither assumption is correct — except at the political extremes.

If we are going to address gun violence effectively, we need to start with mutual respect for two fundamental propositions. On the one hand, the Second Amendment confers a constitutional right, the core of which is the use of a gun for the defense of the home. That constitutional right is not absolute, as Justice Antonin Scalia made crystal clear in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision. On the other hand, public safety is a legitimate concern. It’s one of the fundamental reasons that people join together to form a civil society.

Can that lead to common ground? Of course. There is all but universal agreement that certain people should not be allowed to possess guns because of the threat they pose to civil society. The right to possess a gun has long been denied to people convicted of felonies or violent misdemeanors such as those involving domestic violence and to people suffering from serious mental illnesses.

Universal background checks are designed to prevent people not permitted to possess guns from getting them. The vast majority of Americans — indeed, the vast majority of American gun owners — support universal background checks. Adoption of universal background checks has been blocked by fears that it could lead to gun registration and inconvenience for legitimate gun owners. These fears must — and can — be effectively addressed.

Another measure for keeping guns out of the hands of people who should not have them is the so-called “red flag,” or extreme risk protective order, which provides a judicial process for temporarily taking guns away from and denying access to people who are a threat to themselves or others. Connecticut has had a version of this law for nearly 20 years, and a recent study found that for every 10 to 20 protective orders issued, one suicide was prevented. Utah has the fifth highest suicide rate in the country, and 80 percent of our gun deaths are suicides. Enacting a red-flag statute could significantly reduce the suicide rate in Utah.

Safe storage of dangerous weapons is a particularly challenging issue. It is well-documented that guns taken from family members or friends all too often become the means of mass shootings and suicides. In conjunction with the Utah Suicide Prevention Coalition, the Utah Shooting Sports Council has begun a public education campaign to promote the safe storage of firearms for individuals who pose a threat to themselves. Careful tracking of information from this campaign may help turn the tide on Utah’s gun suicide epidemic.

Many other measures for preventing gun violence have been raised. In each case, two questions should be answered. First, how effective will it be in preventing gun violence? Second, what will the practical impact be on responsible gun owners? Answers must be based on honest, objective analysis, not simplistic partisan rhetoric. Even the author of the Dickey Amendment, which effectively shut down federal research on the causes of gun violence, has recanted and now recognizes the necessity for fact-based research on gun violence.

So there is a road to working together to prevent gun violence. We should take it.

Ed Rutan, Park City, is a member of the board of directors of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah and was the city attorney for Salt Lake City from 2002 until he retired in 2013.

The Trump administration’s accidental release of documents shows what was already obvious: The decision to rescind two national monuments in Utah required the administration to downplay the monuments’ tourism benefits.

In yet another sign of the Interior Department’s phony process, the department first released unredacted background reports, then later replaced them with redacted versions. That makes it easy to compare what they wanted to show as their evidence with the actual evidence.

It’s not just a political embarrassment. It also could provide more legal ammunition for the Indian tribes and environmental groups who are suing to rescind the rescissions. Just as Presidents Clinton and Obama had to have documented evidence for declaring Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears monuments in the first place, President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had to present an evidentiary case for killing them.

And it’s not as if tourism at the monuments can or should be ignored. The state of Utah certainly isn’t doing that.

Now almost eight months since the president killed them, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments are still featured on the state’s official tourism website, VisitUtah.com, under “most popular parks.”

If you really poke around VisitUtah.com using the search function, you can find pages, with virtually no information, on Shash Jáa National Monument and Indian Creek National Monument. What are those, you ask? They are the two smaller monuments Trump created to replace Bears Ears. State tourism officials hurriedly put up the pages when the new monuments were announced, but nothing has been added since.

And it’s no wonder the state continues to promote Bears Ears instead of Shash Jáa. All one has to do is look at Google. Bears Ears National Monument is a regularly used search term, while Shash Jáa National Monument is almost never searched. If you are an outfitter or hotel or any other tourism-related business in San Juan County, your business would wither if you promoted Shash Jáa over Bears Ears on your website or social media.

All of this is just a continuation of the monumental blunder the whole anti-Bears Ears campaign has been. Utah is still promoting on its website what the people behind the Outdoor Retailer convention wanted it to promote — the Bears Ears National Monument — but only after Utah politicians chased away the lucrative convention because they didn’t want to acknowledge a Bears Ears monument.

Why didn’t Utah want to acknowledge it? Because it said the federal government ignored local interests in creating the monument. How did Utah figure the locals didn’t want it? It relied on the illegitimate San Juan County government that a federal judge ordered dismantled because it systematically disenfranchised Indians, most of whom are enthusiastic supporters of the monument.

Bears Ears National Monument has already won the branding war, regardless of what happens to the lawsuits over its existence. Utah’s tourism people know it, even as its politicians are still in denial.

Utah leaders ​have done a bold thing this year to protect the state’s residents: suing certain pharmaceutical companies for what has been characterized in different lawsuits as “callous” and “aggressive” marketing to promote opioids while concealing significant risks. As a result of these tactics, far too many have died of opioid overdose.

While applauding historic actions of state leadership, we can’t help but wonder whether we have assumed too quickly that these industry tactics are somehow exclusive to opioids.

As local citizens who have spent ​years in mental health education, we write to highlight overlooked similarities between industry influences on our opioid and suicide crises.

A Weber County lawsuit alleged that having “trivialized or obscured [opioids’] serious risks,” companies convinced doctors and patients “that the compassionate treatment of pain required opioids.” And a Utah County Commission resolution stated that despite “knowing of the serious risks and adverse outcomes related to the use of their opioids,” companies “nevertheless set out in the 1990s and 2000s to persuade providers, regulators and patients that opioids are safe and effective.”

This same minimization of risks has been plainly documented in industry marketing for antidepressants — a campaign so successful that most people consider them first-line, and increasingly long-term solutions. Indeed, a majority of legislative and educational efforts to reduce suicide (including Sen. Orrin Hatch’s new proposal) aim to essentially increase “treatment access” — which (despite the range of options available) most often means psychiatric treatment.

Will that reduce the heartbreaking numbers?

How we all wish it would! But we have to ask: haven’t we tried this already? Between the early 1990s and 2008, antidepressant use in teens and adults quadrupled — with rates climbing even further in the past 10 years. In this same period, numbers of suicide and chronic disability for mental illness reached record levels — with 600,000 youth and 4 million adults on disability for mental illness today (compared with 16,200 and 1.25 million in 1987).

Despite these troubling statistics, ​“under treatment” and “treatment stigma​” continue to be held up as primary barriers to reducing suicides — almost without question.

Could it be time to reconsider our basic approach? We believe the evidence compels a broader conversation about suicide prevention and mental health overall.

These are not outlier concerns. Recall that the FDA mandated a warning on antidepressant packaging because of the evidence for heightened suicidality with teenage brains. And 20 peer-reviewed adult studies have found consistently poor outcomes with long-term antidepressant use.

Please don’t misunderstand. We are not recommending that anyone stop current medical treatment, which only a doctor can advise. Nor are we saying any treatment option be made less available.

What we’re encouraging is more conversation about sensible adjustments to standard protocols, including: (1) informed consent that better acknowledges risks without overstating benefits, (2) more careful monitoring of heightened suicidality risk during any dosage change, (3) increased support for careful, gradual, and supervised discontinuation when medication benefits have ceased, and especially (4) greater priority attention to hundreds of other ways to boost mood and relieve emotional distress.

There are so many reasons to be hopeful! In our own classes, we’ve seen hundreds of people find more sustainable healing when they begin to decrease core risk factors for emotional distress, one at a time.

Our ultimate plea is for state leaders to ensure that conversations about suicide prevention don’t naively adopt talking points touted by industry-funded researchers or organizations (our tragic opioid mistake), while allowing all perspectives to be included — even those that may be challenging to hear.

The preciousness of each individual life calls for no less.

Jacob Hess, Ph.D., Jocelyn Pedersen, Cassandra Casey, Holli Oram, Karen Welch and Ed and Sharon Fila are involved in local mental health education in partnership with the Utah nonprofit All of Life.

“Let’s help the rising generation to appreciate who they are, and where they came from, and what they have. … More importantly, let’s help them believe that they too can be pioneers, by embracing the principles of the pioneering life, and overcoming their own obstacles and trials to make their own dreams come true.”

— Days of ’47 Parade website

But if you are LQBTQ, you are not in the Days of ’47’s vision of Utah celebrated during the Pioneer Day parade.

Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski has been making a lot of news by not being places recently. She was off speaking at a conference in Mexico when the Legislature took over a third of the city’s land and created the inland port. She refused to be in the room when the City Council achieved a compromise that minorly improved the inland port bill during a recent special session. However, she was perfectly happy sitting on the back of a convertible smiling and waving at the parade crowds while the members of Mormons Building Bridges were sitting at home.

Her argument last year was that it was a strong message for the mayor and her wife to be seen together at the discriminatory parade. That is very true, and that fact was highlighted when KSL decided not to air video of her car in the parade or even acknowledge her presence. At what point do you become complicit in the discrimination?

Mayor Biskupski, your inactions on the inland port are now on your political record. Negotiating with a hostile conservative Legislature and governor is part of the job description of being the mayor of a liberal city in a sea of red, and you chose to walk away from the table.

The irony is not lost on me that, while you were off being recognized in Mexico for your commitment on taking climate action and tackling air quality, the Legislature was stealing land from Salt Lake City for a project that will do the exact opposite. You could have canceled your trip and negotiated in person during this critical time for the city, but you chose not to.

Mayor Biskupski, your presence at the Days of ’47 Parade shows tacit approval of the discrimination by the parade organizers against LGBTQ groups. You were invited to this parade; you chose to attend. Did you even ask the parade organizers to reconsider their decision? Salt Lake City is listed as a sponsor of the parade.

The mayor of Provo was able to successfully stand up to discriminating parade organizers, and LQBTQ groups were included in the Freedom Festival Parade. Her success only highlights your failure to do the same.

I recognize the potential for hypocrisy in simultaneously criticizing the mayor for walking away from one thing and attending another. However, both the City Council and the mayor of Provo were able to achieve something with their actions; what did Biskupski achieve?

This voter will remember Biskupski’s choices on these important issues during the election in 2019.

Parker Reed lives in the Liberty Wells neighborhood of Salt Lake City.

For those of us fortunate enough to live in southern Utah, landscapes such as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument are our backyards. We live and work in a storied place, a place that people travel the world over just to experience. But under President Donald Trump’s proclamation last December, the Grand Staircase is only about half the size it once was.

The president’s proclamation has also left areas open and vulnerable to drilling and mining. Sadly, there’s been a troubling development since The Washington Post featured our restaurant in the May 24 travel section. The magnificent landscape that drives our economy and attracts visitors to our restaurant is at serious risk. Recently, a Canadian company called Glacier Lake Resources purchased an old mine called the Colt Mesa Copper-Cobalt mine, which sits on lands cut from the Grand Staircase. Already the bulldozers have arrived on the Burr Trail to begin the destruction of our priceless landscapes, in order to provide access to the mine.

This devastating development is happening even while litigation on the reduction of Grand Staircase and Bears Ears National Monument wend their way through the court system. In the meantime, those of us in the local communities are feeling the negative effects of this unpopular and unjustified action.

In his proclamation, Trump said, “Some people think that the natural resources should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what: They’re wrong.” But, it appears “they” were right, as Trump and Zinke handed down their mandate reducing our monument without consulting those of us who require unspoiled public lands to make a living; and there are many of us in the communities surrounding Grand Staircase.

For my own business, I fear the harm caused by development on landscapes as iconic and delicate as the Grand Staircase-Escalante. It is impossible to overstate how detrimental resource extraction can be to the natural experience, which is what we rely on to ensure our customers keep coming back. Visitation to our beautiful monument has allowed our communities to avoid the roller-coaster effect of boom-and-bust extraction cycles. Outdoor recreation and tourism provide a much more stable and wholesome revenue flow.

However, Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have failed to recognize time and time again the importance of keeping these landscapes intact to our local economies and our way of life. From outfitters and hospitality businesses to ranching and agriculture, the fabric of Western economies is much more complex than the administration cares to understand.

Part of living and running a business in this unique and breathtaking place is acknowledging the stewardship we have of this land, which in truth belongs to all Americans. It is our duty to speak up for the landscape that we love beyond measure, and we hope everyone will join us in working to save it from cynical and shortsighted plundering that benefits no one.

Blake Spalding, along with her business partner Jen Castle, is chef/owner of the award-winning Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm in Boulder, Utah, which is now in its 19th season. Recently, Blake and Jen wrote their second cookbook, “This Immeasurable Place: Food & Farming from the Edge of Wilderness,” which highlights the extraordinary wilderness that is the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

I oppose any attempt at taking guns away from responsible gun owners. The irresponsible ones should be fair game. The woman who forgot her gun in the restroom is an irresponsible gun owner.

She should forfeit her firearm and have her concealed carry permit canceled and Second Amendment rights suspended until completing a thorough firearms training course. Had she made this major safety violation at a sanctioned shooting competition, she would have been disqualified and ejected from the range.

The Utah Legislature should apply a standard of strict liability to firearms ownership. Strict liability means a person is responsible for their actions regardless of their intent. A person should be strictly liable, criminally and civilly, if they lose control of an unsecured firearm or inappropriately discharge their gun. Other than mechanical failure caused by manufacturing defects, there are no gun “accidents.”

Strict liability applies to inherently dangerous activities, and firearms ownership certainly qualifies. In many jurisdictions, dog ownership comes with greater liability than gun ownership. That is just not silly, it is wrong. The best way to support responsible gun owners is not tolerating the irresponsible ones.

Dennis Willis, Price

As I read the column a few days ago from writer Robert Gehrke, I wondered who would bring him down a few notches. He apparently assumed that he was writing the letter concerning U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr.’s assignment for the good of all. Wrong.

When you think you know what an ambassador to a foreign nation does or thinks, you are way out of line.

Ambassador Huntsman, in my opinion, is a perfect representative for our nation to a powerful foreign country. He is very intelligent, charismatic and an excellent leader in every way. To put it correctly, he has some class that many can never touch.

When he was our governor, I always found his decisions to be very fair and well thought out. He did not make decisions because someone else or some other governing power told him what to say.

Now he represents America and I applaud him for, once again, making his own decisions. I am sure this assignment is a very delicate and yet powerful one for any ambassador. He is a perfect candidate for this.

You overstepped your boundaries here, Mr. Gehrke. And once again Huntsman, very much on target and very diplomatically, put you in your place. You were way out of your league.

Keep doing your job, Ambassador Huntsman.

Dotty Wrathall, Draper

Were it not for the extremely selfish cultural focus of the state of Utah, almost all political subunits throughout the state, and the typical voter, it might be possible to join in the “pioneer” spirit intended by this holiday.

I moved here nearly a half-century ago, from a horrifically burned-out lead-zinc and coal mining region of southeastern Kansas, via four or five majors over a decade in the University of Kansas system, only to encounter this callous indifference of government toward indigenous cultures, archaeological and paleontological wealth, and the prevalence of ways of thinking other than Mormon. What a fabulous physical wonderland — if we can suspend awareness of the impacts of the burgeoning populace. Compounded by the sudden onset of global warming, the Trump/Zinke/Herbert administration effort to put as much as possible of Utah’s hydrocarbon storehouse into the atmosphere may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

It’s not worth the risk, ye gamblers with our collective fate! Quit cheating on our future, and exercise appropriate restraint!

Ivan Weber, Salt Lake City

It’s not as if there was a shortage of summer musical festivals out there, so what exactly was the motivation for Troubadour 77 band members Monty Powell and Anna Wilson to partner with Live Nation SLC to create yet another one in Troubeliever Fest?

For starters, “We’re trying to create a whole culture, a whole tribe, a whole place to gather — we’re trying to create a place for songwriters,” Wilson told The Salt Lake Tribune. “Yes, it’s another music festival, but it’s also an experiential situation. That’s what sets this apart.”

True enough. While the two-day event taking place Friday and Saturday at Snowbasin Resort in Huntsville will feature a traditional performance lineup including the likes of Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Shawn Colvin and a “Legends Live” jam, it’s also intended to provide attendees with the opportunity to do more than listen.

Troubeliever Fest will also feature songwriting workshops and master classes, song evaluations for aspiring musicians by professional ones, even a singer-songwriter competition.

That said, the lineup itself is hardly an afterthought.

Powell and Wilson spent a quarter-century in Nashville as songwriters to some of country music’s modern heavyweights — Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Tim McGraw — before choosing to focus more on their own performing.

That helped set the stage for determining how the festival would be curated and structured.

“We approached it from the artist mindset,” Wilson said. “How would we want it to go? What would be a fun festival for an artist to do?”

First came settling on a format, which proved easy enough. Having both been steeped in the singer-songwriter tradition, Wilson and Powell quickly zeroed in on a program revolving around that genre.

It was something of a curious choice, given that many top artists from that style are frequently relegated to playing house shows and small-capacity clubs.

“We wanted to deconstruct the festival format,” Wilson said. “… We wanted to create a show you can’t get anywhere else in the country.”

Part of that meant that rather than worry about whether performers who usually play before small audiences could hold the attention of a much larger crowd, Wilson and Powell simply turned the situation on its head.

Instead of trying to make the artists adjust to a bigger show, they decided to give the concert a cozier feeling.

“Those shows often have 100 people; we wanted to bring that intimate sort of experience to a lawn in front of 5,000 people,” Wilson said. “In a club, you see the emotion, you can see tears falling down people’s faces. We wanna put that on a video screen and bring it to the people all the way in the back.”

Beyond that, the idea is to keep things simple.

“The format is for the artists to talk about why they did what they did, and not just race through song after song after song,” she said. “… It’s all stripped down, just you talking to the audience. You don’t have that wall of sound behind you, all the smoke and lasers. Sometimes artists get so caught up in the machine; when we invite them here, it’s an opportunity to just be a musician.”

The music, in the end, is what it’s all about.

Wilson said the philosophy behind booking the talent was to get some artists who knew each other and had worked together previously, thereby creating the possibility for “some magical, unscripted moments” and “all these creative touchpoints.”

While Harris and Crowell are the unquestioned headliners, Wilson was particularly excited about the “Legends Live” jam session, which will feature a collection of ’70s singers “performing songs in a supergroup setting.”

It will feature the likes of David Pack (Ambrosia), Richard Page (Mr. Mister, Ringo’s All-Starr Band), John Elefante (Kansas) and Jim Peterik (Ides of March, Survivor).

Wilson knows they are not necessarily “immediately recognizable household names,” but she said any confusion on the audience’s part will be cleared up once the performance starts.

“People are gonna be blown away hearing all these songs they know that these guys wrote,” Wilson said. “At Troubeliever Fest, the songs are the stars.”

The way some local public officials talk about public lands in Utah is as nonsensical as the mayor of Detroit demeaning the auto industry or the governor of California wishing Disneyland would go away.

Sometimes I wonder if it takes the view of someone who didn’t grow up around here to see that.

Take, for example, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee, who has lived his whole life either in wonderful Utah or evil Washington, D.C. When he discusses land and development, he seems to have no clue that the population is growing in cities and shrinking in rural areas all across the nation, even — particularly — in states that have little or no federal land.

And apparently he has no clue that those evil New Yorkers, who are among those he holds responsible for locking up all that land in Utah, have also locked up about a fifth of their own state in the form of Adirondack State Park. Reducing that preserve by 1 acre requires an amendment to the New York State Constitution.

In a speech to the conservative Sutherland Institute earlier this month, Lee again spouted the revisionist history view of how the mean old federal government, as the nation moved west, stopped selling off the major portions of each state and wound up keeping ownership of giant swaths of states such as Nevada, Idaho and Utah.

Lee allows as how the change in behavior was in large part due to the fact that small farmers could make a go of Homestead Act grants of 160 acres or so as Manifest Destiny moved through Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and even Colorado. But, once west of the Rockies, settlers found the land far too barren to support the Little House on the Prairie, so most of it continued to sit in the federal larder. Unless it was really useless, in which case we gave it to the Indians.

That was fine with some people, who took advantage of what was then Washington’s habit of heavily subsidizing mining and grazing at prices that were, and remain, far below what the market charged for the same activities on private land.

The change of view on what should be done with public lands also coincided with a national change of mind of lots of things. Like ending slavery, allowing women to vote, creating large national parks and national forests and other more humane and far-sighted ideas.

Lee is among those who today argue that all that land should have been turned over to the states. Actually, the passages of relevant laws he misquotes or misapplies were about selling the land to private interests, and giving each state a cut of the profits. But Lee is probably hesitant to say that because such a sell-off would much more clearly be for the purpose of carving up, digging up and fencing off millions of acres.

The senator went on at some length comparing federal ownership of Utah to royal ownership of English land centuries ago. It was a situation where kings and nobles pushed the common folk off the land so they could hunt deer and grouse as they pleased.

The modern equivalent, Lee says, is the elite of the coasts wanting to keep much of Utah out of the hands of the locals so that well-hiking-booted visitors can drop in from time to time to hike, take photos and refresh themselves in “their rustic cabins, their craft breweries, their artisanal coffee shops, their bed and breakfasts.”

There’s naught wrong with craft breweries and artisanal coffee shops, lad.

There are folks, more and more of them every year, making honest livings in those businesses, providing jobs, paying taxes and not destroying the land in the process.

There’s also no comparison between land seized by Prince John and land that has always been held in common for all of the American people.

What Lee doesn’t seem to grasp, or to like, is that all that federal land, by law and by right, belongs to each of us. Yes, even fans of craft breweries. And me. It belonged to me when I lived in Kansas. It belonged to me when I lived in New York. It belongs to me now. It will belong to me when I can’t afford to retire in the U.S. and move to Belize. It also belongs to my brother in Japan, my cousin in England, my cousins in Arkansas, South Dakota and Illinois. Even if they never see it.

It is Lee’s hope, not Teddy Roosevelt’s vision, that would amount to the biggest land swindle since the Louisiana Purchase.

George Pyle, editorial page editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, notes that Mike Lee left “quaint used-book stores” out of his list of evil incursions into wild Utah.

It’s midsummer. We’re supposed to be doing outdoorsy things.

But it’s awfully hot out. And watching TV in the air-conditioning sounds like a pretty good idea. And, fortunately, August is not a TV wasteland. There are some good shows and a few great ones.

Here, in chronological order, are 15 reasons to watch TV in August:

1. “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party” (Wednesday, Aug. 1, 7 p.m., VH1) • TV’s oddest couple — Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg — return for Season 2 of their bizarre party/talk show featuring celebrities, mixed drinks and general weirdness.

2. “The Sinner” (Wednesday, Aug. 1, 11 p.m., USA) • Season 2 of this show is about an entirely new case — an 11-year-old who murders his parents. So, yeah, you’ve got to be in the mood to be deeply disturbed.

3. “Better Call Saul” (Monday, Aug. 6, 10 p.m., AMC) • One of TV’s best dramas returns for Season 4, and Jimmy has to deal with Chuck’s suicide.

4. “Lodge 49” (Monday, Aug. 6, 11 p.m., AMC) • Promising new comedy/drama series about a ex-surfer boy/somewhat lovable loser (Wyatt Russell) who stumbles into a fraternal lodge and thinks he’s found a new path in life.

5. “Carter” (Tuesday, Aug. 7, 8 p.m., WGN America) • An actor (Jerry O’Connell) who plays a detective on a TV show has a public meltdown, moves back to his small hometown and gets a job as a police detective. Which sounds pretty much exactly like the failed Rob Lowe sitcom “The Grinder.”

6. “All About the Washingtons” (Tuesday, Aug. 7, streaming, Netflix) • Rapper Rev Run and his real-life wife star as fictionalized versions of themselves in this family sitcom that’s a fictionalized version of their lives.

7. “Demitri Martin: The Overthinker” (Streaming, Netflix) • Standup comedy special.

8. “Fear the Walking Dead” (Sunday, Aug. 12, 10 p.m., AMC) • After a two-month break, Season 4 continues.

9. “Insecure” (Sunday, Aug. 12, 11:30 p.m., HBO) • Issa Ray returns for Season 3 of this very funny show.

10. “Disenchantment” (Friday, Aug. 17, streaming, Netflix) • New animated series from “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening about a hard-drinking princess, her elf companion and her personal demon in the kingdom of Dreamland. It’s definitely for adults, and it’s very “Futurama”-like in the way it lampoons, well, pretty much everything.

11. “Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow” (Saturday, Aug. 18, 10 p.m., Showtime) • Very good documentary.

12. “The Innocents” (Friday, Aug. 24, streaming, Netflix) • Eight-part drama about a teen couple who run away together — and it turns out the girl is a shapeshifter.

13. “America to Me” (Sunday, Aug. 26, 8 p.m., Starz) • This outstanding documentary series from Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) follows a group of black students at a diverse high school near Chicago.

14. “One Dollar” (Thursday, Aug. 30, streaming, CBS All Access) • Murder mystery that follows a dollar bill that changes hands in each episode — and the characters are all tied to a shocking killing.

15. “Jack Ryan” (Friday, Aug. 31, streaming, Amazon Prime) • John Krasinski (“The Office”) stars as Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst — a role previously played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine in a series of movies — in this eight-part TV series. He’s trying to thwart terrorists. And it’s already been renewed for a second season.

Two-thirds of Salt Lake City’s roads are in poor or worse condition, according to a pavement survey the city commissioned last year.

It’s a reality caused by aging, coupled with a lack of prioritization and underfunding in city budgets for road maintenance before and after the 2008 recession. And if something isn’t done soon, the roads will continue to grow worse.

But city officials say the timing is right to fix the streets, and the City Council is gearing up to pass a resolution that would put their plan for an $87 million road maintenance bond on November’s ballot. Then it would be up to residents to weigh in.

“This is a shift in policy,” council Chairwoman Erin Mendenhall says of the initiative. “After a decade of depleted funds since the recession … streets specifically have never been made whole from years and years of underfunding, and this [is a] cooperative shift with the administration and the council to recognize a continued lack in funding for this critical infrastructure.”

Road maintenance isn’t just a problem for Salt Lake City.

Funding is so bad in some areas that Domino’s, the pizza chain, has started paying construction crews to fill potholes across the country. As part of its “Paving for Pizza” marketing ploy to protect its pies from bumps in the road, the company has fixed at least five holes in Burbank, Calif.; eight in Bartonville, Texas; 40 in Milford, Del.; and 150 in Athens, Ga., according to the company’s website.

“It’s a thing that pretty much all cities are struggling with, is the funding … has never been enough to maintain the streets,” says Salt Lake City Engineer Matt Cassel.

But the issue is growing urgent in Utah’s capital, he says.

“Every day we don’t do anything, the road quality goes down,” Cassel says. “And once roads deteriorate to a certain level, the pace of deterioration increases. So it’s not a straight-line deterioration. They get really bad really quick.”

‘It doesn’t matter where you live' — the roads are bad

As Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski walked across the street, her foot sank into a “massive hole” filled with water.

“I almost broke my ankle,” she says, pulling up a photo of the pothole on her phone.

After Biskupski snapped a picture of the road, she submitted a request for service on the SLC Mobile app. And though there’s no button to press for “my street needs to be reconstructed,” Elizabeth Buehler, who works as the city’s civic engagement manager, says pothole-fixing requests are among the most common. In the first six months of 2018, the city received 263 requests through the app.

“It doesn’t matter where you live in the city,” Mendenhall says. “We all receive those complaints.”

As part of its efforts to address road maintenance, the City Council unanimously approved a half-percent increase in the city’s sales tax in May that will also be split among other initiatives, including expanded bus service and more police.

Separately, Salt Lake County recently endorsed a $58 million countywide sales tax hike for roads and transit, meaning the city’s sales tax will climb from 6.85 percent to 7.6 percent in October with both taxes. That county sales tax will bring in more than $5 million a year in revenue to the capital, while the city’s own tax will generate about $33 million annually.

If passed, the money from the proposed 20-year bond would be used for road reconstruction; the money from the sales tax increase would go toward road maintenance. The city would have 10 years to spend the bond funds.

The impact of the road bond on residents would likely be an additional $5 in property taxes per household per year, since the city is paying off existing bonds in 2019 for the Main Library and The Leonardo, and residents will no longer see taxes for those. If the bond didn’t pass, the city estimates average property taxes would decrease approximately $41.35.

The city plans to fix the worst roads first, using the data from its road survey. Eighty percent of the bond money would go toward fixing heavily traveled roads, Cassel says, and the rest would go toward repairing roads with less traffic.

‘We don’t need to have a Cadillac for roads'

Standing outside Emigration Market on 1700 East, the midday summer sun beats down on Cassel’s neck as he looks down at the aging pavement.

“This is an example of a road that’s in very bad shape,” he says, gesturing at cracks in the black asphalt that he refers to as “alligatoring.” “This is a road where we could go and we could take the asphalt off and put the asphalt back on — it’s going to look like this in a few years. … For a road like this, we have to go take 6 to 8 to 10 inches of soil out, put the soil back on, put the asphalt back in.”

The average cost per lane mile of that kind of reconstruction is $500,000. But if the city had put resources into maintaining the road earlier, the expense would have been far less.

“It’s highly likely if we were able to do maintenance on a seven- to 10-year interval," he says, “this road probably would not have gotten to this level.”

Proper maintenance can extend the life of a street anywhere from 25 to 30 years, Cassel notes. And it’s much less costly to do maintenance every seven years than to wait until the road needs to be reconstructed. Without any maintenance, a road could go from very good condition to very poor condition in 12 to 18 years.

Roads “take a beating” a number of ways, Cassel says, including from the sun, Utah’s winters and the constant pounding of cars. But once water has saturated the soil underneath a street, it will ultimately begin to fail.

Salt Lake City roads have become so poor that Cassel says the $87 million is just a piece of what’s needed to bring them up to fair condition — a heavy lift that would ultimately cost $220 million. The cost to bring the roads to good condition would be even higher, around $480 million.

“We don’t need to have a Cadillac for roads,” Cassel says, noting that it’s important to be realistic about what the city can do and to spend its money wisely. “We need to have good Chevys.”

City officials say they have no estimate for how much taxpayer money could have been saved with improved road maintenance over the past few years.

A ‘critical piece’ for reparation

Wilmington Avenue, in the Sugar House neighborhood near 1100 East, not only has a brand-new concrete road but also has wider sidewalks, a bike lane and bike parking.

“It’s just taking into consideration a lot more means of moving around than just cars,” says Cassel, who notes that the area mirrors the city’s goals with road reconstruction as part of its “complete streets” philosophy.

“When we come in and do the road section, we’ll look at ‘Is there an opportunity for bike lanes? Is there an opportunity for better sidewalk pedestrian facilities? Should we be putting in bus stops and bus pullouts? Will there be crosswalks?’” he says. “And all of those little things will be added whenever we do a project, if they warrant it.”

Before breaking ground on a new road, the city also plans to partner with public works to ensure utilities, like water lines, are replaced at the same time, so a road isn’t torn up twice.

Many of the city’s road reconstruction projects, of course, depend on the bond’s passage in November. What if voters reject it?

“That would be a bummer,” Biskupski deadpans, generating laughs from staff in a conference room at City Hall.

“Let’s talk about that after,” Mendenhall says, flashing a smile.

With renewed seriousness, Biskupski says failure would make it “very difficult” for the city to fund full reconstruction projects. “We know that we have roads that are completely failed,” she says. “So [the bond] is really a critical piece to this big puzzle of repairing and replacing roads that … have been put on the back burner for too long.”

To keep the roads from going back to where they were before the $87 million bond, the city recently employed a second maintenance crew with the funds from the sales tax, which will double the number of miles the city can maintain per year. Cassel says he hopes that will build confidence from residents that the roads won’t deteriorate to the same level again.

The council will hold a second public hearing on the road bond at its Tuesday meeting, where residents are invited to express their opinions on the issue. The council is expected to vote on whether to put the bond on the ballot at its Aug. 14 meeting.

“What I think we’re asking our residents to do is seize this opportunity” in November, Mendenhall says. “We are growing in a lot of great ways as a city, and it’s time that our roadways catch up.”

Congress’ annual August recess is beginning — the traditional time for members to return home to hold town hall meetings, talk to constituents and campaign.

But Utah voters may struggle to find an old-style, anyone-can-talk town hall meeting where they may weigh in face to face with elected leaders on immigration, trade wars, President Donald Trump or any other issue.

Members of Utah’s congressional delegation have scheduled only two traditional town hall meetings to date, and they are far from the populous Wasatch Front — in Manti and Moab. They opt instead for alternatives that avoid protests, such as tightly controlled “telephone town halls,” “open office hours,” “industry roundtables” or “employer-employee meetings.”

Brigham Young University political science professor David Magleby mourns the increasing rarity of true town halls.

“It’s very unfortunate because I think they are an important opportunity for the public to interact with elected officials,” he said. “The sad reality is we are living in a period of echo chambers where people tend to talk and listen — and even consume news — only from people who agree with them."

The demise of town halls may be a byproduct of incivility in the wake of two landmark political events — the fight over the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” and the election of Trump.

Rowdy crowds • In 2009, the health care debate exploded into hostility at town hall meetings around the country, some devolving into fistfights and helping spur the populist tea party movement. Members of Utah’s delegation at the time, including Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, stopped doing live town hall meetings.

Then, after Trump’s 2016 election, protesters nationally started crowding into such meetings to counter and shout down members who supported him. They grew so rowdy that former Utah Republican Party Chairman James Evans last year even urged canceling town halls, saying they had become too dangerous.

Two town halls in Utah last year landed in national news as examples of unruliness:

• At Brighton High School in February 2017, protesters shouted down former Rep. Jason Chaffetz for his refusal to investigate Trump’s potential conflicts of interest. They yelled, “Explain yourself” — but Chaffetz had a tough time being heard over them.

About 1,000 people were inside where police patrolled the perimeter, while 1,500 more were unable to enter the full auditorium and protested outside. Chaffetz later told a radio show, “I thought it was intended to bully and intimidate.”

After initially alleging the crowd was incited by “outside agitators,” he backed off that unsubstantiated assertion.

• In April 2017 with a capacity crowd at West High School, Rep. Chris Stewart also often could not be heard above shouts that included, “Do your job,” “liar” and “who are you in bed with?”

Similar scenes occurred around the nation.

Also in April 2017, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who achieved notoriety for yelling “You lie” at President Barack Obama during a speech to a joint session of Congress, was himself confronted at a town hall by constituents chanting, “You lie.”

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, in March 2017, barred noisemakers at a town hall, insisted that questions be submitted in advance and asked those attending to prove they were constituents by showing utility bills or other documents. He was still shouted down repeatedly by an angry crowd.

“The incivility of some of those town hall meetings … gives those who don’t want to do them a ready excuse,” Magleby said. “So it’s understandable that especially incumbents who are relatively safe — and the campaign consultants who would be advising them — stay away and not subject themselves to that.”

He added, “The likelihood of a mistake — a candidate losing their cool in such a setting — is actually greater, and that’s a nightmare. … And there is a potential, given how heated some of these issues are, of there to be some sort of altercation in the crowd because you are bringing nitro and glycerin together.”

Skipping town halls • Amid the political risks, Utah’s six members of Congress, all Republicans, report scheduling only two traditional town hall meetings among them for the August recess so far, although they say more may be added.

Rep. John Curtis plans one Monday in Moab (5 p.m. in Star Hall, 159 E. Center St.), and Stewart will hold one Tuesday in Manti (7:30 p.m. in Manti High School). Rural town halls have not been as rowdy as those in urban areas. Rep. Rob Bishop says he plans several around his district but has yet to finalize plans.

Five of the members — all but Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is not seeking re-election, and whose office did not respond to inquiries — say they value interaction with voters, but they often opt for methods besides town halls to allow that.

Conn Carroll, spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee, said, for example, “Not all forums are conducive to productive dialogue,” so that is why Lee “works so hard to identify new opportunities to communicate with Utahns.”

He said Lee uses “speeches, question-and-answer sessions, tele-town halls, employee town halls [hosted by a company], constituent meet-and-greets, meetings and roundtable discussions to extend the conversation to as many people as possible.”

Like Lee, most members say they are planning telephone town halls — usually announced on members’ Facebook pages or in emails to supporters. But unlike traditional town halls, they usually mute all but one speaker and easily prevent protests. Members usually ask for questions to be submitted in advance and choose which ones to address.

Rep. Mia Love said she is using many of the same methods as Lee plus one she calls “open office hours.” Her office invites small groups of eight to 12 people at a time to her office and tries to group them according to interest or similar questions. They are limited to about 15 minutes.

Love began holding these limited meetings as a safety measure, amid reported threats on her and her family. She says they “have been extremely successful and our office has found that they are a safe, effective way to provide a forum for meeting that is civil. No one involved in our open office hours has felt unsafe or threatened during one of these meetings.”

Defending town halls • Love skipping traditional town halls has led to criticisms from Democratic Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, her opponent in their tight 4th District race.

“Not holding traditional town halls shows that she’s just another spineless Washington politician hiding from the public," said Andrew Roberts, McAdams’ campaign manager. “It’s her job to field tough questions from the people she’s elected to represent.”

McAdams holds town halls — including one this year with 400 people upset about a proposed development near Herriman — and several in 2017 with upset crowds as the county explored where to locate a new homeless shelter, said Roberts.

Some Utah members of Congress continue to defend and use traditional town halls, while also using alternatives. Bishop’s spokesman, Lee Lonsberry, for example, said Bishop has regularly held them and will continue to do so. “He is grateful these meetings have always been constructive.”

Stewart continues to hold some — despite the rowdy one he faced in Salt Lake City last year.

Curtis gives the most ringing support of traditional town halls and says he has held dozens since he won a special election last year to replace Chaffetz. He also hosted them often when he was Provo’s mayor and says those were tougher, and make the current ones seem easy.

“I joke a little bit that you think it’s hard to stand in front of an audience and talk about immigration,” he said. “Try standing up and talking about putting a road in their backyards.”

Curtis said he values town halls because “I’ve also found them to be an important piece of feedback from constituents. If we are not careful, we tend to hear from one source. … I find that people are very frank with me. When it is face to face, it is a little bit more genuine.”

Curtis also said he’s explored having some creative town halls — including earlier this month inviting residents through his Facebook page to climb Mount Timpanogos with him to discuss environmental issues.

“We spent 10 hours together. It was a really fun, different kind of experience,” he said. “We had about a dozen people besides my own staff, between ages 8 and 70.”

He added that his favorite town halls “are those that have a smaller number of people because you really can be more personal and answer all their questions at a much deeper level than if we have a lot of people.”

Back when we lived in Utah County, my wife and I were herding our young daughters into church one Sunday when something horrible happened. It completely drove the spirit of worship away.

Actually, it’s only horrible if you’re some kind of decorum weasel, pervert or bottom thinker. But here it is.

I held the door open for my family and another young couple. When the wife of that family passed inside, I noticed she had blood on the back of her skirt.

Perhaps the proper thing would have been to report her to the bishop as “unclean.” Maybe I should have grabbed the woman by the arm and dragged her into the parking lot to prevent defilement of the chapel.

But the sight of blood — including the natural release of it — was something that, to me, had long become boring. So I quietly mentioned it to my wife, who whispered to the woman, who immediately went home and changed.

Perfectly natural functions of the body that should be allowed in a Mormon church have stirred up a debate of late, particularly that of breastfeeding a child in church.

In northern Utah, a woman says she was denied a temple recommend by her stake president because she refused to stop nursing her child in the foyer. Or maybe it was because she refused to cover up while doing it. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

The point seems to be that breastfeeding is a natural thing and shouldn’t be looked down upon or even called out, especially by men.

Well into my seventh decade of church, I’ve seen a lot of natural biological functions happen there. I remember when I was a kid and Sister Clammage, who was sitting behind us in sacrament meeting, hauled out a boob the size of small pig and stuck her kid onto it.

It was fascinating — certainly a hell of a lot more interesting than the droning from the pulpit. I stared until the Old Man noticed and cranked my head back around with a handful of hair.

Honestly, the sight didn’t seem all that untoward. A few weeks before, I had taken out my doodle in an empty church classroom and peed into a garbage can because the restroom was on the other side of the building, and I wasn’t sure I could make it.

Nobody saw me. God didn’t kill me. And I didn’t have a temple recommend to take away. Except for the person who had to empty the trash, no one was the wiser. A catastrophe had been averted because of my ability to improvise in a perfectly natural emergency.

Emergencies like that — and the needs of a baby — are one thing. But it’s also natural to release burps, gas, snot, sneezes and stomach gurgles (during fast Sunday) and nobody seems to get called on them.

When I was a kid, we had a guy in our ward who was so old that it was rumored he crossed the continent with Brigham Young. Brother Kedge frequently (always) fell asleep in church. Sometimes he snored. But that wasn’t what set him apart from the rest of the ward.

My theory is that sometimes Brother Kedge dreamed that he was still on the Plains, because he would periodically loose a fart audible enough to be heard on Mars. It wasn’t his fault. He was old. And asleep.

But it was hilarious to kids. Once, it was so loud that a deacon passing the sacrament collapsed in hysterical laughter. Several others got wobbly in the knees.

I don’t know whatever happened to Brother Kedge. We moved before he died. Maybe the bishop consigned him to the soundproof cry room. If so, I pity the women who nursed babies in there.

If there is a point to this column — and I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t find one — perhaps it’s that we should all be aware of the less-than-pleasant needs our bodies have and try not to make such a big deal out of nursing babies, which is actually a beautiful one.

Washington • If not for a $6,000 pay raise Sen. Orrin Hatch supported for Supreme Court justices, he might have been one of them.

After Associate Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement in 1987, President Ronald Reagan considered naming Hatch to the high court. Reagan's short list for the spot was so small it included only Hatch and D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Robert Bork.

But Hatch, a Utah Republican and a Reagan favorite, had supported a pay raise for the high court and the Constitution forbids a member of Congress from taking an appointment for which the pay had been increased during that member’s term.

Bork got the nod — though the Senate later rejected his nomination — and Hatch lost out on probably his best shot to land on the Supreme Court.

While he never made it, Hatch has played an outsized role in the nomination and confirmations for every sitting justice. With only six months left in office — Hatch chose not to run for an eighth term — one of his legacies undoubtedly will be his impact on the court.

“Arguably more than than any other senator, Orrin Hatch has helped shape the Supreme Court for decades,” says Jonathan Turley, a law professor at The George Washington University. “Hatch’s success in the Senate is due in large part to his reputation for candid and honest advice. He has consistently voted for conservative causes, however he’s one of the dwindling number of members who works well with the opposing party.”

With President Donald Trump’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy being left by retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, Hatch will have what is likely his last chance to help push through a nominee that lines up with the Utah Republican’s view of the Constitution.

Hatch has said he’d “lift heaven and earth” to get Kavanaugh confirmed, a move that could tilt the court to the right for a generation.

The senator has fought for conservative nominees in the past but also worked to get some of the more liberal and moderate justices on the bench when President Bill Clinton was in office.

RBG, Breyer and Thomas

In 1993, Associate Justice Byron White announced his retirement, setting up the first chance for a Democratic president to pick a nominee in 26 years.

By then, Hatch, a Pittsburgh native who moved to Utah in 1969 and seven years later launched his first Senate bid, was serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He knew that Clinton was considering nominating Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat and former Arizona governor, whom Hatch viewed more “as a politician than as a jurist,” Hatch wrote in his biography, “Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator.”

Clinton phoned Hatch shortly after the vacancy was announced to ask Hatch’s take on whom he should nominate. Babbitt would be a tough battle, Hatch warned, with many Republicans and at least one Democrat opposing him.

Instead, Hatch suggested Court of Appeals Judges Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

“I knew them both and believed that, while liberal, they were highly honest and capable jurists and their confirmation would not embarrass the president,” Hatch wrote in his book. “From my perspective, they were far better than the other likely candidates from a liberal Democrat administration.”

Clinton appointed Ginsburg and later Breyer, and both were confirmed with little opposition. Hatch supported both of the nominees, and they still serve today.

Two years earlier, Hatch had gone to bat to confirm Clarence Thomas after his appointment by President George H.W. Bush.

Thomas had served as a federal judge for 19 months, and no one on the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee that rates judicial nominees would say he was “well qualified” for the post.

Adding to the controversial nomination, former Thomas employee Anita Hill alleged that he had sexually harassed her.

The details of that allegation turned the usually staid confirmation hearings sexually explicit.

Hatch, trying to help Thomas, asked him about specific assertions from Hill, though the senator warned that he was embarrassed to have to ask the questions.

“Did you ever say in words or substance something like ‘there is a pubic hair in my Coke?’ ” Hatch asked. Thomas denied it.

"Did you ever use the term 'Long Dong Silver' in conversation with Professor Hill?" Hatch said. Thomas said no.

Thomas was later confirmed to the bench by one of the smallest margins in recent history, 52-48. Hatch supported him.

The Utah Republican saw through both of President George W. Bush’s picks for the high court — John Roberts and Samuel Alito — but voted against both of President Barack Obama’s — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Overall, Hatch has earned rave reviews from conservatives for his efforts to mold the court.

“He’s certainly been an asset to getting good people on the court,” said former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who served for four years as president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. “He’s been a steady hand for a long time. … Just by the fact he’s been here and been evenhanded for a long time, he’s trusted by both sides of the aisle and that’s certainly helpful.”

Hatch also played a role in halting Obama’s last pick for the court and for holding the spot open for a Trump appointee.

Garland and Gorsuch

Hatch always had a soft spot for federal Judge Merrick Garland and when a vacancy opened on the high court, Hatch called him a “consensus nominee” and that there was “no question” he could be confirmed. Obama chose Kagan instead.

In March 2016, after the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Hatch said that Garland was a “fine man” and a better choice than a more liberal candidate.

Obama, perhaps sensing he could win Hatch’s support, nominated Garland.

But the Utah Republican stood with his GOP colleagues in refusing to even give Garland a confirmation hearing or vote, arguing the process should wait until after the presidential election.

“President Obama has exercised his power by nominating Merrick Garland,” Hatch said in a statement. “I stand with the majority of my Senate colleagues in concluding that the best way to exercise our advice-and-consent power is to conduct the confirmation process after the presidential election. Doing so will keep what should be a serious confirmation discussion from becoming denigrated by the toxic politics of this election season, and it will give the American people a voice in the direction of our nation’s highest court.”

Garland never got a hearing. Trump won. And then Trump handpicked his own nominee — Neil Gorsuch.

Hatch was one of Gorsuch’s top cheerleaders, lobbing softball questions his way during a hearing and lambasting his opponents and Democrats who raised tough ones.

Ron Bonjean, a Washington GOP consultant who shepherded Gorsuch through the confirmation, said it was important to have Hatch on their side.

"Senator Hatch was tremendously helpful advocating for Justice Gorsuch when his nomination was before the Senate,” Bonjean said. “His dedication and enthusiasm in backing the nominee was tremendous. Most importantly, his experience having gone through this process numerous times, was invaluable to our team.”

It’s likely Hatch will play a similar role with Kavanaugh. Although another justice could retire or die before the senator leaves office, this fall’s fight to get Kavanaugh on the bench is largely viewed as Hatch’s last chance to shape the court.

Hatch, who spoke with Trump about Kavanaugh before his announcement, is loudly touting the nominee’s vast experience and credentials.

And the White House is counting on Hatch’s help to get its nominee through.

Raj Shah, a White House spokesman who is heading up the “war room” to confirm Kavanaugh, praised Hatch’s long efforts to shape the judiciary.

"Among Senator Hatch’s enduring legacies will be a leading role in the Senate in fighting for judges that interpret our laws and Constitution as they were written and intended,” Shah said.

Kavanaugh's confirmation process will be the 15th Hatch has participated in since joining the Senate.

In a short interview, Hatch said that he believes “everybody would say” that he's had a major impact on the court.

“We’ve got the very best people that we could get on the court, and it’s doing a very good job,” Hatch said of his influence. “Let me put it this way, there are a number of them who probably wouldn’t have made it had I not been in the Senate, even though they’re great men and sometimes great women, too.”

Hatch noted that his legacy with the Supreme Court isn't so easy to judge and that his support for Ginsburg and Breyer, for example, shows that he's not just fighting for conservatives but for the best jurist.

“I’m not easy to pigeonhole on these things because I’ve supported people who conservatives didn’t like; I’ve supported people liberals didn’t like,” Hatch said. “I just believe in what I’m doing.”

For the first time in its 100-year history, the largest teachers’ union in the state will not hold an annual fall convention.

The Utah Education Association has canceled its traditional two-day gathering — once slated for Oct. 18 and 19 — citing years of declining participation. Less than a quarter of the organization’s 18,000 members attended the event in 2017.

“This was not a quick decision,” said UEA President Heidi Matthews. “But we have decided to take a break from it for now.”

In place of the conference, leaders of the organization plan to use the time to talk to voters about supporting Our Schools Now, the nonbinding question on November’s ballot that would boost school funding with a proposed gas-tax increase.

“We’re just shifting our energy,” Matthews said.

The decision to upend the conference, though, came too late for Utah’s public schools to adjust their calendars — which are set up more than a year in advance and include a fall break during the union’s convention days (what has previously been called UEA weekend). That way, teachers can go to the event and students can have some time off.

“It’s always been aligned with UEA,” said Jordan School District spokeswoman Sandra Riesgraf. “That was really the main reason why we give that fall recess.”

Ben Horsley, spokesman for Granite School District, said there are “no plans to make adjustments to our calendar.” Students and their families, he said, plan on fall break and benefit from having a few days away from school.

“The break is built-in and nice,” he said. “It’s something they’ve come to rely on and enjoy.”

So the students will still get the time off — and Matthews hopes teachers will, too. She cited a new study from the Utah Education Policy Center that concludes the No. 1 reason educators leave the profession is “emotional exhaustion, stress and burnout.”

Internal surveys UEA has conducted, too, found that most of its members who skip the annual conference do so because they want time off. When asked what could be changed to get them to come, Matthews added, the most common answer is “nothing.”

“These vacation days are far much more valuable to them,” she said. “They need time to recharge.”

The state used to compensate teachers for participating in the UEA conference; now, only a few districts do. The event also used to be the only place where educators could fulfill the requirements or get credits to keep a license up to date; now, there are ways to do that online.

Both of those changes, Matthews said, affected attendance. Fewer than 5,000 educators were at the convention last fall. That’s significant when there are slightly more than 26,000 public-school teachers in Utah.

“We just need to get with the times,” Matthews said. People don’t want to travel to the conference, she noted, and don’t want to spend the time away from their families.

The convention dates have already been set for 2019 — Oct. 17 and 18 — but Matthews said it’s possible that event will be scrapped, too.

When I picked him up at the airport, all I knew about him was that he was an artist and he was going to be a VIP for the Urban Arts Festival this fall.

We locked eyes as he came down the escalator. “Mr. Stewart?” I said, holding a sign with his name. He gave a low, deep laugh that reminded me of James Earl Jones. “Yeah, but call me Charlie.”

He sat in the front seat, since his 6-foot-5 frame wouldn’t have folded up very well in the back.

I made my usual conversation. “So, you’re an artist?”

“I’m in a band,” he responded.

“Oh really? What instrument do you play?”

He gave that baritone laugh again. “I’m a rapper. But really I was born to do graffiti. So I like to say I’m a graffiti artist who happens to rap.”

“I’m a knitter who happens to write books and stuff,” I said. That was pretty much where the similarities ended.

We had an hour to kill before he was due at the Gallivan Center, so I took him to Eva’s Bakery on Main Street for some breakfast and proceeded to pick his brain, because I used to be a journalist, and old habits and such.

Charlie grew up in a gangster (his word, not mine) area of Chicago. He and his rather large family (large as in tall, and large as in numerous) lived in adjoining apartments.

When he was 6, he vividly remembers his 26-year old uncle in an ongoing dispute with some dangerous individuals. One night, in the heat of the moment, the uncle wanted to confront his enemies. Charlie’s grandma begged him not to go, saying she had a “bad feeling” about it.

The small woman tried to block the doorway. Charlie’s uncle picked her up by her shoulders and gently moved her aside. And then, he stormed out.

That was the last time Charlie saw his uncle, who was shot and killed that night.

As we sat across from each other in the café, munching on nosh and sipping coffee, I asked Charlie about his tattoos. One showed the face and torso of a man. Charlie told me it was his dad. He’d worked in the steel mills in Detroit in the days before government regulations limited the amount of toxins in the air. He inhaled these toxins for years. When he reached middle age, he got tired. Doctors checked him out, but by then his entire body was riddled with cancer. There was nothing to do but make him comfortable.

Another tattoo on his shoulder was of a girl with a sweet face. It was his cousin, who had died in a Chicago nightclub after security guards put tear gas in the ventilation system, triggering a stampede toward the one way out. She was trampled to death.

At 15, Charlie seemed poised to follow in the footsteps of the family members who’d come before him. That’s when his grandma stepped in.

She is a small, strong woman. She gave birth to nine children, although she lost triplets shortly after they were born. She raised the remaining six and also raised some from the next generation.

She knew the only way to stop the cycle was to take Charlie’s two younger siblings out of Chicago. But she gave teenage Charlie a choice. Stay in Chicago and hang with his wild cousins, or leave with her. Charlie asked for a day to think about it. When his cousins came to pick Charlie up that night, he told them he needed to stay home and figure stuff out.

Later, his cousins were pulled over with $20,000 in cash and a few kilos of cocaine. They ended up doing six years in a federal penitentiary. Charlie would’ve been with them if he had gone.

A few days later, Charlie, his two younger siblings and his grandma packed their belongings and moved to California, where one of his aunts lived.

Fast forward a few years. Charlie finds friends who are into music like he is. He spends his days experimenting with all sorts of genres and his nights decorating the walls of Los Angeles with cans of spray paint. He showed me pictures of some of his art, in particular a striking painting of a fierce tiger that he’d sprayed on double elevator doors.

During a break, I texted my boyfriend to tell him about this fascinating person I was driving. He was all, “You’re driving Chali 2na?? I listened to Jurassic 5 all the time in the nineties!”

So I did a little research on Jurassic 5 and Chali 2na. And suddenly it made sense when he answered his phone at the airport and told his manager “The Tuna has landed.” And why he laughed when I asked him what instrument he played. And why, when I dropped him off at the Gallivan Center, fans began to fawn, excited to be in his presence. And why he was surprised when I called him Mr. Stewart.

It reminded me of this one time when my grandma and mom saw Oksana Baiul in a Nordstrom. My mom pointed her out and said, “That’s the girl who won the gold medal in ice skating.”

When my mom wasn’t looking, my grandma walked up to Oksana, the star of the 1994 Olympics, and said, “I understand you do a little ice skating.”

I wondered if it was refreshing to sit and chat with someone who so obviously didn’t know who he was. I mean, I showed him the shawl I was knitting for my mom, and he acted like I was an artist too. And I was all, yeah, we’re so alike.

When I parted ways with Charlie, I was a little more educated as to who he was, and I did the appropriate thing. I called him Mr. 2na. And he gave me that baritone laugh one more time.

He’ll be at the Urban Arts Festival in September, rapping and doing some live tagging. I highly recommend checking out his music and his art there.

Brodi Ashton is a New York Times best-selling author who lives in the Salt Lake City area. She’s also an Uber and Lyft driver who shares stories from the road in this occasional column.

Rock Springs, Wyo. • Sheriff’s deputies have rescued a party of Boy Scouts who became stranded along a southwestern Wyoming river.

The nine scouts and three adults from a Saratoga Springs, Utah scout troop began a rafting trip last week in the Jamestown area. They had traveled about 15 miles down the Green River and were still nine miles short of their destination in the Flaming Gorge when darkness fell Thursday.

The Rock Springs Rocket-Miner reports that members of the group used hand radios to alert other members of their party camping downstream of their predicament, and that second group contacted authorities.

The Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office used a boat to find the group of stranded scouts and unite them with the rest of their party in the Big Firehole area.

Pinedale, Wyo. • A search is underway in the mountains of western Wyoming for a 13-year-old boy from Utah who became separated from his Boy Scout group during a backcountry hiking trip.

Sublette County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Travis Bingham says the search for Garrett Hunter, of Draper, intensified Sunday morning.

Bingham says it's been more than 24 hours since the teenager, who has autism, was last seen in the Wind River Range near Elkhart Park.

The scout group had been on a 50-mile, multi-day hike. The area, about 10 miles from Pinedale, is remote but heavily traveled by hikers.

Bingham says members of Hunter’s family and volunteers from Utah have joined in the search, which also includes a helicopter and other aircraft.

St. George • A southern Utah man has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 79-year-old St. George woman in her home three months ago.

St. George police say they are holding a 31-year-old from Hurricane on suspicion of first-degree felony counts of rape, a second-degree felony burglary charge and misdemeanor charges of sexual battery and simple assault.

The Spectrum reports the man has been booked into Purgatory Correctional Facility on a bond of about $53,000.

It was unclear Sunday if he has a lawyer yet.

Police say the victim told investigators that someone broke into her home in the middle of the night on April 17, woke her up and put a cloth in her mouth before sexually assaulting her.