Students who haven’t received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine will not be allowed to attend school or school activities in Sanpete County for weeks thanks to a mumps outbreak there, health officials announced Monday.

Two cases of mumps have been confirmed in the county, and health officials are investigating “other probable cases,” according to a news release fro the Central Utah Public Health Department.

Students who are not vaccinated have received notification and will not be allowed to attend school until May 5 at the earliest — and only if they have no symptoms, the department reported.

If new cases are confirmed, the date could be pushed back even further; school exclusions remain in effect for 26 days from the onset of the latest identified case, health officials wrote.

Students may return to school if they obtain the vaccine and can provide documentation of it.

Symptoms of mumps often include fever, headache, muscle aches and swollen salivary glands, which can cause a tender and swollen jaw. Possible complications include encephalitis, meningitis and deafness.

Health officials urge residents to check the vaccination status of themselves and their family.

"A person is considered susceptible unless they have received two doses of the mumps vaccine or were born prior to 1957," health officials wrote.

If you believe you have mumps, call a doctor, health officials said; do not go directly into a clinic, but let employees arrange your arrival to protect other patients.

Provo • She climbed onto a table, her legs shaking, and looked out over the hundreds of students standing on the grass at Brigham Young University. After taking a deep breath, she told them: “I was raped off campus.”

“But,” sophomore Franchesca Lopez quickly added, trying to choke back tears, “I haven’t felt safe to report that since I’ve been here. The Honor Code Office has made me feel like I’m not worthy.”

Those around her shouted back, “You are worthy. You are.”

When Lopez stepped down, the line of students behind her inched forward. They were ready to share their own experiences of being punished for breaking the private religious school’s strict code of conduct, or how they’ve been afraid of the consequences for turning themselves in, even when they weren’t at fault.

One freshman said investigators at the office found she was “likely to have cheated,” though there wasn’t any evidence, and said she wasn’t allowed to appeal. A gay student said he was reported by another student and investigated after the office incorrectly noted that he had "a sexual relationship with one or more male BYU students.” And an athlete said he was called in and threatened with discipline for dyeing his hair blond, which officials apparently said was an “unnatural” shade for the student of color.

The rally Friday — a rare occurrence at BYU — was organized to protest how the school enforces its Honor Code. The code prohibits premarital sex, sets certain rules for when and how dating occurs, contains a dress code and bans the consumptions of alcohol, drugs, coffee and tea.

About 500 participants gathered as some waved signs below the backdrop of the mountain emblazoned with the school’s signature “Y.” Between chants of “Bring Honor to the HCO” and “We have a voice,” the students broke out into church hymns.

“As I have loved you,” they harmonized, “love one another.”

The two-hour demonstration came after renewed criticism that BYU, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, cares more about punishing those who violate its rules than helping them. Especially in the last week, several current and former students have been sharing their stories on social media, including accounts of being suspended for minor violations.

“It’s almost hurtful to see how many people relate, but it’s a comfort, too,” alumna Sidney Draughon told The Salt Lake Tribune. She started an Instagram campaign to publish her experience and ask others to post theirs. It drew a flood of responses and led students to unite on campus in solidarity.

“We came here because we want to be better people and we are not going to leave,” Draughon told the crowd at the rally, after catching a red-eye flight from New York City on Thursday night.

The students organized outside the Wilkinson Student Center, where the Honor Code Office is located, and wrote letters to the administrators inside about ways the university could be more understanding of violations and less stringent with discipline. “I was falsely accused,” one student wrote. “My roommate turned me in,” penned another.

Others kneeled in the grass to make posters that said, “What would Jesus do?”

Several students walked past the protest and a few looked down from the balcony of the student center, named for Ernest L. Wilkinson — a past university president who bolstered the Honor Code during his tenure.

Most of the students who are sharing their stories say they support the church, BYU and the Honor Code. Their objections focus on how the school responds to allegations of misconduct and imposes punishment, which can range from being put on probation to being suspended, sometimes for multiple years, to being expelled.

BYU administrators have reached out to several students in the past week to talk about their concerns. In a statement Friday, the school said it expects ongoing dialogue “will lead to a better understanding of how the Honor Code Office can best serve our students.”

The statement added: “BYU cares deeply about the welfare of our students. We want every one of them to have a positive experience at BYU. ... These conversations have been very constructive, as students have shared with us their concern for certain processes within the Honor Code Office.”

The Provo rally follows a similar protest at the school’s Idaho campus Wednesday, where officials declined to meet with those who came to their offices to talk.

The organizers at both locations want to do away with anonymous reporting of student misconduct, allowing it only when a student has been the victim of assault or abuse. Kevin Utt, director of the Honor Code Office on the Provo campus, said this week that is the general policy there. The Idaho campus appears to not have the same policy.

Organizers also want students to be able to bring in peer and faculty witnesses during the disciplinary process, and they want Honor Code administrators to receive better training. BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said most are not licensed therapists, though the school calls them “counselors,” but they do receive training.

Many also are asking to end pressure to report on their peers, a culture that has been largely encouraged up to now by school and faith leaders, they say.

The students who planned the event said they were surprised by the large and vocal crowd.

“We don’t want it to die out,” said freshman organizer Grant Frazier. “This isn’t the end today. This is the start of something big.”

But some of the issues raised by students don’t reflect current practices, Jenkins said.

“The policy that we do not act on anonymous reports, except where the reported behavior could impact the physical safety of members of our campus community, has been in place since at least 2008,” she said in an email. “What has been evolving since then is the current practice of sharing the reporting person’s name with a student.”

University officials have also told students who met with them this week that they don’t force or encourage students to turn each other in — but BYU alumnus Brayden Smith said that wasn’t his experience.

Smith turned himself in to the Honor Code Office as a student, he said, and told staff there about a sexual encounter he had with a female student. He said the investigator demanded to know who the student was. He at first refused to tell, asking if it would make his punishment more severe if he did not turn her in as well.

“One thing we do look at is your willingness to comply,” Smith recalled the investigator telling him. “If you aren’t willing to give me her name, that’s not really complying.”

Smith finally told the investigator the student’s first name, which was generic. He said the experience left him with lasting scars and made him feel that those who worked in the office had no boundaries in what information they demanded from students.

Most Honor Code cases handled by the Provo campus office involve students reporting themselves, like Smith did, according to the university.

Utt said this week that the “vast majority” of the students reviewed by the office remain enrolled. On average, between 10 and 15 students are expelled a year, from a population of 33,000 students, he said. On Friday, Jenkins added that an annual average of between 40 and 50 students have been temporarily suspended during the last three years, with more than 80 percent choosing to return.

But some students say their Honor Code experiences drove them away the private university. Brynn Adams, who uses they and them pronouns, said they transferred to the University of Utah after three years at BYU because of how they were treated after they came out as gay.

Adams said it was important to stand on their former school grounds in protest to be a voice for those who are too scared to stand up for themselves for fear of retaliation.

“I am a body that BYU can’t affect anymore,” Adams said. “And most bodies here are taking a huge risk being here. It is a risk to be here, and BYU can come down on them for it, but they can’t come down on me.”

Calvin, a student who asked to only be identified by his first name because he fears being turned in to the office, said he has several LGBT friends who were too scared to attend the rally for the same reason. As a gay student, he said, he was also “terrified of being reported” but came anyway.

“We absolutely need change on campus,” he added, holding a poster with a scripture from the Bible about love.

One BYU professor stood at the back of the rally. The man, who said his name couldn’t be printed without permission from the university, said he doesn’t report his students to the Honor Code Office because of how the investigators treat students there.

“I fear for their safety,” he said. “I have to see that something changes.”

Criticism of Honor Code enforcement has not been unanimous on campus. During a five-minute moment of silence for LGBTQ students, who have complained of being targeted with extra scrutiny, someone yelled from a nearby building: “If you don’t like the Honor Code, go to a different school."

The calls for change have been gaining traction since last month, after several former BYU athletes took to social media expressing their frustration with the way the school has handled investigations into alleged student misconduct. One of them, former football player Derik Stevenson, spoke at the rally and shared how he did not seek treatment for a painkiller addiction in college for fear of Honor Code discipline.

“I wish I was as brave as you guys are when I was at this school,” Stevenson told the crowd of students.

Stevenson and other former athletes were responding to a Feb. 28 article in The Salt Lake Tribune that detailed how state investigators found that a former BYU police lieutenant looked at private reports created by other Utah County law enforcement agencies and passed information to university officials — including Honor Code investigators.

As part of sweeping reform in 2016, BYU granted amnesty for Honor Code violations to students reporting sexual abuse. Some students say BYU had disciplined them if they were violating the code at the time they were allegedly assaulted; others said they did not report sex crimes because they feared such punishment.

Lopez, who said she was raped and has been afraid to report it, suggested the culture in the office needs further change before she would feel comfortable talking to the investigators there.

“I hope the Honor Code Office and the administration listens,” she said. Her poster read: “The HCO should scare rapists not rape survivors.”

Ron Weaver III, the sophomore who was reported for dyeing his hair, added that he believes the school needs to stop treating “repentance as punishment.”

After the two spoke, Addison Jenkins, the student who was reported for having a gay relationship, climbed onto the same table and asked the crowd: “Who here has been impacted by the Honor Code?”

Hundreds of students called back in response. In some way, they felt, they all have.

April 15, 2019, 11:38 a.m. • An earlier version of this story misspelled Tyler Slade’s name in a photo caption.

A Utah doctor has been charged with prescribing nearly 900 pills to undercover federal agents investigating him, and prosecutors have filed an injunction to stop him from prescribing more.

While Nick Carl Greenwood “holds himself out as a medical practitioner who operates the premier outpatient program for the treatment of opioid dependence in the Western United States," federal prosecutors wrote he is actually doing more to fuel and profit from the opioid epidemic than cure people.

Documents filed Friday in Utah’s U.S. District Court allege Greenwood knew his patients were selling the narcotics he prescribed them — the Schedule III drug buprenorphine, also known as Suboxone — and that they weren’t using the drugs to treat their addictions. Instead, patients were using the drugs to “lessen the effects of opioid use.”

Agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration began looking into Greenwood, who runs Greenwood Addiction Physicians in Murray, after the Tooele County Sheriff’s Office learned in April 2018 that an inmate in their jail was paying people to get pills through Greenwood, according to court documents.

Ultimately, the DEA sent three undercover agents to try to get pills from Greenwood. They visited him 20 times in total between June 28, 2018 and Feb. 21, coming away with 889 pills “without a legitimate medical purpose.”

The agents describe lax clinic protocols, saying Greenwood never physically examined them, reviewed their medical records or discussed a treatment plan. They also say Greenwood never tested the agents’ urine samples, which were taken before each visit.

Court documents show that during a Sept. 25, 2018 visit, one agent poured soda into the sample cup instead of urine and Greenwood either didn’t notice or didn’t say anything if he did.

The agent also talked about selling the prescribed pills. In one instance in July 2018, the agent said Greenwood walked him out of an examination room and gave the agent advice for how to profit from selling his pills.

The doctor allegedly told the agent to use less than the recommended dosage and sell the rest. In another visit in August 2019, Greenwood is reported to have told an agent that he believed 40% to 50% of patients illegally sold their pills — and that he was certain 25% did.

Agents also found that Greenwood accepted cash payments for prescriptions, which were often pre-signed and given out without Greenwood seeing patients, the court documents allege.

Federal prosecutors charged Greenwood with unlawfully prescribing controlled substances. He could be fined a maximum of $64,820 per violation for a total of $1,231,580.

Prosecutors are also asking a judge to approve a preliminary injunction against Greenwood, which would immediately prevent him from prescribing any more Schedule II and III drugs.

The injunction filing describes Greenwood’s alleged conduct as “significant," but cautions “it is likely just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Based on Dr. Greenwood’s comfort and fluency with the street price of buprenorphine and drug deals, and knowledge that his patients are illegally diverting prescriptions, he likely has previously engaged in — and will continue to engage in — similar illegal conduct,” prosecutors wrote. “There is every reason to believe illegal prescribing pervaded his customer population and will continue.”

Greenwood has 60 days to respond to the charges filed and 14 days to respond to the injunction, U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said in a news release.

He did not immediately respond to The Salt Lake Tribune’s request for comment at his clinic. An email address associated with the clinic appears to no longer be active.

Back in Season 1 of “Game of Thrones,” Cersei Lannister told Ned Stark, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.”

Well, we know that Ned (Sean Bean) lost both the game and his head. Cersei (Lena Headey) is still in the running as the eighth and final season of the hugely popular HBO series begins on Sunday.

And fans are dying to find out how it ends. We’re just five weeks away from finding out who wins; the series finale is scheduled for Sunday, May 19.

If I knew how it ends, I wouldn’t tell you. I hate spoilers. But here’s one prediction that’s guaranteed to be 100% true: “Game of Thrones” will end amid controversy. Some fans will love it; others will hate it and take to social media to rip the show.

In an interview with Emmy Magazine, Kit Harington (who plays the King in the North, Jon Snow) called the ending “strong.” But, he added, “I haven’t watched a single series that has a following like ‘Thrones’ does where everyone is satisfied with the ending. I don’t think that it’ll be any different with this. I think it will divide opinion.”

Absolutely. But it’s fun to speculate. And here are a few guesses from Salt Lake Tribune readers and staff:

• Reader Alex White, who’s a “big fan” of the show, thinks that “Jon Snow and Khaleesi (Daenerys Targaryen) will defeat Cersei and ultimately prevail against the White Walkers after a long and devastating battle. But then winter will come. Ultimately, Westeros will survive in the end just like it always has, regardless of who is currently seated on the Iron Throne. As far as the dragons, Khaleesi will maintain one or two dragons who will help her maintain her grip on the throne. She is the true heir to the Iron Throne.

“Full disclosure, I was raised on Disney so this might all be wishful thinking.”

• Tribune movie critic/reporter Sean P. Means said, “The character with the biggest claim on the Iron Throne is the one we haven’t seen yet: The child of Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow. So what if the kid’s parents are related? [Note: Turns out Daenerys is Jon’s aunt.] That child could end up being the symbol around which Winterfell, the Dothraki, and everybody who’s not a Lannister supporter rallies to defeat the Night King — and then knock over Cersei as an afterthought.

“The question then becomes who will raise the child. My guess is Daenerys will sacrifice her life, probably to the zombified dragon Viserion, leaving Jon Snow to be a single daddy and regent to the baby monarch.”

• Tribune marketing coordinator Jennifer Fitzgibbon is of a similar mind. “I think the HBO show will cater to its fans and end with Jon Snow (Targaryen) ending up on the Iron Throne while Daenerys dies heroically in battle.

“When it comes to those dang White Walkers, I have no idea. Maybe aliens will take care of them.”

• Tribune reporter Ben Wood proposes a “happy (sorta) scenario“ in which Jon Snow will kill the Night King, ending the war with the dead, but Jon will also die in the process. The war in the North will have prompted a southward evacuation by the people of Westeros, putting strain on King’s Landing and tying up Cersei’s armies with riots and uprisings. Jaime will return from the North to find the capital in chaos, and will once again be the Kingslayer, stopping a mad monarch from (metaphorically and/or literally) burning the city to the ground.

“Daenerys will then reclaim the throne, pregnant with Jon’s child, restarting a Targaryen royal dynasty allied with Sansa Stark as Warden of the North in Winterfell.

“But that’s the happy scenario, and that’s not exactly the ‘Game of Thrones’ style. So I put it as even money the Night King will end up just killing everyone and covering the known world in an endless winter.”

• Tribune reader Stuart Johnson comes down strongly on the opposite side of the happy scenario. “Given the history of the show, I highly doubt we end up with a happy ending — i.e., Jon and Daenerys defeat the Night King, marry, then rule. I think the Night King will destroy most of the armies of Westoros, but in the end, Jaime will turn on Cersei for the good of the realm, and leave the throne to Tyrion or Sam to shepherd.”

• Tribune web manager Kelly Cannon is basing her theory “on the assumption that Cersei is actually pregnant. She will lose the baby either in a miscarriage or in childbirth. This will cause her to go mad and she will become the Mad Queen. It will be up to Jamie to then kill her to save Westeros. He’s already the Kingslayer because he killed the Mad King. He will now have to kill the Mad Queen and become the Queenslayer. Afterward, he’ll either kill himself or (in a better plot) Brienne of Tarth will have to kill him because she will be honor-bound to do so.”

• Tribune sportswriter Alex Vejar predicts that “with his last dying breath, after helping defeat the White Walkers and the Lannisters, Jon Snow graciously gives the Seven Kingdoms to the mother of dragons [Daenerys]. I think most everyone dies, including Cersei, Jamie, Melisandre, Davos and Varys. And I think Dany loses another dragon somehow.”

• Tribune reader Scott Hansen is an optimist. “Daenerys will win the Iron Throne, and Jon Snow will be her hand.”

(The hand of the king — or queen — is the ruler’s chief adviser. Sort of a prime minister/grand vizier.)

• Tribune photo editor Rachel Molenda is convinced that “Jamie has to kill Cersei. Also, I think even though Jon is heir to rule over everyone, he’ll give the throne to Daenerys. It doesn’t seem like he really wants to be king. But the statues of Jon, Arya and Sansa [in a promo clip] throw me off and I don’t want to think about everyone dying, but maybe everyone will die because the writers just seem that rude. And none of that considers whether everyone who has died up to now will rise because of the ice zombies showing up. I am stressed.”

Molenda’s husband, Jeff Rock, takes a dark view of what’s coming: “Cersei takes her own life to become one of the dead. She wins. Arya and Sansa die.”

• Molenda isn’t the only one feeling “Game of Thrones” stress. Tribune reader Taylor Jolley describes himself as a “big fan” who is “way too emotionally invested.” And he thinks “the only fitting ending is in a way that is completely unexpected, and sure to stir lots of emotion in fans. For example, many or all of the key players either dying or renouncing the throne, and a smaller character such as Gendry being crowned after all the dust settles.

“This won’t stop me throwing things at the TV if Jon dies (again).”

• Tribune reporter Nate Carlisle said that the show “reminds us how choices made long ago influence us today. So why not have the show end much as it began?

“Daenerys Targaryen returns to Essos to continue liberating people there. Jon Snow returns to The Wall to protect Westeros from whatever remains after the final battle with the Night King. Sansa Stark takes her father’s place as Warden of the North. Likewise, a Baratheon sits on the Iron Throne.

“Congratulations, Gendry, and your wife/Hand of the King, Arya Stark.”

• I’ve watched every “Game of Thrones” episode multiple times. I’ve read all the books. I’ve interviewed many of the actors, the producers and author George R.R. Martin himself. And — based on absolutely no inside information whatsoever — here’s what I think will happen:

Something will bring an end to magic. I’m guessing it will be the destruction of the Night King, or something related to that. But Westeros will lose magic, and the seasons will return to normal — no more yearslong summers and winters.

But the end of magic will mean the end of magical things. Bran Stark’s abilities as the Three-Eyed Raven are magic. Melisandre’s ability to appear young is magic. Dragons are magic. Jon Snow being alive is magic.

I’m expecting a bittersweet ending.

In the April 14 Salt Lake Tribune, both Leonard Pitts and George Pyle called attention to Kyle Korver’s evocative essay, “Privileged,” published April 8 in The Players Tribune. He eloquently describes his perspective as a white player in a league that is over 75% players of color. His given privilege of just being white offers him the possibility of “opting in” or choosing to remain silent on issues of racial tension, while his black teammates cannot “opt out” of those contentious discussions. He clarifies that while he is not accepting the personal guilt and shame for our country’s history of slavery and its aftermath of racial injustice, he does bravely accept responsibility for the continuing inequities. Responsibility (the ability to respond) implies a duty to react, to take positive action, in the face of injustice.

As an old white male, I have long been the beneficiary of privilege. I was freely given unconditional love of middle-class parents, access to educational and vocational possibilities, and access to power. None of those privileges were earned by me, but they come with an obligation to repay by working to improve myself and my community. Part of my responsibility is to call out both subtle and overt bigotry, to educate, and to actively demonstrate acceptance, compassion, humility and equality.

Mr. Korver, thank you for the reminder.

William E. Cosgrove, Cottonwood Heights

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Utah’s national parks bring people from all over the world and provide locals a respite from daily life. Unfortunately, our national parks are being clouded by a haze of human-made NOx (nitrogen oxide) and PM (particulate matter) pollution being emitted from the Hunter and Huntington coal power plants. The pollution from these power plants reduces the ability to see Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce and Zion National Parks by 70% of the year or more!

There are solutions available through an industry-standard technology called SCR (selective catalytic reduction), which Pacificorp uses at other plants. EPA analyses found the Hunter and Huntington plants could achieve significant pollution reductions through SCR. So why isn’t Pacificorp using SCR at these plants? In 2015, they made a deal with the state of Utah to close down a coal-fired plant, which the plant was non-compliant with mercury emissions anyway. Then in 2016, because of the regional haze issue, the EPA required SCR to be installed by 2021. Instead of complying with the EPA, Utah chose litigation against them.

What can you do? Contact the Utah Air Quality board and ask them to address the NOx and PM pollution and create a regional haze rule with effective actions.

Maurena Grossman, Salt Lake City

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Really??? We need to do another study of why teachers leave the profession? It will provide us with the same results the other studies have given us. One result would be an increase in pay, at least a cost of living increase. Another would be smaller class sizes so it would become more about helping students and less about crowd control. Also, how about enough money for supplies to teach the students? In elementary schools, some teachers are buying crayons, pencils and other supplies out of their own pockets because the allotted amount goes to buy paper. How many times do we need to go over this list? As a retired educator of 32 years, I am saying wake up legislators and do the right thing for once.

Cindy Christensen, Coalville

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We should be worried that Donald Trump is the president and has the support of most Republicans. Supporting Trump is a denial of America’s need to get along with the rest of the world. Isolationism did not work during either of the World Wars, nor will it work now in our ever-globalized world. Favoring Trump is a green light to racism, hate speech and verbal abuse.

A vote for Trump is telling the people who flee violence, poverty and disasters that their lives don’t matter, that their children can be taken from them, and they can be crammed into cages reminiscent of slave days. If you like Trump, you also don’t mind breathing dirty air and seeing our natural spaces encroached on by dirty fuel exploration. Evidently you don’t need health care, and don’t have any preexisting conditions jeopardized by his policies. You don’t mind your tax dollars going to the cost of lawsuits against the Trump administration (last count, 134), or mind a president who is a perpetual liar (average 15 a day), or spends most weekends at his resort. You must not care that America is losing its place as a world leader.

Patricia Becnel, Ogden

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There are times when I could easily prefer living in the Bronze Age. The Stone Age even. Both were more ignorant times, to be sure, but also considerably less complicated.

Before you say, “Well, don’t you already live there in your head?” consider the fact that you’re still alive as proof that I don’t. Brutal villainy and a general lack of concern for human life was considered a job skill back then.

My fault with the modern age — aside from the fact that social media has proved that the human subconscious hasn’t progressed much beyond witch burning and lynch mobs — is that we have become slaves to our machines.

I am by no means a Luddite, a term originating during the early 19th century when English textile workers went around destroying machinery in mills because they believed such modernization threatened their livelihoods.

Eventually, sufficient Luddites were shot or jailed so that the movement died out. But the problems with machinery were just getting revved up.

Machines have made life much easier in many ways. Building the pyramids would have been much easier with mechanized forklifts instead of the human ones, who tended to wear out rather quickly.

Today, no one in his right mind would submit to a liver transplant performed with just a sharp stick. And who would dare get on an airplane in which the flight controls consisted of a complicated rock?

This doesn’t mean machines are our salvation. Most people today do not understand the machinery they operate, only that it makes the task at hand easier to accomplish — laundry, accounting, traveling, planning, cooking, etc.

But when things stop working, the operator has to find someone else to fix the machine. Unlike indentured servants and other beasts of burden, you can’t threaten them into performing better or even at all.

Well, some people can. But these people are also wizards. For example, Sonny can fix anything. Up to the point when I passed out, I watched him help put my shoulder back in its socket. I’ve seen him fix lawn mowers, motorcycles and guns.

Once, while stuck in the middle of the desert because his truck wouldn’t start, I sat down and began writing my last will and testament in the dirt. Mechanical stuff is beyond me. I knew we were going to die of thirst.

Not Sonny. He opened the hood of the truck, bashed on it with what he called a “fix-it brick.” He swore, climbed onto the top of the engine and jumped up and down until it looked like the motor had been rebuilt with a grenade.

After yanking out several parts and flinging them into the sagebrush, he used a small screwdriver to carefully turn something in the mystery jumble of parts.

“Let’s go,” he said. The truck started right up.

I am not lying. I’ve seen him do this exact same thing at least a dozen times since, including once on a cow. It always works.

This morning, my computer came down with some kind of Windows 10 virus. Nothing works and nothing is where it used to be. The problem is beyond my skill set. Hell, I had to write this column by hand.

I’ll tinker with it some more. If my computer doesn’t start soon, I’ll have to borrow Sonny’s fix-it brick. Then it’s back to the Stone Age.

Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.

Here’s a reason to pay attention as President Donald Trump wages trade and tariff wars: A new study says international trade supports 1 of every 5 jobs in Utah — 389,000 of them.

The study by the Business Roundable, an association of chief executive officers of top U.S. firms, says trade with Canada and Mexico alone support more than 120,000 jobs in Utah. The state exported $2.7 billion in goods and services to those two countries in 2017.

The group said that highlights “the need to preserve and strengthen the North American trading relationship by passing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) this year.”

It notes that exports from Utah to Canada and Mexico have increased by 378 percent since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.

The study found that trade-supported jobs in Utah increased by 86 percent from 1994 (when NAFTA was implemented) to 2017 — nearly three times faster than total employment.

The report says that worldwide, Utah exported $11.6 billion in goods and $6.8 billion in services in 2017 to 196 countries.

The top buyers of Utah goods and services abroad were the United Kingdom, $2.3 billion in goods and $617 million in services; Hong Kong, $1.6 billion in goods and $129 million in services; Canada, $1.2 billion in goods and $510 million in services; China, $731 million in goods and $404 million in services; and Mexico, $673 million in goods and $281 million in services.

The study says Utah’s exports have grown at a rate of 6.1% a year since 2007, while the average state gross domestic product grew at 3.7% during that time.

It also says that Utah ranks among the top 15 state exporters in 14 industries. That includes ranking third in nonferrous metal products, third in sheep, goats and fine animal fur and sixth in miscellaneous foods.

“With more than 95 percent of the world population and 80 percent of the world’s purchasing power outside the United States, future economic growth and jobs for Utah and America increasingly depend on expanding U.S. trade,” the study says.

Happy Tuesday. You may not be able to pronounce his name. Yet. But Pete Buttigieg is on the rise. In the span of 11 weeks, the South Bend mayor has risen from the bottom of the pack to a slot in the top tier of the 2020 Democratic field. Can it last? [Politico] Also, if you missed it, a profile of Buttigieg that’s worth a read. [NYMag]

Topping the news: Ahead of a scheduled campaign visit to Utah, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren discusses public land conservation including reinstating the original Bear Ears National Monument as part of her campaign platform. [Trib][DNews]

-> Two Utah cities will pilot ranked choice voting after four other cities backed out of the program to test the new voting system. [Trib][Fox13]

Tweets of the day: From @SteveSaldivar: “You don’t win a Pulitzer Prize without the help of people coming forward to share their story. Often putting themselves at risk. They’re names are often not in the story, but as @latimesharriet says, ‘we could not have done it without them.’”

-> By @BySteveReilly: “Most Pulitzer Prize winners today will celebrate with their colleagues, families and friends. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo remain in prison for their work exposing the systematic expulsion and murder of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.”

Happy Birthday: to Ann Romney and to Derek Miller, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber.

In other news: Tax day was Monday, here is a sum up of useful information for those expecting refunds or those who have filed for an extension. [Trib][ABC4]

-> FlixBus, a German company which launched in the United States last year, has announced it will now provide service from Salt Lake City to las Vegas. Tickets, currently only $4.99, will be on sale until May 3 after that date they will increase to $14.99 or $19.99. [Trib][ABC4]

-> A Louisiana native who mistakenly applied to Salt Lake Community College instead of South Louisiana Community College received a free trip to Salt Lake City from an anonymous donor and took a tour of Utah’s SLCC campus. [Trib][Fox13]

-> A mumps outbreak in Sanpete County has prompted health officials to bar children who have not received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine from attending school or school activities until May 5 at the earliest. [Trib]

-> A newly elected top prosecutor in Utah County vows to reform the justice system starting with changing the way the department handles low level offenders. [Trib]

-> Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson vows to find solution to winter congestion in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons by the ski season of 2020-2021. [DNews]

-> Pat Bagley illustrates our lady of liberty’s vantage point. [Trib]

Nationally: Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders appeared on a Fox News hosted Town Hall and held his own despite criticism from liberals for agreeing to participate in an event hosted by a conservatively bent network. [Politico][NYTimes]

-> Sanders released 10 years of tax returns showing increased income from his presidential campaign in 2016 and subsequent book sales showing places him among the nation’s top 1 percent of earners. [WaPost][Politico][NYTimes]

-> As President Trump prepares for a 2020 re-election campaign, verbal attacks against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar are reminiscent of the Muslim stigmatization employed during his 2016 campaign. [NYTimes]

-> Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action against an accounting firm if it releases the president’s financial statements following a subpoena for the records from House Oversight and Reform Committee. [Politico]

Got a tip? A birthday, wedding or anniversary to announce? Send us a note to cornflakes@sltrib.com.

-- Thomas Burr and Christina Giardinelli

A 76-year-old Delta man was shot to death, and his brother is in jail in what’s been described as an argument over property.

John Peck, 63, was booked into the Millard County jail on Sunday night after he called police to report that “he had shot his brother and needed help,” according to a booking document filed with the jail the jail.

When deputies arrived near 100 W. 1000 North in Delta shortly after 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Peck was outside the residence and was “very emotional." Police discovered the body of Frank Wynn Bringard inside the home on the living room. Peck told police he shot Bringard because “he had gotten into an argument with his brother over titles to property” and that “he thought his brother was lying to him over properties.”

Peck is being held in lieu of $1 million bail. Formal charges have not yet been filed.

The lawsuit over use of the science fiction and fantasy convention name “Comic Con” might still be on appeal, but a federal judge says his earlier ruling stands.

The Salt Lake City-based convention now called FanX must pay $4 million in attorney fees, the judge affirmed Monday, FOX 13 reported. The injunction forbidding the convention from using “Comic Con,” like the more-famous gathering in San Diego, was made permanent, the station reported.

The ruling is a minor procedural step in the case. FanX organizers are still hoping the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reduces the amount it owes in the trademark-infringement case.

The spring 2019 edition of FanX begins this week.

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune and FOX 13 are content-sharing partners.

Renton, Wash. • Russell Wilson is sticking around with the Seattle Seahawks as the highest paid player in the NFL.

Wilson posted a video on social media early Tuesday saying, "Seattle, we got a deal," shortly after agreeing to a $140 million, four-year extension with the Seahawks, his agent Mark Rodgers told The Associated Press. Wilson's new deal runs through the 2023 season and includes a $65 million signing bonus, a no-trade clause and $107 million in guaranteed money.

Wilson's per year average of $35 million tops Aaron Rodgers' average annual salary of $33.5 million as part of the $134 million extension he signed last year with the Green Bay Packers.

Wilson's current $87.6 million, four-year deal was signed at the beginning of training camp in 2015 and was set to expire after next season.

"Russell's goal and his hope was that he would continue his career with the Seahawks and continue to bring championships to this town," Rodgers said. "He believes there is still unfinished business and he is looking forward to pursuing that without having to worry about contracts and his future."

The 30-year-old Wilson had set a midnight deadline for a new deal with Seattle. He wanted certainty about his contract before the start of the team's offseason workout program, which began on Monday. Wilson showed up for the first day and by the end of the night was posting a video with wife Ciara announcing the agreement.

The deal ends the debate about Wilson's future with the Seahawks, although there seemed to be little doubt he would remain in Seattle for a while. The team held leverage knowing it likely had at least three more seasons with Wilson under center. Even if he played out 2019 under his current deal, Seattle could have used the franchise tag if needed to keep him under contract through 2020 and 2021 at a reasonable price by quarterback standards.

But the extension allows Seattle to budget for the future knowing how to work with Wilson's hefty paycheck in the years ahead and build a contender around the former third-round pick that has developed into a franchise QB.

Wilson's new deal was going to have to top the extension signed by Rodgers before the start of last season. Wilson was the second-highest paid player in football behind Rodgers when his deal was signed in 2015, but had fallen to the 12th highest-paid QB in the league, according to Overthecap.com.

The five-time Pro Bowl selection is coming off arguably his best season as Seattle went a surprising 10-6 and earned an NFC wild card before losing to Dallas in the opening round of the playoffs. It was supposed to be a rebuilding year, but the Seahawks were ahead of schedule thanks to their return to a run-first offense and Wilson's exceptional performance when tasked to throw.

The 5-foot-11 Wilson threw for a career-high 35 touchdowns and matched his career low with seven interceptions. He attempted only 427 passes — his lowest total since his second season when Seattle won the Super Bowl — but his efficiency was a career best with a 110.9 passer rating. He also ran only 67 times, a career low, as the improved run game and offensive line play allowed Wilson to stay in the pocket more and scramble for his life less.

It was a stark change from the 2017 season when Seattle missed the playoffs for the first time under Wilson. He led the league in touchdown passes, but also was Seattle's leading rusher due to a non-existent run game.

The idea of Wilson ever leaving Seattle has always seemed a stretch. Teams simply don't give up on quarterbacks with the kind of success he's had. Wilson has led the Seahawks to the playoffs in six of his seven seasons, the only miss coming in 2017 when Seattle finished 9-7. He won a Super Bowl in his second season and got back to the championship game a year later before making the one major mistake of his career that will linger until he wins another title, throwing a goal line interception in the final minute when the Seahawks had a chance to take the lead on New England.

Wilson has shelved the stigma of short quarterbacks being unable to play in the NFL. He’s also been extremely durable, never missing a game while playing through significant knee, ankle and shoulder injuries.

National Parks Week kicks off Saturday with a present for every American: Admission to the nation’s 61 national parks and more than 300 other sites across the country is free.

That includes, of course, Utah’s five national parks: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion. It also includes seven national monuments — Cedar Breaks, Dinosaur, Grand Staircase/Escalante, Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, Rainbow Bridge and Timpanogos Cave — as well as Golden Spike National Historic Park and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

(The National Park Service also oversees four National Historic Trails that go through Utah: California, Mormon Pioneer, Old Spanish, and Pony Express.)

The entrance-fee waiver does not cover amenity or user fees for activities like camping, boat launches, transportation or special tours.

National Parks Week actually runs nine days, with a series of special events: Saturday, April 20, is National Junior Rangers Day; Sunday, April 21, is Military and Veterans Recognition Day; Monday, April 22, is Earth Day; Tuesday, April 23, is Transportation Tuesday; Wednesday, April 24, is Wild Wednesday; Thursday, April 25, is Throwback Thursday; Friday, April 26, is Friendship Friday; Saturday, April 27, is Bark Ranger Day; and Sunday, April 28, is Park Rx Day.

For more information, go to nps.gov.

Saturday will be the second (after Martin Luther King Day) of five free-admission days this year. The parks will also be open free-of-charge on the National Park Service birthday (Aug. 25); National Public Lands Day (Sept. 28); and Veterans Day (Nov. 11).

Like the plants it grows on the foothills of Salt Lake City, Red Butte Garden creates its summer concert lineup organically.

“We try to look at each individual opportunity and show as its own kind of living, being thing,” said Chris Mautz, concert promoter for the Red Butte Garden Outdoor Concert Series. “Each of them has their own story to tell.”

The 2019 concert series will have 31 stories to tell, mixing up-and-coming performers like blues rocker Gary Clark Jr. and multi-instrumentalist Tash Sultana with such legendary musicians as Mark Knopfler, Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Williams, Seal and Boz Scaggs.

Creating the series schedule is “sort of an ongoing conversation that happens pretty much year round,” Mautz said. Sometimes Mautz pursues acts that are planning to tour, sometimes agents and artists approach him, and sometimes he takes suggestions from Red Butte Garden audiences and members.

The outdoor setting is one draw for artists, but so are the audiences.

“Performers are kind of surprised by Utah crowds, and the real attentiveness at times to the show, and the energy that’s shared,” Mautz said. “Red Butte is not a passive place to perform. People aren’t just sitting there having what happens onstage be its own thing. That audience connection is part of the whole thing.”

The range of musical styles covers rock, folk, bluegrass, alt-country, blues, funk and more. The ticket prices also range widely: The cheapest, at $35 for the general public, is for Utah Shakespeare Festival’s concert version of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” on June 6; the most expensive, at $92, is for guitarist and Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler on Sept. 11.

Here are the 31 shows in the 2019 Red Butte Garden Outdoor Concert Series, with dates and general-public ticket prices. (Tickets are $5 cheaper for Red Butte Garden members.)

• Friday, May 31 • Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, jazz/bluegrass band. Opening act: Billy Strings, bluegrass guitarist. • $50. (Previously announced.)

• Wednesday, June 5 • Little Feat, southern rock band marking its 50th anniversary. • $47. (Previously announced.)

• Thursday, June 6 • Concert version of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Raincoat,” presented by Utah Shakespeare Festival. • $35. (Previously announced.)

• Tuesday, June 25 • Howard Jones, British 1980s pop-rock performer. Opening act: Men Without Hats, new wave/synthpop group. • $50.

• Wednesday, June 26 • Lucinda Williams, folk/rock singer-songwriter, with her band, Buick 6. • $40.

• Thursday, June 27 • Greensky Bluegrass, bluegrass/rock band. Opening act: The Lil Smokies, progressive bluegrass band. • $40. (Previously announced.)

• Tuesday, July 2 • Utah Symphony’s “Patriotic Celebration,” featuring Broadway actor-singer Hugh Panaro, conducted by Michael Krajewski. • $40. (Previously announced.)

• Wednesday, July 10 • Galactic, jazz/funk jam band. Opening act: Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, funk/jazz multi-instrumentalist. • $38.

• Thursday, July 11 • Pink Martini, cocktail pop combo, featuring singer China Forbes. • $47. (Previously announced.)

• Sunday, July 14 • Lyle Lovett, alt-country legend, and His Large Band. • $53.

• Thursday, July 18 • Seal, soul/R&B singer-songwriter. • $75.

• Tuesday, July 23 • Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, folk/Americana band. Opening act: Lucius, indie-pop quartet. • $55.

• Friday, July 26 • Trampled by Turtles, bluegrass/folk/rock band. Opening act: The Dead South, Canadian folk/bluegrass band. • $42.

• Tuesday, July 30 • John Prine, country/folk singer-songwriter. Opening act: I’m With Her, female folk/bluegrass trio. • $65. (Previously announced.)

• Sunday, Aug. 4 • Umphrey’s McGee, rock/jazz jam band. Opening act: Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, funk jam band. • $42.

• Monday, Aug. 5 • Jonny Lang, blues/rock guitarist-singer, and JJ Grey & Mofro, southern soul/rock band (co-headlining). • $51.

• Wednesday, Aug. 7 • Mandolin Orange, Americana/folk duo. • $37.

• Friday, Aug. 9 • O.A.R., indie-rock band. Opening act: American Authors, pop/rock band. • $58. (Previoiusly announced.)

• Tuesday, Aug. 13 • Shakey Graves, Americana/blues/folk musician, and Dr. Dog, psychedelic rock band (co-headlining). • $43.

• Wednesday, Aug. 14 • Lord Huron, indie-folk band. • $45.

• Friday, Aug. 16 • The B-52s, ‘80s new wave band. Opening acts: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), English electronic band; and Berlin, ‘80s new wave band. • $78. (Previously announced.)

• Monday, Aug. 19 • Steve Miller Band, classic-rock band, and Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, country legend (co-headlining). • $87. (Previously announced.)

• Monday, Aug. 26 • Stray Cats, rockabilly band celebrating 40th anniversary. • $79. (Previously announced.)

• Wednesday, Aug. 28 • The Wood Brothers, folk/blues/country band, and Colter Wall, outlaw country singer-songwriter (co-headlining). • $40.

• Thursday, Aug. 29 • Amos Lee, soul/folk singer-songwriter. Opening act: Madison Cunningham, Americana singer-songwriter. • $45.

• Wednesday, Sept. 4 • Gov’t Mule, southern rock jam band. • $42.

• Friday, Sept. 6 • Gary Clark Jr., blues/rock/soul musician. • $63.

• Wednesday, Sept. 11 • Mark Knopfler, rock guitarist-songwriter. • $92.

• Sunday, Sept. 15 • Boz Scaggs, rock/soul guitarist-singer. • $50.

• Thursday, Sept. 19 • Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, Americana/alt-country musicians. • $62.

• Monday, Sept. 23 • Tash Sultana, psychedelic rock “one person band.” Opening act: The Teskey Brothers, Australian blues/rock band. • $45.

Tickets for most shows go on sale to Red Butte Garden members online on Monday, April 29, at 7 p.m., and by phone and in person on Tuesday, April 30, at 9 a.m. Tickets for the general public — for shows that haven’t sold out already — go on sale online, by phone or in person on Monday, May 6, at 9 a.m. (The exceptions are tickets for the Béla Fleck, Little Feat, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and Utah Symphony shows, which are already on sale.)

Those wishing to renew or purchase “Garden-Flex” level memberships, so they can take part in the members-only presale, have until Tuesday, April 23, at midnight to do so.

Red Butte Garden is located at 300 Wakara Way in Salt Lake City, on the University of Utah campus.

For details, go to www.redbuttegarden.org/concerts.

Paris • Authorities are assessing the stability of Notre Dame Cathedral after a fire ripped through the iconic monument in central Paris and seriously damaged large parts of the structure.

"Fire risk being now removed, it's now about the building itself," deputy interior minister Laurent Nunez said early Tuesday morning after visiting the iconic 850-year-old Gothic monument.

Firemen were still hosing the south side of the transept to cool down the building, and a district around the cathedral was sealed, as military and police patrolled the area. Experts met at 8 a.m. local time to determine if the building structure is stable and if firemen can now work inside to cool the building, Nunez said.

President Emmanuel Macron late Monday evening vowed to rebuild the cathedral after it was ravaged in the fire, leaving France in shock over the extensive damage to one of the nation’s most iconic landmarks. The president called for donations and said he would draw on the world’s best talents for the task. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo suggested an international donors office.

Money has already started to arrive for a rebuilding that will take years if not decades. The Paris region has unblocked 10 million euros ($11.5 million) in emergency funding. The Pinault family of Gucci owner Kering announced it was giving 100 million euros and the Arnault family that controls LVMH said it pledged 200 million euros.

The blaze raged for more than four hours before Macron declared the two bell towers and facade had been saved. Flames had engulfed the roof, snaking up the ornate spire before it collapsed as smoke billowed out into the evening skyline of the French capital. More than 400 firefighters battled the inferno.

The cause of the fire is still unknown. Paris prosecutors opened a non-criminal investigation Monday night, a routine step in such a major incident. The roof of the monument was under restoration and partially covered in scaffolding."We will rebuild Notre-Dame because that's what the French people want," said Macron, who was visibly moved. "That's what our history deserves, because that is our destiny."

The historic church, located on one of two islands in the middle of the Seine River, had been under renovation and scaffolding had covered much of the top structure.

Live television images transfixed viewers around the world and Macron postponed a major speech as flames tore through the cathedral that has towered over Paris for centuries. It had come through long-range German bombardment during World War I and was spared damage during World War II.

Bystanders including priests were cordoned off from the blaze on Monday, with many singing and praying, or standing by in silent disbelief. Thousands of people were evacuated from the building after the fire broke out and hundreds of onlookers remained on the scene as ashes fell onto surrounding streets. At least one fire fighter was seriously injured.

Some of the centuries-old artwork and relics from the cathedral were removed by firefighters, according to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. She wrote on Twitter she was at a loss for words "to express the pain I feel in the face of the ravaging flames. Tonight Parisians and the French mourn this symbol of our common history."

Early Tuesday, it was still unclear what exactly had been saved from inside the church, Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit said on BFM. He said the treasury had been saved, including a crown of thorns that Louis IX is reputed to have brought from the Holy Land in the 13th century, and that the organ appears to have escaped major damage. "But some things are attached to walls and couldn't be taken out and I don't know what shape they are in," he said.

"It is eight centuries of history going up in smoke," said Marion Lacroix, a 54-year-old Parisian. "It's the heart of the country. I think that in our generation, people won't see Notre Dame built again. It's over."

The flames lapping the famous landmark is just the latest in a string of tragedies to strike the French capital. In 2015, Paris was the site of two of the worst terror attacks in the country's post-WWII history. Since last November, the city has also been under siege every Saturday as clashes between the so-called Yellow Vest protesters and police have turned violent. Macron canceled a major policy speech as the extent of the fire became clear.

Notre Dame is a major tourist destination, with the number of visitors swelling to as many as 50,000 a day, especially during periods like holy week in the Christian calendar leading up to Easter.

The fire devastated a center of French Catholicism where some of the nation's historical events were celebrated. Construction got underway in the 12th century, though the current structures are mostly the result of renovations carried out in the 19th century following damage during the French Revolution.

The cathedral was at one time in a state of total disrepair and close to the point of being demolished, but was later saved by Napoleon who himself was crowned Emperor in 1804 inside the cathedral.

The interior of the cathedral is 427 by 157 feet, with its 115-foot-high roof. Two massive early Gothic towers crown the western facade, which is divided into three stories and has its doors adorned with early Gothic carvings and surmounted by a row of figures of Old Testament kings.

Bloomberg’s Vidya Root, James Regan, Adveith Nair and Tara Patel contributed.

Kerry Gibson, the current deputy director for the Utah Department of Natural Resources and a former Republican legislator, has been named the new commissioner for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

Gov. Gary Herbert, who announced the appointment Monday, said Gibson’s previous government experience and his career as a dairy farmer "will serve him well as he works with Utah’s farmers, ranchers and other important members of our agricultural community.”

Gibson served in the the Utah House from 2005 to 2010 and later was elected to the Weber County Commission.

He will replace the retiring LuAnn Adams, the first woman to lead the department. Gibson’s appointment is subject to confirmation by the Utah Senate.

During his time as a state representative, Gibson was the chairman of the Natural Resources Appropriations Committee, where he oversaw the state’s budget for natural resources, agriculture and others state departments. He also sponsored legislation dismissive of the science supporting climate change. Critics argued Gibson’s unwillingness to acknowledge the threat of global warming made him a poor choice for a key position overseeing natural resources.

Gibson’s appointment as deputy director of natural resources came under another cloud in 2017, when Ogden police investigated the dairyman’s role in a flood-mitigation project on the Weber River near his family’s fifth-generation farm. A five-month investigation failed to produce sufficient evidence to prosecute Gibson on allegations he misused public funds and resources.

As agriculture commissioner, Gibson will oversee nearly 200 employees responsible for — among other duties — livestock grazing; weed eradication; soil conservation; meat and poultry safety; homeland-security issues; and even some consumer-protection policies, such as ensuring that the gas pump fills your tank with the correct amount of fuel.

“It is truly an honor to have been nominated by Governor Herbert as the commissioner of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food,” Gibson said in a news release. “I express my gratitude to all of those who work so hard every day to provide food and fiber for a grateful nation. Working together with all Utahns, we can make Utah an even better place to live and thrive."

Video: To many Parisians, the Cathedral of Notre Dame has embodied the heart of the French capital for more than 800 years. Here’s a look back at the cathedral’s history. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)

A great book is burning, one of the greatest ever written.

That an edifice like Notre Dame Cathedral could survive so much and then, in an instant, by accident, be engulfed in flames and devastated in a matter of hours causes, in 2019, a sensation that is at once harrowing and dully familiar. We assume that things are durable because they have lasted. But in the words of G. K. Chesterton "to be breakable is not the same thing as to be perishable. Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years."

"A vast symphony in stone," wrote Victor Hugo of Notre Dame in his novel of the same name. "The colossal work of a man and of a nation," he continued, "combining unity with complexity ... a sort of human Creation, in short, mighty and prolific as the Divine Creation, of which it seems to have caught the double character, variety and eternity."

Yet, strangely, Hugo's contention was that the book had killed the cathedral. The cathedral had been the form for the preservation of human thought for centuries. "In those ages, whoever was born a poet," Hugo wrote, "became an architect."

To Hugo, the cathedral, with its heavy towers and its soaring spire leaping weightlessly heavenwards, was a book in which, over the course of two centuries of construction, builders and masons and architects and worshipers had inscribed their thoughts. Passersby and worshipers could read their hopes and see the spots that marked their transit from birth to oblivion. Their labor wrote sentences in the stone, paragraphs; it built a cathedral. It was not merely a sermon in stone; it was a symphony, made up of innumerable voices.

Time is a distance that can be traversed by places that remain powerfully still. Like the moon visible from two distant points at once, Notre Dame is a rare edifice that is fixed, on which our eyes can meet across the expanse of time, that we can discuss with the long-dead.

Mark Twain marveled at the carvings on its facade, writing in 1869′s The Innocents Abroad that “These battered and broken-nosed old fellows saw many and many a cavalcade of mail-clad knights come marching home from Holy Land; they heard the bells above them toll the signal for the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, and they saw the slaughter that followed; later they saw the Reign of Terror, the carnage of the Revolution, the overthrow of a king, the coronation of two Napoleons ... and they may possibly continue to stand there until they see the Napoleon dynasty swept away and the banners of a great republic floating above its ruins.”

Things last because they acquire new meaning and they continue to acquire new meaning because they last. This is a source of optimism. We can only travel so far across time, these artifacts inform us, but it is possible to send words into the void, written in ink or in pixels or in stone. To build is always an act of hope, of faith that the unexpected good will continue to happen. Yet so much does endure. We begin to forget what a miracle it is that anything is here -- a church, a forest, a system of government.

Perhaps the fragility of the durable should be more readily apparent. Nothing is so instantly and painfully scarce as that which used to seem ubiquitous and permanent. The cathedral looms permanently over the city; it is almost too obvious. You need not capture something so present. Then in an instant the permanent vanishes, and the ephemera is what endures.

This is why Hugo thought the book would destroy the cathedral. "Now, what immortality is more precarious than that of a manuscript? But a building is quite another book, a substantial and durable one." Yet the book has not destroyed the cathedral. It has helped save it, has helped make it worth preserving. "In printed form thought is more imperishable than ever: it is volatile, intangible, indestructible; it is in the air we breathe. In the days of architecture, thought became a mountain, and boldly possessed itself of an age or a place. Now it becomes a flock of birds that scatter themselves unto the four winds of heaven, and occupy at once every point of air and space." And in it, once more, we find the cathedral, preserved in ink, ready to be rebuilt.

Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”

@petridishes

Washington • It’s not enough that President Trump and his advisers have been arguing for years that official government data is bad, untrustworthy, phony, manipulated for political gain. Now they are working to lend credence to these smears and conspiracy theories — by making them true.

Unless, that is, the Supreme Court intervenes.

During the Obama administration, Trump repeatedly claimed that official numbers released by our independent federal statistical agencies — such as the unemployment rate — were fake. Legions of career civil servants were all cooking the books to make Democrats look better, he claimed. Trump’s economic advisers and boosters (including Stephen Moore and Herman Cain, whom Trump now plans to nominate for the Federal Reserve Board) joined in the baseless conspiracy theorizing. As did some other high-profile Obama critics who should have known better.

Troublingly, it turns out a lot of other Americans are on board with this numerical nihilism. In a poll last fall from Marketplace and Edison Research, about 4 in 10 Americans said they either completely or somewhat distrust data about the economy reported by the federal government.

And since Trump has taken office, he has worked to justify such distrust by actively degrading the quality of data — specifically, by seeking to make the 2020 Census less accurate.

The Trump administration wants to add, at the last minute, a new question to the census. I say "last minute" because usually new survey questions go through years of research, field-testing and public comment, as required by law and federal regulations.

This is to make sure that, among other things, any changes will not disrupt the accuracy of an enumeration mandated by the Constitution.

"It's pretty well known that when you change the context of a data-collection instrument, unexpected things can happen," said John Thompson, a former director of the U.S. Census Bureau. "The only way to understand what's going on is to test it."

The question the administration wants to shoehorn in without this process turns out to be particularly disruptive: It asks about citizenship. Given rising levels of government distrust among immigrant and ethnic minority populations, the question could be reasonably expected to depress response rates among these groups and lead to significant undercounts or otherwise inaccurate data.

In fact, in unrelated survey testing in 2017, respondents told census workers that they fear how their data might be used against them or their loved ones. They expressed concerns about the "Muslim ban," anxiety over "registering" household members and the dissolution of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Some falsified their names, birth dates and other demographic information.

Despite such warning signs, as well as an explicit recommendation against inclusion of a citizenship question by experts within the Census Bureau and six former bureau directors appointed by Republicans and Democrats alike, the Trump administration barreled ahead.

Three federal courts have so far blocked the question, finding that the administration violated administrative law. Two of those courts also found it violated the Constitution. Next week, the issue heads to the Supreme Court.

So what happens if the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration instead?

In the near term, the consequences could be severe. Hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated annually based on the decennial census. Congressional seats are apportioned, and districts are redrawn. Perhaps not coincidentally, blue states are likely to be the biggest losers in both dollar terms and political representation if, as expected, this new survey question results in significant undercounts of immigrant and Latino populations.

The decennial census data is also the baseline against which virtually all other surveys are calibrated. Which means that whatever its motives, the administration's innumeracy is likely to skew all sorts of other critical information that government agencies use to evaluate economic trends and health epidemics; that businesses rely on to decide how much to invest and hire and where; and that workers and families use to determine where to live, what to study, how much to spend on a home.

Even giving the public reason to believe the numbers have been either manipulated or mismanaged will cause people and businesses to make worse choices. Just like the Fed, our statistical agencies must be free of political influence both in practice and perception to be useful.

And that's the longer-term risk here. One basis of a democracy is good official statistics so that the people and their representatives can make informed decisions. By throwing the numbers into doubt, the administration jeopardizes our democratic and economic health, not only today, but for many years to come.

Catherine Rampell’s email address is crampell@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @crampell.