During Monday's Days of '47 Parade, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski rode down the route in a convertible — as mayors have done for years, usually accompanied by their spouses.
This was a bit different. Biskupski is the city's first mayor to have a spouse, Betty Iverson, who is of the same sex.
When the car carrying the couple approached the review stand of KSL, which televised the parade live, the cameras cut away to a sideline reporter, who did a quiz with a spectator about famous Mormons.
The coverage came right back to the parade entries passing by the stage — after the mayor and her wife were out of camera view.
While the cars carrying several other officeholders were pictured going by the review stand, the commentators never mentioned the mayor of the city in which the parade was being held.
KSL General Manager Tanya Vea said the station intended no slight toward the mayor.
"We cut away from the parade all the time — for sideline reports, commercials. Someone is always going to feel left out," she said. "Last year were heard complaints from the mothers of the Davis High School band."
Vea said KSL gives top priority to floats and bands, so many individual entries were missed for sideline reports.
My suspicions were aroused over the fact the parade committee itself has denied Mormons Building Bridges, a nonprofit group dedicated to fostering understanding and compassion between the LDS and LGBT communities, from participating in the parade for four consecutive years.
See no satirical evil? • The Salt Lake Tribune ran an ad on the front page of its Utah section Thursday for "The Book of Mormon" musical, which opens Tuesday at the Eccles Theater in downtown Salt Lake City.
The Deseret News, alas, did not.
It turned down the paid ad for the Tony Award-winning play, which, in raunchy terms, pokes fun at the Deseret News' owner, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The paper instead used that spot for a travel agency ad.
Deseret News Editor Doug Wilks noted that the paper covered the musical when it came to Salt Lake City before and did so again this year, with a story in Thursday's online edition.
"But we chose not to run advertising promoting the show that many feel is objectionable," Wilks said, "a position consistent with our position years ago when the musical came to town."
The LDS Church, however, is not averse to promoting itself in playbills for the production — whether in Salt Lake City, New York, Chicago or wherever — with ads that urge theatergoers to read the real Book of Mormon, the faith's foundational scripture.
Belated confession? • Swiping campaign signs is about as common as an ice cream cone on a hot July afternoon, so while I receive reports of these thefts all the time, I rarely write about them.
But it's not every day that the perpetrator calls the candidate whose sign he stole and confesses, apologizes and offers to pay for any damage to the sign.
That's what happened to Taylorsville mayoral candidate Kristie Steadman Overson recently, when she received such a call from a Taylorsville man who was quite remorseful.
Such valor among thieves might not be exactly what it seems, however. Shortly after the call from the sign stealer, Overson received a call from the police, letting her know that they had caught and confronted a man who had admitted taking her signs. The person asserted that the signs were on private property without permission, and that's why he took them.
After some discussion, Officer Brett Miller advised the man, who displayed on his own property campaign signs for Overson's opponent, that he can't just remove signs because they are on someone's private property without contacting the property owner. He didn't cite the man, but left the investigation open.
It may have been that the sign pilferer was not quite as sorrowful about his act until he got caught.
Comedy of errors • As many Utahns celebrated Pioneer Day with parades and barbecues or pie and beer, my former Salt Lake Tribune colleague Carol Sisco was forced into survivalist mode.
Sisco lives in a condo in the Capitol Hill area and so many things went wrong last weekend in her neighborhood that she could have assumed some higher power punishment for neither going to a parade or a pie-and-beer party.
On Sunday afternoon, as she was returning home with her groceries, a neighbor told her a construction crew building condos behind Almond Street had broken a waterline, so the water supply in her complex was depleting quickly.
No problem. Sisco, relying on her well-honed deadline reporting skills, had a couple of gallons of spring water on hand. She quickly filled a few more with tap water. She then filled a bucket from the complex's swimming pool for flushing toilets.
All set, right?
Alas, the city crew digging to find the water break cut the CenturyLink cables right through the middle. While the waterline was fixed in short order, the building's fire alarm went off.
After running down the stairs, she learned it was a false alarm. But the alarm system caused the elevators to go to the bottom floor and automatically lock. No one had a key, and the repair company was closed and couldn't be reached. Besides, the landlines didn't work because of the CenturyLink outage.
Sisco does have a cellphone, but the building intercom is hooked to the landline, so she has no clue if anyone tried to visit her over the weekend.
Pie and beer probably never sounded better.
