Notorious Utah brothel owner’s interview eludes historians
February 1, 2020


1 of 4
This 1948 police booking photo courtesy of Weber State University, Special Collections, shows Rossette Davie, also known as Rose Davie. Weber State University scholars are trying to unlock a mystery after discovering a nearly 70-year-old transcript of an interview with the notorious madam. She ran the Rose Rooms brothel with her husband, Bill Davie, in the 1940s and 1950s. The 1951 transcription is written in a decades-old shorthand style that few people use today. Weber State University historians are asking for help from anyone who might be able to read the dictation. (Weber State University, Special Collections, via AP)

OGDEN, Utah (AP) — Scholars at a Utah university are trying to unlock a mystery after discovering a nearly 70-year-old transcript of an interview with a notorious brothel owner that is written in a shorthand style that few people can read today.

The interview was with madam Rossette Duccinni Davie, who ran the Rose Rooms brothel in Ogden with her husband in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, the location is home to the nightclub Alleged, the Standard-Examiner reported.

The interview with former Standard-Examiner reporter Bert Strand was hidden inside a box of 1970s photos from the newspaper, said Sarah Langsdon, head of the Weber State University’s special collections.

The pages could be a treasure trove of material for historians in Ogden, a city of about 88,000 located 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Salt Lake City.

But there’s a problem: The 1951 transcription is written in a decades-old shorthand style that few people use today. “It’s definitely a lost art,” Langsdon said.

Davie was considered Ogden’s most notorious madame — with the possible exception of Belle London, who was active from 1890 to 1914, Langsdon said.

“Anyone we’ve ever interviewed who was alive remembers her,” Langsdon said of Davie. “She’s definitly a well-known figure in the history of Ogden.”

It’s widely believed that city police and county sheriffs turned a blind eye to the brothel run by Davie and her husband, Bill Davie. Historian Val Holley has said they were likely police informants. Another theory holds that they paid a sheriff to look the other way, Langsdon said.

Rose Davie, as she was known, pulled down $30,000 a month in her prime and withstood several prostitution charges before she was ultimately done in by a federal tax evasion charge, Langsdon said.

Now, Weber State is hoping to find someone who can make sense of the lost interview notes. Anyone who is interested in helping can call 801-626-6540.

“It’s probably been decades since anyone has used (shorthand),” Langsdon said. “But if we could find someone who can decipher these notes, it could be pretty fascinating.”

THE STYLE IS PERSONALIZED SHORT HAND USED BY REPORTERS.
BASED ON STANDARD SHORT HAND FROM THE FORTIES
I LEARNED THE BASIC SHORTHAND IN GRADE 10 TYPING CLASS

Baboon grooms little lion cub in South Africa’s Kruger park
By ANDREW MELDRUM February 4, 2020

1 of 3
In this photo taken Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020, a male baboon carries a lion cub in a tree in the Kruger National Park, South Africa. The baboon took the little cub into the tree and preened it as if it were his own, said safari ranger Kurt Schultz who said in 20-years he had never seen such behaviour. The fate of the lion cub is unknown. (Photo Kurt Schultz via AP)


JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A male baboon carrying and grooming a lion cub is an unusual sight, yet it happened over the weekend in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

The baboon took the cub up into a tree and preened it as if it were its own, said safari operator Kurt Schultz, who in 20 years had never seen such behavior.

“The baboon was grooming the lion cub as if it was a baby baboon,” Schultz said in an email to The Associated Press. “Male baboons do a lot of grooming but the care given to this lion cub was the same care given by a female baboon to one of her own young.”

Schultz said when he first saw the baboons early Saturday, the troop of baboons was excited and animated. It is possible they had discovered the lion cub, he said.

The baboons had gathered in an area with granite hills and boulders where lions and leopards have been known to hide their cubs while they go hunting, he said, and that’s likely how the baboons found the cub.

Baboons “are really strong animals and when they were all excited and fighting over the baby in the beginning, it could have been injured internally,” Schultz said. It was a hot morning and the cub was also showing signs of dehydration, he said.

While the rest of the baboon troop settled down, the male “moved from branch to branch, grooming and carrying the cub for a long period of time,” Schultz said. “The cub seemed very exhausted.”

Schultz and others on safaris in the park watched the rare sight and took photographs.

“I don’t see a chance of this poor cub surviving. The troop of baboons was large and a lion would not be able to get the young back,” Schultz said. “Nature is cruel at most times and the survival of a young predator cub is not easy. The lion cub would pose a threat to the baboons when it gets older. I have witnessed baboons viciously killing leopard cubs and have heard of baboons killing lion cubs.”

MUTUAL AID 
THE MALE BABOON IS ACTING IN A DEFENSIVE MANNER AGAINST THE PACK THREATENING A WEAKER INDIVIDUAL REGARDLESS OF SPECIES 
IT IS BOTH A MATERNAL AND FRATERNAL RESPONSE OF SOLIDARITY 
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MUTUAL+AID
SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KROPOTKIN

Takes a village: Bear ‘foster mom’ raises cub saved by dog
February 13, 2020

1 of 2
In this photo provided by the Wildlife Center of Virginia, a male black bear cub who was admitted to the center on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, in Waynesboro, Va. is cared for by staff members. The cub was rescued the night before in Washington County when a family dog brought it home to its owners. The baby is being resettled with a mother bear and her biological cubs. (Wildlife Center of Virginia via AP)

BRISTOL, Va. (AP) — An orphaned black bear cub has been placed with a substitute mother this week after being saved by a dog and brought to safety.

The rescue effort unfolded after the dog turned up at its owner’s home in Washington County with a cub in its mouth on Feb. 5, Bill Bassinger, wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, told news outlets. The male cub wasn’t hurt by the dog, he added.

The cub, estimated to be two to three weeks old, was taken to the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro for treatment and eventual resettlement with his own species. The center keeps female bears with monitoring collars on for this purpose, according to Bassinger. Conservation officers use the collars to locate the bears, then track them and listen for cubs making sounds in their dens, the center’s website says. If they find a good match, staff members place orphaned cubs outside the dens, and mother bears usually adopt them as their own, Bassinger and experts said.

“The mothering instinct is just very strong in most animals,” Bassinger told the Wytheville Enterprise. “Generally, most females will take the young back, even after it has been handled by humans.”

The male cub was settled into an incubator earlier this week where he received constant care and feeding, an update on the wildlife center’s website said. He was described as bright, alert and “vocalizing readily.” The center said the cub was placed with a new mother who was nursing three cubs of her own on Wednesday.

Pot shops turn to highway sponsor signs amid strict ad rules
February 16, 2020

In this Feb. 6, 2020, photo, a Clean Colorado highway sign sponsored by the Northern Lights Cannabis Co. is displayed on eastbound 6th Avenue west of Sheridan Blvd. in Denver. (Andy Cross/The Denver Post via AP)


DENVER (AP) — Cannabis companies are using a loophole in Colorado’s strict limits on marijuana advertising by sponsoring state highways and putting their names on roadside signs.

Currently, 51 cannabis dispensaries, cultivators, manufacturers and edible producers sponsor roadways throughout the state, according to the Adopt a Highway Maintenance Corporation. Although they represent less than half of all organizations that participate in the Clean Colorado program, their reach spans about 198 miles (318 kilometers) , or 66%, of the roads actively sponsored, The Denver Post reported.


“The rules governing highways signs are in a different section than rules governing the cannabis industry,” said Nico Pento, government affairs director for Boulder-based Terrapin Care Station, which operates six dispensaries in the Denver metro area. “The highway signs were a loophole that was overlooked.”

Colorado Department of Transportation officials say the signs are not intended to be an advertising medium, but they have become a clever workaround for an industry with few other options. Oftentimes, they are strategically placed near exits where passersby can find the businesses.

Colorado’s rules governing how and where cannabis companies can advertise are strict to prevent marketing messages from reaching minors. State regulators prohibit cannabis businesses from advertising on TV, radio and in print unless they can prove the audience is predominantly 21 and older. Digital and social media platforms are even more restrictive.

Harsha Gangadharbatla, an associate professor of advertising, public relations and media design at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says that because Clean Colorado signs don’t look like traditional advertisements, they might be one of the most effective ways to reach drivers.

“They’re a different kind of signage on the side of the road. They tend to stick out a little bit more than billboards, so consumers do pay a little bit more attention to anything that’s novel or different from the formats they’re used to,” he said.

LivWell Enlightened Health, which operates 17 dispensaries in Colorado and Oregon, is one of the top sponsors of Colorado roads, paying for cleanup on 19 miles (30 kilometers). Mike Lord, the company’s director of business development, said the program spreads brand awareness while also making a positive impact.


“It’s pretty incredible how many stretches of mile of highway are being cleaned right now,” he said.

But not everyone is pleased with the program.

Pitkin County Manager Jon Peacock and County Commissioner Patti Clapper criticized the signs after a marijuana grower in Ridgway sponsored a portion of Highway 82, according to The Aspen Times. They said the signs promote marijuana use and obstruct scenery, and that the county hasn’t allowed billboards or highway advertisements for decades.

Drivers could begin to see more prominent advertising from cannabis companies, thanks to a new law that allows them to use outdoor media, such as billboards. Legalized as part of the 2019 Sunset Bill, marijuana ads would be prohibited within 500 feet (152 meters) of schools, places of worship and playgrounds and still be subject to local regulations.

Museum’s Rembrandt knockoff turns out to be the real thing

This s from left, before and after restoration of a painting called "Portrait of a Young Woman." Thanks to modern technology and some expert detective work, the 1632 painting that had long been attributed to an unknown artist in Rembrandt’s workshop has been judged to have been a work of the Dutch master himself. (Allentown Art Museum via AP)Museum’s Rembrandt knockoff turns out to be the real thing

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Thanks to modern technology and some expert detective work, a nearly 400-year-old painting that had long been attributed to an unknown artist in Rembrandt’s workshop has now been judged to have been a work of the Dutch master himself.

For decades, the Allentown Art Museum displayed an oil-on-oak panel painting called “Portrait of a Young Woman” and credited it to “Studio of Rembrandt.” Two years ago, the painting was sent to New York University for conservation and cleaning.

There, conservators began removing layers of overpainting and dark, thick varnish that had been added over centuries — and they began to suspect Rembrandt himself was responsible for the original, delicate brushwork underneath.

“Our painting had numerous layers of varnish and that really obscured what you could see of the original brushwork, as well as the original color,” said Elaine Mehalakes, vice president of curatorial affairs at the Allentown Art Museum.

Conservators used a variety of tools, including X-ray, infrared and electron microscopy, to bolster the case that it was the work of one of the most important and revered artists in history.

The scientific analysis “showed brushwork, and a liveliness to that brushwork, that is quite consistent with other works by Rembrandt,” said Shan Kuang, a conservator at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts who restored “Portrait of a Young Woman.”

Outside experts who examined the 1632 painting after the completion of its two-year restoration concurred with the NYU assessment that it’s an authentic Rembrandt.

“We’re very thrilled and excited,” Mehalakes said. “The painting has this incredible glow to it now that it just didn’t have before. You can really connect with the portrait in the way I think the artist meant you to.”

When “Portrait of a Young Woman” was bequeathed to the museum in 1961, it was considered to be a Rembrandt. About a decade later, a group of experts determined that it had been painted by one of his assistants. Such changes in attribution are not unusual: Over the centuries, as many as 688 and as few as 265 paintings have been credited to the artist, according to Mehalakes.

The museum has not had the painting appraised — and has no intention of selling it — but authenticated works by Rembrandt have fetched tens of millions of dollars.

The painting, currently in the museum’s vault, will go on public display starting June 7.

Democrats diverge on outreach to anti-abortion swing voters
JUST ANOTHER WHITE MALE VOTING BLOCK

FILE - In this July 30, 2019, file photo, from left, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., greet each other before the first of two Democratic presidential primary debates hosted by CNN at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Democratic presidential hopefuls are offering different approaches to the central challenge of how to talk about the polarizing debate over abortion. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — In a party that’s shifted leftward on abortion rights, Democratic presidential hopefuls are offering different approaches to a central challenge: how to talk to voters without a clear home in the polarizing debate over the government’s role in the decision to end a pregnancy.

While Bernie Sanders said this month that “being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat,” his presidential primary opponent Amy Klobuchar took a more open stance last week in saying that anti-abortion Democrats “are part of our party.” Klobuchar’s perfect voting score from major abortion-rights groups makes her an unlikely ally, but some abortion opponents nonetheless lauded the Minnesota senator for extending a hand to those on the other side of an issue that’s especially important for Catholics and other devout voters.

The praise for Klobuchar suggests that Democrats who have heeded rising worry within their base about GOP-backed abortion limits by pitching significant new abortion-rights policies may risk alienating religious voters who are otherwise open to supporting their party over President Donald Trump. Voters in that group looking for an appeal to “common ground” on abortion, as former President Barack Obama put it during his 2008 campaign, have heard few of those statements during the current Democratic primary.

“Plenty of pro-life Catholics are looking for an alternative to voting for President Trump,” said Kim Daniels, associate director of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. “We wish the Democratic Party would offer us an alternative instead of doubling down on support for abortion throughout pregnancy, taxpayer funding and the like.”

Klobuchar has underscored her abortion-rights support, and she’s signed onto legislation that would limit states’ efforts to constrain abortion access, such as the multiple state-level anti-abortion laws that passed last year. But Daniels described Klobuchar’s rhetorical openness to working with abortion opponents as “an important step,” and she’s not alone.

Chris Crawford, a pro-life activist who tweeted about Klobuchar’s welcoming response to him during a recent event in New Hampshire, said that “I don’t like” the senator’s abortion record or positions, “but I do like the work she’s doing on adoptions.”

“And if she’s serious about putting together an agenda that can provide for mothers ... that would make a big difference for me and other voters I know,” added the Catholic Crawford, who said he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but has not yet decided who he’s supporting in 2020.

Religion is not the only factor motivating potential Democratic voters who favor some degree of abortion limits -- Democrats for Life executive director Kristen Day pointed out in an interview that atheists are part of her coalition. But abortion restriction is still a priority for a sizable number of Catholics, even as Pope Francis orients the church toward a more expansive definition of the term “pro-life,” pressing President Donald Trump on some of his immigration policies.

An AP-NORC poll taken in December found that 45% of Catholics backed significant restrictions that would make abortion illegal except in cases of rape, incest, or threats to a mother’s life. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults, 17% said that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, a number that rises to 25% among self-identified conservative or moderate Democrats, according to a Pew Research Center survey last year.

The abortion debate is set to return to the political forefront next month, when the Supreme Court hears arguments in a high-profile challenge to a Louisiana state law, authored by an anti-abortion Democratic lawmaker, which requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. A final decision is anticipated by June.

Charles Camosy, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University who recently left the board of Democrats for Life in frustration over what he saw as the party’s absolutist approach to abortion, asserted that “something is missing” when the same blanket “pro-choice” terminology can be used to apply to both Klobuchar and Sanders.

A Democratic candidate willing to focus on common ground could have “a golden opportunity to meet pro-lifers, or at least religious people who are mildly pro-choice,” Camosy said.

However, Klobuchar’s comments left some abortion-rights and anti-abortion activists cold. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List tweeted that the Minnesota senator is “still extreme & out-of-touch,” pointing to her record of abortion-rights votes, and Ilyse Hogue, president of the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, warned Klobuchar against “giving credence to right-wing red herrings.”

Hogue said in an interview that under the umbrella of abortion-rights advocacy, she sees room for shared values of “compassion and freedom” as well as different feelings about the decision to terminate a pregnancy.

“Where we are in common service together,” Hogue said, is that “none of us ever want anyone to feel like they have to terminate a pregnancy because they will not get the support they need to parent.”

Hogue also underscored the sharp contrast between Democrats and the GOP, where Trump has embraced anti-abortion policies and burnished his standing with religious conservatives as a result. That distance between the parties has grown in recent years, with fewer anti-abortion Democrats serving in Congress and two straight Democratic platforms adopting stronger language on abortion rights.

Indeed, Sanders described abortion-rights support as “essential” this month but took flak from some abortion-rights advocates in 2017 for backing an anti-abortion Catholic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. Anti-abortion Democrats are not wholly extinct, with the Catholic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards winning reelection last year, but two such members of Congress are facing primary challenges from the left.

In this year’s Democratic presidential primary, Klobuchar’s inclusive language marked a rare instance of daylight between candidates in an abortion debate that’s already put pressure on her rivals.

When pressed on abortion by executive director Day of Democrats for Life during a Fox News town hall last month, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said that “I support the position of my party that this kind of medical care needs to be available to everyone.”

Joe Biden, a Catholic who last year reversed his stance to back unrestricted federal funding for abortions, was denied communion by one South Carolina priest last fall in response to the former vice president’s support for abortion rights.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for her part, said at November’s debate that safeguarding abortion rights is “fundamentally what we do and what we stand for as a Democratic Party” and demurred when pressed about whether an abortion opponent like Bel Edwards would be welcome.

Like those Democrats, Klobuchar supports codifying the abortion-rights protections of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision into law. And for some anti-abortion voters, inclusive language like Klobuchar’s may not be enough to overcome that substantive Democratic alignment.

Klobuchar’s handling of the issue is “going to make her look much more moderate” and could break through with potentially persuadable Catholic voters, said Robert George, a Princeton University professor and past GOP appointee to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

But that advantage can be “undercut” by Klobuchar’s abortion-rights votes, George added, which Trump’s campaign would seek to do.

__

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Utah lawmakers get tough on porn, ease up on polygamy


FILE - In this Jan. 30, 2020, file photo, Republican Rep. Brady Brammer, poses for a portrait at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. A proposal to require warning labels on pornography in Utah passed the state House on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020, a move an adult-entertainment industry group called a dark day for freedom of expression. Brammer, the lawmaker behind the plan to mandate the labels about potential harm to minors, says it’s aimed at catching the “worst of the worst.”(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah lawmakers voted Tuesday to put new regulations on pornography and remove some on polygamy in separate proposals moving quickly through the Legislature in the deeply conservative state.

Senators voted unanimously to change state law to remove the threat of jail time for consenting adult polygamists, a step that supporters argue will free people in communities that practice plural marriage to report abuses, like children being taken as wives, without fear of prosecution.

A majority of people in Utah belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which had an early history of polygamy but has forbidden it for more than a century.


An hour later, House lawmakers approved a proposal to require pornography to carry warning labels about harm to minors. An adult entertainment industry group called the vote a dark day for freedom of expression.

The faith widely known as the Mormon church declared pornography a public health crisis in 2016, and since then, more than a dozen states have advanced similar proposals.

The labeling proposal from Republican state Rep. Brady Brammer would carry a potential penalty of $2,500 per violation.

“I think it will make a difference,” Brammer said. “It won’t stop every problem related to obscenity, it will not stop all obscenity, but it will move the ball further down the field.”

Republican lawmakers called it a creative solution. The measure would apply to material that appears in Utah in print or online and allow the state and residents to sue producers.

The new measure is narrowly aimed at hardcore obscene material, but the way the law is written could still allow for thousands of lawsuits, said Mike Stabile, a spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, a pornography and adult entertainment trade group.

“Really it just sort of opens up the floodgates for lawsuits over all sorts of content,” he said.

He also argues the dire harms outlined in the proposed warning label haven’t been proven.

The porn warning labels need to be approved by the Senate, while the reduction in punishments for polygamy must pass the House.

Utah’s restrictive bigamy law is an outgrowth of the church’s history with polygamy. While mainstream members abandoned the practice in 1890, an estimated 30,000 people living in polygamous communities follow teachings that taking multiple wives brings exaltation in heaven.

Utah goes further than other states by prohibiting cohabitation with more than one purported spouse. The measure from Republican Utah Sen. Deidre Henderson would make that an infraction rather than a felony.


Some former members of polygamous groups have spoken against the change, saying it would do little to help victims like those in underage marriages.

Polygamists with Utah ties range from Warren Jeffs, who was convicted of sexually assaulting girls he considered wives, to Kody Brown, whose four wives chose the relationship as adults. The Browns have opened their lives to reality TV cameras in the TLC show “Sister Wives.”

Utah has publicly declined to prosecute otherwise law-abiding polygamists for years. Still, Henderson argues that fears remain, left over from raids where children were separated from their parents.

The new proposal would keep harsher penalties for other crimes sometimes linked to polygamy, including coerced marriage.

“Bad people really can, and have, weaponized the law in order to keep their victims silent and isolated in their control,” she said.


In this Jan. 30, 2020 photo, Republican Rep. Travis Seegmiller poses for a portrait at the Utah State Capitol. A proposal to require warning labels on pornography in Utah passed the state House on Tuesday Feb. 18, 2020, a move an adult-entertainment industry group called a dark day for freedom of expression. "I've had constituents, including some dear friends, bring to me their personal stories of the truly horrific and nightmarish costs their families have suffered because their child has been exposed to these sorts of things," said Seegmiller. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Republican Sen. Deidre Henderson looks on during a hearing Monday, Feb. 10, 2020, in Salt Lake City. Polygamists have lived in Utah since before it became a state, and 85 years after the practice was declared a felony they still number in the thousands. Now, a state lawmaker says it's time to remove the threat of jail time for otherwise law-abiding polygamists. "The law is a failure. It hasn't stopped polygamy at all and it's actually enabled abuse to occur and remain unchecked," said Henderson. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Boeing finds a new issue with Max, debris in fuel tanks
By DAVID KOENIG today

Boeing said Tuesday that it found debris contaminating the fuel tanks of some 737 Max jets that it built in the past year but was unable to deliver to airline customers.

A Boeing official said the debris was discovered in “several” planes but did not give a precise number. Boeing built about 400 undelivered Max jets before it temporarily halted production last month.

The fuel tank debris was discovered during maintenance on parked planes, and Boeing said it immediately made corrections in its production system to prevent a recurrence. Those steps include more inspections before fuel tanks are sealed.


A Boeing spokesman said that the issue would not change the company’s belief that the Federal Aviation Administration will certify the plane to fly again this summer.

An FAA spokesman said the agency knows that Boeing is conducting a voluntary inspection of undelivered Max planes.

The FAA “increased its surveillance based on initial inspection reports and will take further action based on the findings,” said spokesman Lynn Lunsford.

Metal shavings, tools and other objects left in planes during assembly can raise the risk of electrical short-circuiting and fires.

Mark Jenks, Boeing’s general manager of the 737 program, said in a memo to employees who work on the 737, “During these challenging times, our customers and the flying public are counting on us to do our best work each and every day.”

Jenks called the debris “absolutely unacceptable. One escape is one too many.”

The debris issue was first reported by aviation news site Leehamnews.com.

Max jets were grounded around the world last March after two crashes killed 346 people. Boeing is conducting test flights to assess updates to a flight-control system that activated before the crashes on faulty signals from sensors outside the plane, pushing the noses of the aircraft down and triggering spirals that pilots were unable to stop.

While investigators examining the Max accidents have not pointed to production problems at the assembly plant near Seattle, Boeing has faced concerns about debris left in other finished planes including the 787 Dreamliner, which is built in South Carolina.

Ehardt introduces bill to ban trans girls from girls' sports

NOT MY FAVORITE IDAHO 

AND WHAT ABOUT TRANS BOYS?
By NATHAN BROWN nbrown@postregister.com
Feb 13, 2020

Rep. Barbara Ehardt speaks to audience members during the House Republican Caucus Town Hall at the Bonneville County Commissioner’s Chambers on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019.

JOHN ROARK | jroark@postregister.com

BOISE — An Idaho Falls Republican has introduced a bill to restrict transgender girls and women from playing on girls’ teams in high school and college sports.

Rep. Barbara Ehardt, who attended college on a basketball scholarship and went on to a 15-year career as a college basketball coach, has been working on the idea for the past year-and-a-half. Ehardt grew up in the 1960s, when girls’ opportunities to participate in sports were more limited, and she remembers the passage of the federal Title IX civil rights law in 1972.

“This ... (provided) opportunities to girls and women to participate as our counterparts had been participating in sports,” she told the House Education Committee on Wednesday.
×
For Ehardt, being able to take part in sports was a childhood dream that helped shape both her later career and her character.

“It’s helped me with leadership, with confidence, with conflict resolution,” she said in an interview. “Sports has done so much for me, and I see what it’s done for our counterparts.”

Ehardt said she doesn’t view her bill as anti-gay or anti-transgender. She sees transgender girls and young women being able to play on girls’ teams as unfair to other girls.

“This bill is truly all about continuing opportunities, not taking away opportunities,” she said.

Ehardt’s bill would require public schools, colleges and universities, or private ones that are affiliated with the Idaho High School Activities Association or with the college sports organizations the state’s public colleges and universities belong to, to designate teams as either male, female or coed, and says teams designated for females shall not be open to male students.

In case of a dispute, the bill says sex should be established with a physician’s statement based on the student’s external genitalia, the amount of testosterone the student naturally produces and a genetic analysis.

The bill also says that students who are “deprived of an athletic opportunity or (suffer) any direct or indirect harm as a result of a violation of this chapter” can sue the school, college or university that isn’t following the law.

Ehardt said she expects to get a hearing on the bill in the House Education Committee next week, after which it would go to the full House if the committee OKs it. Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene, is sponsoring it in that chamber. The bill comes in the context of a larger nationwide debate over whether transgender girls should be allowed to take part in girls’ sports, and GOP lawmakers have introduced bills similar to Ehardt’s in several other states this year.

Ehardt said she has been working with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based socially conservative group that opposes letting transgender girls take part in girls’ sports, on the bill and they helped craft the language. Much of the language in Ehardt’s bill is identical to one that was introduced in Mississippi earlier this month.

Lawmakers in several states also have proposed bills this year banning gender reassignment surgery for people under 18. Rep. Christy Zito, R-Hammett, introduced one in Idaho’s House Judiciary Committee on Friday that would subject doctors who break the law to up to life in prison.

“There are a number of states that are trying to introduce these anti-trans bills,” said Assistant Minority Leader Rep. John McCrostie, D-Garden City. “It’s very disheartening again, to try to take their humanity.”

The Education Committee voted to introduce Ehardt’s bill after Rep. Steve Berch, D-Boise, made an unsuccessful motion to reject it.

“I think we have so many important issues to deal with in education in this state and this is so far down the list,” he said.

A couple of Republicans replied they do see it as important.

“We have come a long ways from those early days of women’s sports, and this issue that Rep. Ehardt has raised is not one down on the list, it’s one of absolute significant importance that girls can grow up knowing they can compete with other girls in sports,” said Rep. Gary Marshall, R-Idaho Falls, who first met Ehardt when he was a high school athletic director in Idaho Falls and she was playing basketball and volleyball.

McCrostie, who is the only openly gay member of the Legislature, said after the meeting that the Idaho High School Activities Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association both have policies saying transgender athletes need to have been taking hormone therapy for at least a year. He said the bill sends the message that transgender girls and women really aren’t girls and women.

“Everyone deserves the opportunity to experience their humanity, and a bill like this is just so aggressive,” McCrostie said


Reporter Nathan Brown can be reached at 208-542-6757. Follow him on Twitter: @NateBrownNews.

Did Neanderthals bury their dead with flowers? Iraq cave yields new clues

Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in an Iraqi cave already famous for fossils of these extinct cousins of our species is providing fresh evidence that they buried their dead - and intriguing clues that flowers may have been used in such rituals.

A view of the entrance to Shanidar Cave in the foothills of the Baradost Mountains in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, the site where fossils of 10 Neanderthals have been unearthed is seen in an undated photo. Courtesy of Graeme Barker/Handout via REUTERS.

Scientists said on Tuesday they had discovered in Shanidar Cave in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq the well-preserved upper body skeleton of an adult Neanderthal who lived about 70,000 years ago. The individual - dubbed Shanidar Z - was perhaps in his or her 40s or 50s. The sex was undetermined.

The cave was a pivotal site for mid-20th century archaeology. Remains of 10 Neanderthals - seven adults and three infants - were dug up there six decades ago, offering insight into the physical characteristics, behavior and diet of this species.

Clusters of flower pollen were found at that time in soil samples associated with one of the skeletons, a discovery that prompted scientists involved in that research to propose that Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers.

That hypothesis helped change the prevailing popular view at the time of Neanderthals as dimwitted and brutish, a notion increasingly discredited by new discoveries. Critics cast doubt, however, on the “flower burial,” arguing the pollen could have been modern contamination from people working and living in the cave or from burrowing rodents or insects.

But Shanidar Z’s bones, which appear to be the top half of a partial skeleton unearthed in 1960, were found in sediment containing ancient pollen and other mineralized plant remains, reviving the possibility of flower burials. The material is being examined to determine its age and the plants represented.

“So from initially being a skeptic based on many of the other published critiques of the flower-burial evidence, I am coming round to think this scenario is much more plausible and I am excited to see the full results of our new analyses,” said University of Cambridge osteologist and paleoanthropologist Emma Pomeroy, lead author of the research published in the journal Antiquity.

COGNITIVE SOPHISTICATION

Scholars have argued for years about whether Neanderthals buried their dead with mortuary rituals much as our species does, part of the larger debate over their levels of cognitive sophistication.

“What is key here is the intentionality behind the burial. You might bury a body for purely practical reasons, in order to avoid attracting dangerous scavengers and/or to reduce the smell. But when this goes beyond practical elements it is important because that indicates more complex, symbolic and abstract thinking, compassion and care for the dead, and perhaps feelings of mourning and loss,” Pomeroy said.

Shanidar Z appears to have been deliberately placed in an intentionally dug depression cut into the subsoil and part of a cluster of four individuals.

“Whether the Neanderthal group of dead placed around 70,000 years ago in the cave were a few years, a few decades or centuries - or even millennia - apart, it seems clear that Shanidar was a special place, with bodies being placed just in one part of a large cave,” said University of Cambridge archeologist and study co-author Graeme Barker.

Neanderthals - more robustly built than Homo sapiens and with larger brows - inhabited Eurasia from the Atlantic coast to the Ural Mountains from about 400,000 years ago until a bit after 40,000 years ago, disappearing after our species established itself in the region.

The two species interbred, with modern non-African human populations bearing residual Neanderthal DNA.

Shanidar Z was found to be reclining on his or her back, with the left arm tucked under the head and the right arm bent and sticking out to the side.