We are halfway through the legislative session and after so many years on the hill in the thick of
things, I’m missing the action. This is what happens when you retire. When you are on the hill
you hear about lots of bills and you kind of know what is going on. Now, I’m not there but I’ve
been tuning in online and if you don’t have time to follow all the really important stuff, I’m
offering a quick summary for you, so you know what bills are critical. Stay with me.


House Bill 60 is all about hiding your gun. Basically, it says that you can carry around your gun
and keep it hidden without having a permit. If successful, this bill declares that you can keep
your pistol in your belt (covered up by your jacket), or grandma can carry her gun in her purse.
Maybe people do this anyway, I don’t know. I’ll go on record as saying that I hate guns, but the
men in my family think guns are really cool and they own lots of them. We had a recent gun
scare at our house. You know how when you move you lose stuff? Well, after we moved the
hubby could not find his pistol. He searched everywhere in a panic. He was sure it was in the
storage unit (the repository of the really important stuff we couldn’t part with after 55 years).
When he finally found it, he practically clicked his heels in glee. It is obvious that that the gun
makes him happy. In order to be agreeable, I have tried hard to like guns. I even went to the FBI
Citizens Academy and they let me shoot all their guns and I learned this about myself: those big
bangs scare the socks off me. I think opponents to HB 60 suggest that it might make it easier for
criminals, but everyone knows that criminals don’t bother with gun permits anyway, so there is
that. I’m voting in favor of this bill.


HB 266 says you don’t have to have a State of Utah license to wash my hair. However, you do
need a State of Utah license to cut or color my hair. Apparently, this is a very big deal. I had no
idea that this issue would rise to the level of grand debate on the hill. Maybe it has something
to do with the pandemic. If you think guns are important to men, try telling women that there
is a virus and therefore they cannot go to the salon to get their hair cut and colored. This
becomes so traumatic that women of a certain age have resorted to all kinds of maneuverings
to get around this one (think Nancy Pelosi-I’m not a fan but I’m going to cut her some slack
here). Some of my friends who are do-it-yourselfers have ended up looking like Cruella. Did you
know there is a product called Color Oops? I’m betting it is now a best seller. Hair is very
important to women and we want someone who knows what they are doing when it comes to
messing around with our hair. Men don’t care about this stuff and there are too many men on
the hill who don’t get it, so I’m sending this message to them: I’m voting against this bill.

HB 278 is the giant bill that is sucking all the air out of all the other important issues like and
when the hubby can put his gun in his belt who can cut my hair. It is the one that says Dixie
State University will change its name. People and cultures assign meanings to words and
symbols and those meanings are always shifting with societal changes. For example, the
swastika carried religious connotations until Hitler came along, and then you know how things
changed. By the way, a couple of years ago some guy in London named his son Adolf and took
his picture with a Nazi flag and he and his Nazi friends went to prison for that little caper.
Similarly, over time the confederate flag has become a symbol of racism and hatred, although some around here like to hoist it up the flagpole showing how they are completely tone deaf.

Now, we come to the word, Dixie. Here in St. George, we connect it with pioneer heritage, but
the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way, and we get it. We watched the hospital read the
tea leaves and reinvent its name into something that works nationally since that is the space they want to occupy. Likewise, we know the name of the university is going to change.
We know the reasons. We are going to live with it because the future of our students is too
important to us to do otherwise. Our university no longer only belongs to our little community,
but it has transformed into a national and maybe international force extending far beyond what
our forefathers imagined. Now, we are forced to reimagine. Here’s where it gets interesting:
what will be the new name? Over the next six months, there will be hearings, meetings,
struggles, and battles over the new name. To the powers that be: please make it something
that reflects the St. George legacy and traditions, something that recognizes the southern Utah
culture that we love. With that qualification, I’ll vote in favor of this bill.

And, just so you know, we are keeping the D on the Bluff.