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🌅 Good morning!

Utah is hosting a major national sporting event this week — the World Horseshoe Pitching Championships are coming to the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy starting Monday.

Pitchers of all ages will be competing in the different age groups at the tournament, including folks in their 80s all the way down to 7-year-olds, Caitlin Keith reported.

“There’s absolutely nothing else I would rather do in my spare time than pitch horseshoes,” Steven Gibson, the reigning Utah state men’s horseshoe pitching champion, said this week as he prepared to chase a world title.

Read more about the World Horseshoe Pitching Championships.

How one woman found new life out of hope born from grit

Against the odds, one Utah woman is running cattle and teaching her young sons and students to love the land.

Jacie Fasselin splits her time between being a full-time rancher in Elmo, Utah, and teaching agriculture full-time at Carbon High School.

The background: Her ancestors homesteaded the land generations ago, so it feels like destiny for Fasselin to be fighting for the land and water rights after getting the ranch in her divorce.

“I got the farm. I chose to stay," Fasselin said. "I would be in a room wishing I was here. At least the stress of the farm is genuine, the stress of raising my children is genuine. I used to stress life that was not necessary.”

A natural born teacher

Now, she is running her own cattle, breaking horses, fixing fences, teaching all the time, Amy Joi O'Donoghue writes.

“The fact that I am a natural born teacher, I will sail that ship all day. I am really passionate about agriculture literacy. You do not have to grow up in agriculture to make a difference.”

The challenges of farm life

As a single mom, farmer, rancher and teacher, Fasselin has plenty to do.

Her boys, Jace, 10, and Jaxten, 7, are learning early about the culture of having land that you work. There’s crops to be planted, harvested, cattle and horses, O'Donoghue writes.

At the end of the day, Fasselin gathers the boys around the dinner table. They say their prayers and she never stops being grateful.

Read more about Fasselin and her passion for agriculture.

How wildfires beget floods and the delayed danger we ignore at our peril

Wildfires can make an area dangerously susceptible to flash flooding.

The background: Last June, two intense and unruly wildfires burned through the Sacramento Mountains around Ruidoso, New Mexico. When wildfires burn at high temperatures like those did, the soil becomes less absorbent and enters into a state called “hydrophobic.”

What the experts are saying: “You have almost a tin roof or an asphalt effect, where a few inches down below the soil surface, you have what’s called a ‘water repellent layer,’” said Cody Stropki, a wildfire recovery expert and director of resilience at SWCA Environmental Consultants. “That results in water not being able to infiltrate into the soil profile, so it runs off. And right after fire … it’s almost like you’re dumping water onto pavement.”

This changing soil is becoming increasingly common as areas in the West continue to become drier and hotter each year.

Here are three key points, reported by Kevin Lind:

A viral video of a house floating down a river in Ruidoso highlights the threat posed by flooding after extreme wildfires.
Intense fires can chemically alter ground soil, making it water repellent rather than absorbent.
According to the U.S. Forest service, we can expect floods "to be a significant risk to ecosystems and humans.”

Read more about wildfires.

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Utah

Wildfires disrupt Lake Powell access; boaters urged to stay alert (St George News)
Ogden Arts Festival returns to historic Union Station this weekend (Standard-Examiner)
Vineyard manufactured toothpaste company partners with Walmart through ‘Shark Tank’-style pitch competition (Daily Herald)
Hideout responds to the ‘wild, wild West’ of wildfire risks and extreme home insurance premiums (The Park Record)
Man dies in Little Cottonwood Canyon rockslide (KSL.com)

Health

Woman thought she had pulled a muscle working out. It was a rare cancer that had spread to her brain (CBS News)
How protein became my secret weapon for feeling better (WebMD)

Faith

‘God is still God’ — Remembering the lives lost in Lesotho bus accident (Deseret News)
Faith carved deep in the Pacific island country of Palau (Church News)
How one couple relies on their covenants to face dementia with faith (LDS Living)

Politics

How Epstein became the center of the MAGA divide (Deseret News)
A war on fentanyl, from D.C. to Carbon County (Deseret News)

The Nation and the World

What will happen if birth rates around the world keep falling? (Deseret News)
Are home prices dropping? What national indicators are showing (Deseret News)
At least 30 injured after car plows into crowd outside music venue in Los Angeles (ABC News)
Tourist boat capsizes during a thunderstorm in Vietnam, leaving 34 dead; 8 people remain missing (NBC News)

Sports

BYU’s board of trustees believes university’s sports programs must be different to succeed (Deseret News)
Who has the most difficult schedule in the Big 12? (Deseret News)
How a Utah mother of 3 found a home with college soccer's best on championship-level team (KSL.com)

🗓️ Events Calendar

We put together a calendar list of events and activities going on around the state of Utah during this month. Check it out, and let us know if we are missing anything!

Here are some highlights for events in Utah today:

Spanish Fork Fiesta Days | Spanish Fork
9th West Farmers Market | 1060 S. 900 West
Park Silly Sunday Market | Historic Main Street
Wheeler Sunday Market | Wheeler Farm
X, and Los Lobos | Red Butte Garden

Please reach out to me at [email protected] if you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas you would like to share!

✨ Cheers ✨

— Gambles