Columnist Susan Snyder: Meeting has us feeling glazed

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 | 8:34 a.m.

Maybe 7:30 a.m. is too early for Beefeater.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is going to settle for coffee Friday morning when he shows up at a Lamar's Donuts to talk with residents in what the event's announcement calls "a casual setting."

The doughnut shop is in Ward 6 at 5805 W. Craig Road, near Jones Boulevard. This is Las Vegas Councilman Michael Mack's ward, and Mack also will be there to drink coffee, eat doughnuts and swallow whatever else constituents can come up with.

Residents who simply want to meet the mayor and have a cup of joe with him are welcome to attend, as are those with issues. The Goodman and Mack show will run from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

It is Goodman's second such coffee klatch. The first was April 19 at a downtown Starbucks. These are in addition to his monthly "open door" meetings in Las Vegas City Council Chambers.

City officials hope the Lamar's setting "will be more informal and perhaps less imposing to some people."

Not sure which they are calling imposing -- City Council chambers where residents must to step up to a microphone to speak, or a cafe in which they must shell out $5 for a cup of coffee.

But Lamar's doughnuts are sure to fabulous, as usual. And depending on who shows up Friday, the rest could be fun to watch -- even without gin.

If it's not doughnuts you want, but you could use extra dough, there's a new contest about which you should know.

No money is required. You may enter for free. All you must do is write good poetry.

Send one poem, 21 lines or less, to Celestial Arts at the following address: P.O. Box 1140, Talent, Ore., 97540.

If instead it is e-mail you send with aplomb, you may enter verse that way at freecontest.com.

The grand prize is $1,000, if winning's your fate. But your poem must be entered on or before June 8.

You can write about nature or people who are rude. You can write about love or your pets or good food.

You can write about things you that love or those that you dread.

Just make sure whatever you write is better than what you just read.

Cripes. I thought we'd never get through that last one either. "Talent, Ore.?" Wherezat?

Anyway, I periodically try to update items that have been mentioned in this spot. On March 12 I wrote about a document that had been unearthed at Lee's Fort, a Utah historic spot on the banks of the Colorado River.

The document, written on what looked to be a 19th century lead scroll, blamed Mormon Church leader Brigham Young for an 1857 massacre of 120 Arkansas immigrants traveling by wagon train through Mountain Meadows in Southern Utah.

The document, dated 1872 and unearthed in January, said Young ordered LDS Church member John D. Lee and other Mormon leaders to carry out the massacre for which Lee was executed.

Forensics experts in late April said the scroll is a fake and likely the work of Mark Hofman, a forger serving a life prison term for two bombing deaths in the 1980s. The murders, experts said, were to cover up numerous forgeries, most of which involved altering historic documents to make the LDS Church look bad.