This is a reenactment of our surprise entrance into my family’s house on Christmas eve. We told everyone we couldn’t get time off until the 28th & surprised them. We spent about 90 minutes waiting outside the house stalking them for the right moment to surprise them when they’d all be in the same room, but we got restless & just decided to barge in. Despite our lack of patience it turned out to be a successful surprise & was billed a Christmas miracle by all.
The night was filled with DI wonders from my dad. Everyone at the wrapping station at the BYU bookstore calls him “the DI guy” since he buys DI presents & has them wrapped up professionally.
These orange socks were among the excellent catches from Neil’s Christmas haul.
As was this vibrant turquoise cowboy shirt from the 80s. My dad must have read Neil’s Christmas list.
It was the best Christmas surprise ever.
Especially since on the way up we paid $6.37 to stay the night in Terrible’s Primm Valley Resort. High Class. High Class!
In case you are not good at reading facial expressions… what you see above is good ol’ fashioned Christmas cheer. From us & ours to you & yours. Happy Christmas! (There is also a hint of “ohmygosh I am so glad to be done with law school finals” on my face. And, ohmygosh I LOVE working at a mall during Christmas on Neil’s 
)
The 20th of April is Earth Day! Hurray. To celebrate I have decided to make to make a list of earth friendly goals as my way of celebrating. I will follow my do & don’t list for an entire 24 hours starting at 12:01 AM on the 22nd.
- I will not burn fossil fuels in a vehicle (i.e. I will ride my bike everywhere I go)
- I will not eat any packaged foods; only breads, grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables I can carry home without packaging (of course I will refrain from meat as well).
- When I leave my home and office I will turn off/unplug all standby electronics.
- I will use as much ambient natural light as I can.
- I will take a 1+ hour nature hike up Rock Canyon, and will collect and haul out as much garbage as I can.
I hope everyone will find a way to celebrate our beautiful earth this Earth Day in a productive and eco-friendly way. Let me know what you decided to do.
On my jaunt to work I noticed black smoke pouring from the old Provo City Power building. Does anyone know what’s going on? I have been in Provo since the spring 2003 and have, in all that time, never seen a puff come from the building. I wonder if this is a routine maintenance procedure or if Provo is using more power than can be pumped from the outside and so the old plant needs to fired up. Let’s hope not. The Wasatch front can’t handle any more pollution. In fact it can’t really handle the pollution it already has. If they permanently fire up the plant we will be living in a giant pollution cloud and will need fog lights for daytime driving. 
If anyone within word-shot of this blog knows anything about this, please let me know. Not that there is anything I can do, just interested. I live right next to the building and my house is in the down draft. If this is permanent I might need to pack up and move…to San Cristobal, Mexico.
Yesterday evening as Kate and I returned home from her parent’s house, we got to talking about how hard it is to live a green or ethical life in Provo. The more Provo develops and the more people move in, the harder it is to bike around, buy locally, or patronize ethical retailers. Since I moved here in 2003 more than 1/2 of the orchards in the area have been cut down and converted into crappy housing (just an observational estimate). Non national chain stores and restaurants last about a year before they are forced to close. In the downtown closed shops remain closed for years, no one wants to invest in them because locally owned businesses struggle to be profitable. Every time I drive down Provo’s commercial streets there is a newly closed shop or eatery. The only businesses that seem to do well at all are multinational mega cooperations like Wall-Mart and the other mega stores, McDonald’s and its fast food counterparts, and Banana Republic and all things shopping mall. Just imagine how much of the money spent in Provo ends up in the coffers of rich corporations hundreds of miles away. I am deviating…
So it’s hard to find local shops to support, local foods to eat, and public transportation hubs. Kate and I try, really try, but it’s difficult because everything that is grown, sold, or made locally is being under produced, under traded, and under cultivated by Mexico, Cincinnati, and China.
Everything good and healthy for a community (parks, orchards, trails, gardens, and local shops) are turned into things that harm community (poorly planned suburbs, fast food joints, and made in China junk stores). What we need is a revolution. A locally produced, made in Provo urbanism and consumerism revolution. We need to eat food grown in Provo, buy products created in Provo, patronize stores that are owned in Provo, and for heaven’s sake reuse the land we already have in Provo instead of tearing down new land.
Well, I know this has been negative, but there is hope and to prove it I am going to post a list of good business, living centers, and development in Provo in my next blog.
Sunday evening I went for a walk down Provo’s historic downtown and found this gem of a statue; mother lifting child lifting energy drink bottle cap. Provo’s downtown is a disaster. Nearly 1/2 a million people live in Provo/Orem area, more than enough to support a historic downtown and all the locally owned business it entails. Or you might think the 100,000+ visiting students attending BYU, UVSC, and the hundreds of nursing and cosmetology schools would go out of their way to support a lively downtown area. Yet, downtown Provo looks more like downtown Baghdad, with nearly 1/3 of the old building and stores crumbling with decay and abandonment. There are more for sale/for lease signs than store front signs.
The sad part is downtown Provo has so much potential. It is such a fun, open, easily maneuvering (not for cars) street that it would make a perfect place to live, play, and work. Unfortunately business don’t do well.
I am not sure what restrictions are placed on the buildings, but with a little creativity downtown could be a productive business and living area. So in order to save downtown I propose we create a website called wikiprovo.org which will allow people to create a virtual downtown following the 10 principles of new urbanism. If all goes according to plan then Provo will have a great source of ideas how to fix downtown, and all us living here will have a great place to shop and live. Let me know what you think.
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