10 rad things about provo & happy birthday miss gertrude stein

gertrude stein, who reminds me to strive continously to forsake aesthetic timidity

there are, in reality, more than ten cool things about provo, but here's some stuff that's happening lately--a few that i just discovered:

1)  the provo river delta restoration project.  there are some hardworking environmentalists tenaciously trying to improve our air and water quality.  even resisters are beginning to relent. 

2)  downtown gallery stroll tonight.

3) we have our own sartorialist.  provo fashion isn't as cutting edge as some other places--and julie's street fashion shots are some of my favorite anywhere, but i love that this guy is looking for it.

4) the sundance screening room.  this tiny theatre is where the sundance film festival started.  in the past few months they've featured free screenings of redford films, and they always show sundance best of fest screenings for locals.  oft times you can schmooze with r. redford himself, if he's not having one of his aloof days.

5) muse music and velour.  i don't go to these places often, feeling that it would be a little creepy at my age, but i like knowing they're there, and that provo is developing some homegrown sounds.

6) communal.  i'm gonna go out on a limb and pronounce that a resataurant without interesting vegetable sides is not worth going to.  i sometimes go for dinner here and order just sides.  not that we need the new york times to validate us, but here's a shout-out to communal in the times.  and here's a sample menu.

7)  the walden school.  i'm lucky enough to have been able to send three of my children here, and to get to teach here.  it's a truly progressive public school, and i get to teach rad classes like this food/writing hybrid and last semester's performance art class.

8) the provo orem word.  a lovely online publication showcasing the pretty deep pool of local talent.

9) amano chocolate.  this rad dude is my neighbor.  he has a real chocolate factory with vintage machinery.  he roasts his own beans, trained with jacques torres, and is the only american to win the grand prize at the royal academy of chocolate in london.  not that we need london to tell us that provo is rad.

10) tryst press letter press.  we take the word seriously around here.

i've written about this before, but i'm gonna say it again:  we've got tons of hardworking, brilliant, and talented people in provo, utah.  but we can be aesthetically timid and intellectually repressed.  i say this with all the love in the world, hoping that my people will break out and bring it a little harder.

seriously.  this is my hope and prayer.  amen.

legwear:  jeans and cowboy boots.  a provo winter classic.
inspiration:  mt. timpanogas.
looking forward:  to dinner with my man and gallery stroll tonight.

p.s.--yes.  nicki minaj.  here's what one ph.d has to say about minaj in the ever-so rad crunk feminist collective.  

p.p.s.--happy birthday, miss gertrude stein.  your tender buttons are with me always.

sunny valley

january at utah lake

today we went out to utah lake--i love being in the bowl of our big open basin right after a snow. on all sides, the cusp of the basin is made of mountain.

we went out to look for birds in the marshland on the edge of this un-beautiful lake, but only saw nests, and heard the ice melting in the cattails.

going to the lake always reminds me of two local heroes, oliver smith and raquel callis smith. oliver is a bioneer and he and raquel run their own little urban homestead in downtown provo, complete with a root cellar, the fantastic tree house (click on the link below), chicken coops, and an aquaculture pond in process. oliver has a great blog about the junesucker fish, an endemic species that has nearly gone extinct, and that local environmentalists are trying to revive. for as long as i've known raquel, she's been at the center of local art and culture. she used to live and work in the downtown space art front, she was a key player in starting the provo farmer's market and also the provo gallery stroll.  she's also a very adventurous artist.

the reason the lake reminds me of raquel and oliver is because it makes me think about how hardy, optimistic, creative people can take a less than perfect body of water like utah lake--shallow, silty, and wide--and turn it into something beautiful and inspiring.

after you look at the callis-smith tree house and their fabulous blogs, check out our photos from the lake today, including some great shots that cecily took on her new pink fisher price camera.

i'm outside! and i'm happy!

hand me down purple boots.  not my style, but warm, and karmically acquired

moses with binoculars--taken on cecily's fisher price camera

cecily the photographer

handsome husband

we had known water

at 4.30 a.m. i woke up and read martin luther king, jr.'s i have been to the mountaintop speech. reading and listening to this speech has become something of a ritual for me every mlk holiday. it's my current favorite, and every time i read it, something new occurs to me. today i honed in on his parsing of the good samaritan story. maybe it was because julie wrote about levinas yesterday, but king's emphasis on empathy as the key to freedom and justice in his retelling of the story really stood out to me in the wee hours of the morning today.

in this speech, king uses martin buber's i and thou construction in discussing the good samaritan, similar to levinas' idea of looking into the face of another. and he tells that this is the difference between the levite preist, who was afraid to help, and the good samaritan:

And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

king motivates those who hear him to forsake fear and to cultivate empathy. so what if bull connor turns his fire hoses on you?

Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us.

the courage of righteousness is strong.

the power of empathy to overcome fear is strong.

read this speech. cultivate emphathy and righteousness. that's why we're here, i believe. if not that, then why, pray tell?

i wish i had the vision of the promised land as firmly in mind as dr. king.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

wish i could live as righteously as he and so many others have done.

amen.

p.s.--one more thing to make you more righteous today is reading langston hughes' poem "the negro speaks of rivers." i don't know if king was consciously echoing hughes here, but it was a nice connection to king's "we had known water" when i read today:

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

i find this baptism imagery inspirational in the new year, as we are all working to renew ourselves while the world is working to renew herself. the idea of a cleansing really motivates me to keep trying to be a better person and citizen and sister and mother and human being.