A Moment...

A moment, from my week, loving my kindergartners "mixed media, mixed animals"

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Above Salt Lake...

I can't take credit for this amazing picture, taken above Salt Lake. My daughter took it at the top of one of Park City's ski runs, or I should say snowboard runs.
After two days humoring me and going along for the ride around Salt Lake City, see here, we headed up into the Wasatch Mountains, and in about forty minutes were in Park City...

Where much of the 2002 Winter Olympics took place and where in a few weeks the slopes and streets would be filled with actors and "beautiful people" for the Sundance Film Festival.

But a week ago, they were filled with my beautiful people, daughter #1 brushing up on her snow board "toe side" skills, whatever that means....

And Daughter #2 doing some Nordic and X Country skiing with her dad....

 After dropping everyone off on the mountain, I intended to "get some work done" for the afternoon, but ended up going back to the hotel and taking a nap, Holiday planning is exhausting for the mom. But after a few hours , everyone was ready for a break...

and  we warmed up at Atticus Coffee and Books.... 

Which has the coolest painted floor.

It was rather a long time before one daughter, I won't say which, admitted she had just realized the coffee shop was inspired by Atticus from TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD, this after I pointed out the dozen cut out black birds hanging from the ceiling and the Boo Radley peanut brittle and yes, both girls have read the book in school.... and seen the movie.

 Oh my, think the brain just gets shut off for the Christmas break.

Everyone warmed up,  some went back to the hotel for another nap, not saying who and some went back to the slopes, now lit up against the coming dusk...

And then a little while later, we met up again and drove back to Main Street, this time surrounded by colored lights against the snow... 

                                    where we found food and drink at the Wasatch Brew Pub.

And then came Sunday and it was time to go home, so we drove back down the mountain, but timed it just right to hit Salt Lake City's  IN- N -OUT. Yup, they have one, the Salt Lake Basin must be only's a days drive from America's best burger and fries distribution centers. There are only three choices for burger combinations and fries, that is it on the menu, but yum....

Even though it was a little weird to have IN-N-OUT in the snow. Places we usually get it- Arizona, Nevada or California where you can spot the burger joint by the towering crossed palm trees....I don't think palm trees would grow in Salt Lake.

A Gentile Weekend in Salt Lake...

Usually to ring in the New Year we go south into New Mexico and Indian Country...

 but this year we celebrated the coming of 2014 at home and then the next day drove north into Utah and Mormon Country.
Meandering  up through the familiar scenery around Moab...

 we finally reached 1-70 and took it west and then at Green River followed the railroad and old Highway 6 up north again past Price where we took a detour around the old town of Helper....

and I was amazed that such a little town had so many old hotels. Situated at the mouth of Price Canyon since the early 1880's, Helper is a railroad/ mining town named for the "helper" engines that were needed to get the coal trains over the steep grade leading up to Soldier Summit. I guess many railroad worker and miner needed a place to stay, but also wonder if Helper, situated a little bit more than half the way from Salt Lake City and the outlaying setttlements such as Moab, Monticello, Bluff and Blanding, catered also to the Mormon traveler on their way to the Salt Lake Temple.
Continuing our journey,over Soldier Summit and past the wind turbine farm below on the other side, we popped out at Spanish Forks, where we headed north between the Wasatch Mountains to the west...

and the Great Salt Lake and Flats to the East to downtown Salt Lake City...

Now you are probably wondering why "Gentiles" would want to spend a weekend in Salt Lake City, where up to a few years ago was so vastly Mormon it was hard to find coffee or tea in any form, let a lone a good micro brewery and everything, except Temple Square was shut down tight on Sundays, yes it is open all day Sunday.
I remember passing through, when the girls were little, Jon being highly motivated to find his morning coffee. We drove around and around  trying to find any place that had some caffeine and finally found a "Gentile" Auto Garage mechanic who shared his hot pot from behind the counter. Another time in the heat of the summer, I ordered ice tea off the fresh new menu and was told that the tea was actually coming, as in the whole set up of serving tea was coming but not there yet.
Guess what, things have changed, thanks hugely to the 2002 Winter Olympics that brought this city and the ski resorts above it to world wide attention and as of  the 2010 census, Salt Lake is over 50% Gentile.
And now there is some pretty cool revitalization downtown, complete with a tram...

The Gateway Mall, built up around the old Union Pacific Train Yard and just a  few blocks  from Temple Square hosts some fantastic shopping, nice hotels, a great Mega-Plex movie theater and a Starbucks in the Clock Tower.
But since its establishment in 1847, when Brigham Young, the LDS colonizer and second president, upon seeing the Great Salt Lake basin, declared"This is the place", Salt Lake City was intended to be the capitol of a new nation, Zion...

A stark contrast to another old capitol, where streets in Santa Fe, made a Spanish Capitol in 1610, are barely wide enough for two burro carts to pass...

Salt Lake City was from the beginning a planned community, with extra wide streets...

and "awe" inspiring monuments like the Eagle Gate, which you pass under on your way down from the Capitol Building on State Street, where if you turn onto  S Tempe you go past Brigham Young's grand residence, the Bee Hive House, which was being de-decorated while we were there, the holidays finally over...

and past the old Utah Hotel, now known as the Joseph Smith Memorial Building...

grand enough to be built in Washington D.C.

But in downtown Salt Lake the grandest of them all, is Temple Square. 

Mormon or not, anyone interested in architecture and the history of how "the West was won", has to be impressed by the tenacity that it took to build the Temple...

and the Assembly Hall, built in 1880 with the left over stone from constructing the Temple...

Another beautiful fascade, around the corner from Temple Square on Main St.  is the old  ZCMI building....

Created in 1866, the Zion Cooperative Mercantile Institution's  purpose was to either protect the Mormons from the price gouging of the Gentile merchants around them, or to drive out the competition that had come to make the Salt Lake basin their home as well. Which way it was is up to interpretation, but the original store still stands, an amazing example of Victorian architecture and has now been taken over by Macy's. 

And the Mormon church is not out of the mercantile business, investing millions if not billions in a downtown revitalization where across the street from the old ZCMI,  the new crowning jewel is the City Creek Center, upscale shopping complete with fountains and  a constructed creek...

.

But don't be fooled by Salt Lake's squeeky clean appearence, it still is a big city, with all the big city stuff, including almost getting my purse, cell phone and tablet ripped from my hands at the Gateway Mall, a  man, complete with hoodie over his head and dark glasses, who abruptly changed course right near my shoulder, when at the bottom of an escalator, a mall security guard just happened to walk by. The reason I was carrying my purse, loose in my hand is because running back to the car alone, well with a kid in tow,  I was also carrying  my husband's very valuable work laptop, as in the family's source of income, secure in a backpack, I usually do carry my purse diagonal across me and zipped. 

Well I spied the man, switched my purse to the other hand and then became a "Mamma" Bear and glared at him until he crossed over to the other side of the street. 

But the thing I have learned about Salt Lake and the Four Corners, is where the "rubber band" is too tightly wound one direction, eventually, the extreme opposite comes to exist as well. Parts of Salt Lake City have a "hipster" and alternative vibe to them, none more than the Sugar House neighborhood, where on 15th and 15th there is an Eisenstein Bagel, Starbucks, contemporary gallery, a cool bookstore with  a very contemporary and liberal clientele and surrounding the intersection, a neighborhood of renovated Arts and Craft style bungalows...

and an inordinate number of double entry "duplexes" or what we like to call "polygamy houses"...

  for such a neighborhood built in the 1920's and 30's. Seen throughout the Mormon communities in the Four Corners, double entry houses or duplexes were a convenient layout for those following "the Principle" set forth by Joseph Smith and practiced until the church began excommunicating  members for having more then one wife in the beginning of the 20th century. 

For many things in Salt Lake, I am too liberal and to the left, for some other "new" ideas I am too conservative, but again that is what brings me again and again back to Utah. A  place much like Jerusalem, The Salt Lake temple is aligned to the Holy City which was an inspiration to the founders the New Zion and like the Holy City, Salt Lake has always been and will always be city in conflict of culture and beliefs, in a place as inhospitable as the Holy Land.

Season's Greetings.....

May you and yours have a Blessed Christmas! 

IF:Spirit

The Illustration Friday prompt this week was Spirit. First words that came to mind when reading it was "...in the spirit of Christmas", the idea that something outside yourself inspires you. So in the spirit of Christmas, I'm posting a nativity scene I stitched a long time ago, back in 2009. Still love the idea, Mary resting and Joseph, as a new dad, holding and admiring the little baby, before....all the rest of the Christmas story and what was to come after.
The scene was also inspired by my own experiences, gladly handing over our daughters to their dad to close my eyes and try to get the room to stop spinning.
We had one of our daughters at the start of the Christmas season and so the verse in Luke 2...

"But Mary treasured up all these things

and pondered them in her heart (vs 19)"

is very special to me as is the memory of Jon, at every opportunity holding, loving and getting to know his daughters. Both went through daily crying fits. The oldest could only be soothed by her dad dancing with her in the living room to Micheal Martin Murphy's Christmas album...

one song in particularly was very fitting, Two Step Round the Christmas Tree.

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All the pretty lights...

( I apologize for the green highlighting below- either I or Blogspot is having some difficulties and I can not "unhighlight" a few paragraph- so decided to go with it and write another post, instead of trying to "fick it" as my daughter said when she was two- and yes half the time it sounded like something else!)

Our farmer's market is continuing through the winter, thanks to the availability of some toasty warm greenhouse space at the nursery. Saturday morning, we moseyed on over there to buy our poinsettia, gets some fire oven baked pizza, from the chilled, brave and very pregnant vendor outside, think she was hoping the shock of cold might finally send her into labor, she is three days over due. Bought some locally made sausage and buffalo steak, some hot house tomatoes and kale.

Also went to a Christmas Arts and Craft show at the local brew pub where we got a few gifts and jewelry, along with some much unneeded but yummy handmade chocolate. It was a very pretty and festive day, with beautiful decorations, trees and well, prayer flags, lotus symbols along with ornaments for those who love Twitter and Facebook. What I did not see, though I didn't think about it until driving home, was a Creche or Nativity scene of Joseph, Mary and the Baby Jesus...

In fact, last year I remember also noticing the lack of the "Holy Family" amongst the decorations, I did see a Buddha themed Christmas tree though.

This isn't a post bemoaning  how we have taken Christ out of Christmas, because I'm not sure Christ has ever wanted to be the inspiration for winter time festival declared by the Catholic Church to give an alternative to the pagans who were celebrating the Winter Solstice...

God has always proclaimed his dislike for festivals, no matter how well, festive and pretty they are. In Isaiah...

 "I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, 

They have become a burden to Me. I am weary of bearing them." 1:14

He has always warned against traditions, monuments and festivals. Why? Because as Paul says in 

Romans 1:25, it is too easy for us to exchange the Creator for the Created. 

Christmas is great, it comes in the dark of winter, when the grey skies are looming, the decorations, the lights, the music bringing good cheer. But for one, Christ wasn't even born in December. He was born during lambing season, so probably April, "the shepherds out tending their flock by night".

The other reality is that there is not much in the decorations of Christmas that actually do not have a pagan root to them, most especially the beloved Christmas tree. The tradition starting in Germany way, way, way before  Prince Albert brought it to Queen Victoria and the rest of Europe.

 It really isn't that much of a stretch, in the dead of winter, when everything else has lost it leaves between the white span of snow and grey skies, that the Evergreen would be a symbol of life, as is any light in the dead of winter...

My roots are in the far North, in Denmark and we still keep lights in the windows in the dead of winter. The light a beacon for travelers and to provide warmth and security in the darkness. It is the light, such a part of Christmas, the strings of lights surrounding our trees and framing our house that truly hearkens to Christ, the light of the world....

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming

 into the world. He was in the world, and though the world

 was made through him, the world did not recognize him. John 1:9-10

Even back in Isaiah, his coming was hearkened to with the symbolism of light...

The people walking in darkness  have seen a great light;on those living

in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. Isaiah 9: 2

 I love Christmas, it is absolutely beautiful, a festive start to a long winter. A chance for families and friends to come together.There is so much history in the cultures that celebrate it. 

How much Christ is actually in this Winter Festival is our choice and it is certainly hard to keep the focus on him, I haven't even mentioned the horrid aspect of well what starts with "Black Friday" and doesn't end until "Boxing Day", whether that is packing up the old to make ready for the new or if that means a mad rush to the stores to buy even more then what was under the tree. 

But it is hard to keep the focus on him, any time of the year. Guess what, Easter is no better, the Christian, pagan and well commercial traditions in a great swirl. 

What is so important about Christmas, to quote Dr. Seuss...

"And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. 

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. 

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. 

What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

Sadly, that is as close as the festiveness of Christmas will allow the contemplation to go. The sentiment echoed in classic movies like...

It's A Wonderful Life

We like the residual-ness of what Christ brings, but it is safer on the edge of it, where we have the control. 

 PEACE ON EARTH

is declared from cards, banners and lights on the hillsides of towns. But rarely is the whole verse quoted..

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Luke 2:14

That last bit of a downer- "on whom his favor rests". 

So why is Christmas important, if it has been so, well, adulterated? It is the time of year, if not the wrong time, that maybe, we will focus just for a moment on the story. The story of a young girl, who might have been as young as twelve years old, who God blessed and cursed with being the mother of the Messiah. God did not "clue in" everyone else, only visiting Joseph a few times in dreams. But Joseph did marry her and the Christmas story unfolded.

The Nativity scenes still needs to be set out, the scene of Mary and Joseph, with the Wise Man and the shepherds needs to hold its ground in this Winter Festival that all to easily starts to loose it's Light.