Even though I complain about it occasionally and dream of moving somewhere more exotic and cosmopolitan, my hometown was recently voted the 7th-best place to live in America by Men’s Journal magazine.
Provo/Orem, Utah
- Metro Population: 320,800
- Median Household Income: $40,197
- Median Home Price: $136,837
- Climate: 15 inches of rain, 58 inches of snow, and 232 days of sunshine per year.
No full-strength beer here, but there’s just about everything else a man could want: one of the nation’s best job-growth rates; housing prices that continue to stay low; proximity to national forests, 10,000-foot peaks, and rivers teeming with 17-inch brown trout; 300 inches of white gold on the slopes in winter; and one of the highest ratios of women to men in the country. But no full-strength beer.
I guess it just goes to show that the grass isn’t always greener where they get more than 15 inches of rain per year.
34 Comments
Didn’t know you were a fellow provo/oremite.
That 15 inches of rain seems to be a generous estimate the way things have been lately.
Anyway, I am orignially from southern california, and there are definite tradeoffs, but this is definitely not a bad place to live.
Men’s journal doesn’t know poop about poop. I wouldn’t live in Provo/Orem (nickname: happy valley) if you paid me. OK, maybe if you paid me, but it would have to be a lot. It’s just way too homogenous (sp?) for me. And I live in Salt Lake City, for heaven’s sake! You’ld think it couldn’t get more white-bread conservative than that, but ooooooooh no! I once walked around the BYU campus back in the days when I had long hair and a scruffy-lookin’ beard. Let me tell you, that day I knew what a black person would feel like in Idaho. I could feel their eyes on me. It’s creepy down there.
Good for business, though.
Dan, as my father would say, you need a pumpkin-sized prozac…
No offence intended. Seriously.
Dan,
Funny comment, but BS.
I am from Southern California, not here. I have something to compare to. I have had a variety of facial hair, a fauxhawk, dyed hair–never got stared at here more than anywhere else.
No doubt that it is more homogeneous, but you also have the largest population of americans who speak a non-native second language. It is hilarious to think of a group of people who have lived all over the world as so narrow-minded.
I would still rather live in salt lake, but not for the people, because there is actually stuff going on up there!
Dan,
You could feel their eyes on you because you were the handsomest damn man they’d ever laid eyes on. With your long hair you looked like Brad Pitt in “Legends of the Fall.”
Where you see ridicule and judgement, I see awe and adoration. Where you see your glass as half full, I see your glass as being twice as big as it needs to be….or something like that.
I’ll join the fray. I agree that Utah Valley has its own quirks, but who cares? So far I’ve spent considerable time in Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. Utah Valley is still pretty attractive. BYU has its own culture and subculture of kids that are trying to find their identity and sometimes end up over-conforming or over-rebelling and bad mouthing Utah Valley to make sure that they are not identified with it (sound familiar?). Let’s not forget that your wife and friends are all products of “Happy Valley.”
And people were probably staring at you because they thought you were playing Jesus in some new church movie. I saw you with the long hair (a la Brad Pitt) and beard. It was uncanny.
Stop being silly, Dan. It’s predictable.
Haw-haw! I’ll bet you’re right, Chris [about the church movie]. Although I picture Dan more as one of the twelve apostles than as Christ.
Ah, Dan Grasshopper:
I share with you a story: A wise man was traveling away from his town when he came across a family caravaning toward it. “Tell us, kind sir, what you know of the town beyond. We are going there to find shelter and work.”
“Tell me about the town from which you come,” queried the wise man.
“Oh, it is full of creepy dullards and nincompoops,” replied the family.
“Then you will not want to settle in the town beyond, for you will find it the same,” said the wise man. Dejected, the family changed their course. The wise man traveled further and came upon another family caravaning toward the town.
“Tell us, sir, what you know of the town beyond. We are going there to find shelter and work.”
“Tell me about the town from which you come,” queried the wise man.
“Oh, it is full of the kindest, most charitable people in the world.”
“You will find the town beyond to be just the same,” replied the wise man.
Now wasn’t that an enlightening tale, or as we say in Happy Valley: “Fer profound!”
In all seriousness, I did have some trouble adjusting to our most recent move back to Utah Valley from the oh-so-cosmopolitan San Francisco area. Utah Valley is getting just a little too unhomogeneous (i.e., diverse) for me–and I don’t mean culturally.
It used to be that everyone’s dad either farmed, worked for Geneva Steel, or was a low-paid BYU professor. Now there is a much greater division between the “haves” and the “have nots.” The “haves nots” are so busy trying to look like the “haves,” and the “haves” are so busy trying to look like the “have even mores,” that we have one of the highest bankruptcy rates in the nation. Fer fiscally irresponsible!
Even though I’m somewhat disappointed at how culturally/economically competitive things have become here, I will say Men’s Journal showed great wisdom in listing Orem/Provo. The mountains are spectacular, the women are without peer, and with such great scenery and company to intoxicate, who needs beer?!
live here long enough… you’ll want beer.
when i go on trips and see fun places, it seems like it would be nice to live there etc. but, i find i love utah county. I love the mountians etc.
maybe the fact that you can’t get full-strength beer is part of the reason this is a nice place.
(btw the booze store does have better beer.. I use to like the chimay) so one might have to look a bit harder to find some things but hey.
as i use to say to my fellow class mates hailing from the south parts of cali… if you don’t like it get the hell out, we really don’t like you being here… ahem.
{{{{ hugs to you about the rough time you’re going through }}}}
OK, you all make interresting points. So I guess I’ll post an ammended version of my view on Utah Valley. I retract what I said about it being creepy. I retract what I said about it being way too homogenous (I looked it up this time: properly I should write homogeneous, as it means what I am trying to say, and this spelling means something else in its first dictionary definition. The second definition clears me, though, and I prefer the sound of this spelling).
Here’s what I really think: It’s worse than creepy! It’s downright scary! You’re right, Chris, that many of my dearest friends including my wife hail from there, but I’m convinced that my particular pool of friends pretty much taps the entirety of non-scary Utah County residents! All I have to do is read the op-ed section of the local paper (The Daily Herald) to re-affirm how truly closed-minded and violently intolerant that valley can be.
As for it being way too homogenous- I retract that only because I think it understates the case. Of course there are the “rebels,” desperately trying to make the “I’m not like this place” statement, but even they are too much a product of the place they are rebelling against. Their entire life is spent trying to tell the world that they are different than the rest of the Stepford wives community in which they grew up. What does that tell you?
I don’t believe in a place where a parent is made to feel ashamed if one of their children stops going to church as an adult. I don’t believe in a place where a young boy of 15 starts having elicit encounters with strange men in gas station bathrooms because he KNOWS that he will be tormented if anyone finds out that he’s gay. I don’t mean tormented in the sense that he would be beaten up and publically ridiculed, though that might happen as well. I mean (and this is just as bad) that his family and church leaders would unrelentingly pound him with the error of his ways, and work voraciously to try to change him. The motivation for this is irrelevant– just because someone thinks they are acting out of love doesn’t make it ok– this kind of treatment has led to thousands of broken families, and worse, suicides by kids who are given no alternative but to chose between being who they are or being a good child. It’s inexcusable.
OK, whew!!! Time for dan to take his chill-pill. Sorry. Lost control of the reigns for a second there.
Truth be told: the mountains are spectacular, I love many people down there, I go there frequently, but I stand by my statement that I couldn’t live there.
The wise man queries “tell me about the town from which you come.” I answer, “It’s nice. It’s clean and has great mountains and, though it’s a little too conservative and a little too white-bread for my taste, I like it.” “Well,” the wise man answers, “at least it’s not Provo! Have you been there? YEESH!”
Dan,
I find it intersesting that the people who are most anxious to profess their openmindedness to any who will listen are often the first to pass judgement on those they consider narrowminded. If you have ever (or ever do) lived among other communities in the US (or the world) for other than a vacation you may just find that you are the “whitebread” you disdain so much.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts!
Oh Dan (followed by a sigh meaning, “What’ll we do with you!?”):
I did so want to leave you hanging out there, hoisted on your own petard, but I just can’t. A few comments:
1) That’s not how the wise man story goes.
2) Your overgeneralizations are neither descriptive nor enlightening. Many of my Provo neighbors are older. They are wise and kind. They try to live honest, true-to-a-moral-code lives. And they’re doing the best they can with their trials, whether that means helping a spouse recover from a stroke, raising a child with autism, trying to help a seven-year-old grandson keep up in school because he has suffered brain damage from having to undergo so many open-heart surgeries, or watching a spouse slowly lose his personality and memory due to a brain tumor. I’m not trying to pull on your heart strings. These are my immediate neighbors. They are good people. And they represent a good cross-section of Utah Valley. Now there I go overgeneralizing. But I think my overgeneralizations are more accurate than yours because they’re based on long-term field experience.
3) I’m not going to act as an apologist for the minority of people here who are unthoughtful. And I don’t mean unthoughtful like “I forgot to send you a birthday card.” I mean unthoughtful like not fully reconciling their actions and interactions with others with their religious beliefs–not really thinking things through before they say or do something harmful. But I do think they are in the vast minority. For heaven’s sake, most LDS Church members have close friends or relatives who have stopped attending church and will show more empathy than judgment toward others in the same boat. Those who express judgment are wrong. As for the 15-year-old clairvoyant who is absolutely forced into certain situations because he somehow knows how everyone around him will act . . . I’m not going to go there. Let me just say logical phallacies–I mean fallacies–abound.
4) OK, so the Daily Herald is a sorry excuse for a newspaper. That’s a gimme. But to assume that the “Letters to the Editor” section in any community newspaper represents a portion, large or small, of that community? That’s a false extrapolation. Well, you argue, even if each letter only represents an individual, doesn’t that add up to a lot of wackos in Utah Valley? No, I would argue, because certain local “eccentrics” (e.g., Clyde Weekes) write letters on a weekly, if not a daily, basis.
5) Another bit of advice I got from a wise man: If you want an unretouched, honest, but still flattering family portrait captured–and who doesn’t?–don’t go to a street artist who specializes in caricatures, who paints with a 10-inch Sherwin Williams roller, and who doesn’t know you from Adam but was offended by your great uncle some years previous.
6) And finally, Dan, no matter how many times you say, “I don’t believe in a place . . . ” it really does exist, and real, kind, Christian (in the best sense of the word) people do live here. And I’m glad I live here too. I’m sure you’re glad you don’t. And that’s okay too. But please, no more caricatures.
I’ve decided that no one will be allowed to make any more comments about this topic without empirical data. How many gay suicides EXACTLY? How many nice neighbors with brain cancer? How many beard-stares and for what length of time? (Of course you’ll need a non-bearded control group to compare against.) Percentages, fact sheets, graphs please. Anecdotes will no longer be accepted.
You can, however, pass notes with the question:
“Do you like Provo/Orem? (Circle one.) Yes No Maybe.”
Amen.
I think, perhaps, it’s time that I say a few words in defense (or, rather, explanation) of my husband, Dan of the Strong Opinions. Indeed, the bulk of my formative years were spent in Happy Valley. In the time Dan and I have been together (eight or nine years or so – to be perfectly honest we can’t seem to keep track), he has heard many of my Strong Opinions about Happy Valley, and these have not usually been the joyous, festive ones (yes, I have some of those, too). So he has definitely not had the benefit of an objective viewpoint of Utah “Happy” Valley.
At this point I should verify, yes, I have a myriad of dear friends and family in the area. Yes, the mountains and canyons are gorgeous (I don’t believe that there is a better mountain view than the one of Mount Timpanogos from the floor of Utah Valley). BUT I do maintain that I would never raise children in the area. I had one or two or twenty-three too many bad/weird experiences as a result of homogeneity of the vocal majority (especially religious, but not just – for instance, when I was in high school it’s my understanding that the student body was at least 98-99 % Mormon, and there were TWO black students the entire time I was there – brother and sister – and I won’t begin to talk about the ethnic slurs tossed their way. It was disgusting). One time, when I was a child, my little (non-Mormon) neighbor friend decided to try to attend a Mormon church meeting and was ridiculed so severely that she ran home crying (she had very innocently worn pants to the church meeting). Suffice it to say she never came back. I had classmates in high school who befriended my catholic friends (they were of the tiniest minority – two brother, in fact) specifically to convert them to Mormonism (they told me that was their plan – I am not assuming). I had classmates in high school who thought I was “difficult” and some who thought I was “evil” because of circumstances in which I suggested that PERHAPS the separation of church and state was being compromised (please understand I’m not considered, by any stretch of the imagination, a particularly outspoken person). (I really, REALLY like parenthesis, though.) I worked at BYU for my father part of the time that I attended the University of Utah (in Salt Lake City). I had a variety of strange experiences there: I got yelled at and gestured at on the road because of my U of U parking sticker, I (without thinking) wore a U of U t-shirt once or twice and had complete strangers tell me quite angrily that I was “in the wrong place” and I should go to “where I belonged,” etc. Then again, BYU is its own microcosm of weirdness; I shouldn’t go there. So here’s another thing that scared the utter hell out of me: way, WAY too many “Elect Bo Gritz” signs in Happy Valley lawns in 1992 – including my granmother’s – yikes!! (For those who don’t know, he was Ex-Klansman, neo-Nazi David Duke’s running mate in 1988, and his own presidential slogan in ’92 was “God, Guns and Gritz” – you get the idea. I, myself, am not a particular fan of extremist, white supremacist, homophobic, survivalist paramilitary, ultra-radical right-wing freaks. And it surprised and horrified me to see so many of his zealous fans in Happy Valley) I could go on and on (even more), but I think I’ve made my point.
I very firmly believe that it isn’t fair to blame the ignorant, hurtful or just bizzare acts of individuals on a population as a whole; I’m not trying to do that. Just like any place on earth there are many wondrous souls as well as idiots in Utah Valley. But I believe that any place with a paucity of opportunities to be exposed to more diverse viewpoints/ethnicities/religions/politics is not what I would choose for my (theoretical) children. (I would also stay away from parts of the South for this reason – call me a Yankee snob.) This is not to say that I think they would have a holistically BETTER experience elsewhere, but I think they could have an experience more reflective of the world as a bizzare, diverse and wackily festive whole. (I like the word “festive.” I think it’s wackily festive.) I do understand that the diversity of the Utah Valley population has evolved since I was growing up (I graduated from high school in 1988), but I don’t get the impression that it would be enough to suit me or in a way that I would like. It seems that parts of Provo are a lot more diverse than Orem at this point; my niece and nephew go to school with an extremely varied student body in South Provo, but it’s also a very poor area, which seems to go back to Amy’s point of growing division of the “haves” versus the “have nots.”
And on a note completely unrelated to cultural/religious/political issues, I wouldn’t raise my (theoretical) children in Utah Valley because of my personal experience with the horrific air pollution there (I am asthmatic). The beautiful mountains, unfortunately, act as a bowl that can trap some pretty nasty pollutive particulates, smog, etc. My pulmonary health has VASTLY improved after moving to Salt Lake (which is, by no means, a bastion of clean air, but the air is certainly better than Utah Valley’s air was when I lived there). If Geneva Steel closes for good, that would defintely change things; we’ll have to see.
Blah blah blah blather blah blah. I think I had a point…? Oh yes. I have been an extremely subjective representative of Utah “Happy” Valley to Dan, My Man, so it’s nice for him to benefit from other viewpoints of the place. We still will not live there with our (theoretical) children. (I suppose this might delight some of you at this point.)
But we still would love to visit….
Fin
Amen
Love,
Kate
Queen of the Genetic Universe and Keeper of All that is Medically Ethical
Boy, Howdy, I wish I’d read Pam’s entry before I posted anything (ironically, I was too busy writing with long wind). As they say, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” (Or “Festivity is the soul of cheese” or “Cheese is my brief soul” or something like that.)
Dang, I love my wife.
She’s so much smarter than me (can I get an Amen?).
I object, however, to her assertion that my opinion of Utah Valley comes strictly from her. It hasn’t. I have plenty of other subjective sources upon which I base my ideas. So there. Hell, there are even a few points about happy valley upon which we disagree. For example (and get ready, cause this may well be my most controvertial opinion yet): I think that Orem is really just a section of Provo. Why Orem pretends to be its own city is beyond me.
In closing, empirical data notwithstanding, I stand by my statements. Get over it.
Don’t sigh for me, Argentina.
P.S. I wrote that last one in Utah County. He he he.
I think I’ve figured out why my experience in Utah Valley and the experience of others has been so different. Maybe, unwittingly, I’m the one who has been doing all of the offending. Maybe I was the one who stared at Dan-Dan-the-Bearded Man. Maybe I laughed at something the pants-wearing girls said at church because I thought it was funny and she thought I was laughing at her pants. And maybe a closeted high school friend interpreted something I said as homophobic (like my clever and oh-so-original phallacy/fallacy pun), and he took desperate measures. Well, this valley is going to change, and it’s gonna start right here with me!
N.B. to Pam: I checked my data and the statistics I stated above are correct: 1 neighbor with autistic child; 1 neighbor with brain cancer; 1 neighbor with spouse recovering from stroke; 1 neighbor with child/grandchild (3 generations live in the same home) with heart/developmental problems. I could have gone on with even more examples of pioneer-like fortitude, but I didn’t want to get maudlin.
Dan,
That Orem being a section of Provo is just down right hurtful, uncalled for, and not at all appriciated.
I want a retraction… or my wife may never cut your hair again!!!(Ha Ha)
…that’s just a rude thing to say…
I had an unfortunate experience dealing with the people of Utah Valley and their self-righteous politesse just this last Friday.
I returned home after having visited Target and a half-dozen other establishments only to discover that I had a big ol’ blob of dried vomit on the back of my jacket. I’d occasionally gotten a whiff of it but had assumed that it was an unhygienic fellow shopper, or just the product of an over-active imagination. My youngest daughter had come down with the stomach flu that day, but after she threw up in the car I’d masterfully carried her into the house–using only *two fingers* on each hand. Through some sort of sneaky acrobatics she must have used these few seconds of physical contact to clean her soiled hands on my jacket-back.
Now the point of my whole story is this: if only the people of Utah Valley had been a little more assertive and vociferous and a little less smug and polite, I might have discovered this big ol’ nasty, thick, crusty, 5-hour-old 6″x8″ square of dried stomach acids + waffles + maple syrup a little earlier and saved myself alot of embarrassment.
The nerve of some people…
I rarely get into discussions about politics. I rarely get into discussions about geothermal power alternatives. I rarely get into discussions about the mystique surrounding Cher. Why don’t I get into discussions about these topics? Mostly because I have no real first-hand experience with them or in depth knowlege. If I were to be cornered into a discussion about the Fibonacci Sequence I could a) stare blankly b) try to BS my way out of it in hopes of sounding clever and more knowlegable than the inquisitor or c) run. Generally I stare blankly and politely decline the conversation. Occasionally I will find myself with a few morsels of information that I can pipe into a discussion with, but I quickly will find myself out of my depths and have to withdraw.
I have studied art and art history for many years now. I complain to my wife about the current state of art museums and how capitalism is killing aesthetics. I do this just to blow off steam. I feel I have a bit of a stake in the area and a fair amount of knowlege on the subject. But I see no point spouting off to a group of people about the apparent holes in the system, the fops in office, or the people who perpetuate the problem out of fear of rejection no matter how clever I think I may sound. If we are tossing around silly, metaphoric tales and sayings I’ll dust off the proverb: “The fool shouts at the darkness, the wise man lights a candle.”
I can either do something about it or become a doctor of medicine and leave the festering art world behind. But whining and pseudo-witty banter really don’t accomplish much.
I appreciate Kate’s point of view since she actually grew up in Utah Valley. I also appreciate her not jumping in until she felt that she had to protect her husband. I have no problem with defensive maneuvers. Aggressive ignorance has no place anywhere. And frankly it seems to be the stem of this entire discussion. Dan is miffed at experiences and second-hand experiences involving people being aggressively ignorant. Other people (including myself) seem to be miffed at Dan for then perpetuating the same problem, but from a different standpoint.
My name is Chris, I’m from Utah Valley and I step on people’s toes sometimes. This is my friend Dan, he was raised in Salt Lake (30 minutes north of Utah Valley), he tends to step on people’s toes sometimes. I don’t like aggressive ignorance. I assume the same is true for Dan. This line of argument is really silly. We all know people like the one’s Dan is talking about, we also know people like the ones Ames is talking about. These people exist everywhere. There is intolerance on every side in every state everywhere. There are some people in Utah Valley that I respect very much, such as Grettir, Jenny, and Amy. They are there and they are trying to make it better. So until Dan agrees to move to Utah Valley and rectify the problems that plague the area, I think he would be better served singing the praises of his place of residence and not shouting at the darkness (mostly generated by Geneva Steel Factory. The pollution is pretty bad, just ask Kate’s dad.)
Chris is smart.
Thank you for those thoughts, Chris. We will now close our meeting singing one verse of “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” Jenny, would you please accompany us on the piano and Kate, would you please lead?
In the name of …
Ok, folks. Here’s my last word on this subject (and it’s long- sorry)
I am a fellow given to hyperbole and drama. I tend to overstate myself because I think it’s funny and because somehow it insulates me from being real. It’s time to be real.
I’m not at all scared in Utah Valley. Were I to end up living there, though I’m sure I’d have ongoing objections, I’m also sure I could make a fine life for myself and my family. I already know many beautiful people there and I have no doubt that I would make more friends. That’s the un-exaggerated truth of the matter.
That said, I still wouldn’t want to live there. It’s just not the kind of place that I like. I admit it; I think there is too much khaki. I think there is too much clean-cuttedness. Too many neckties per capita.
Do I think any of these things are inherently bad? Of course not! I’m not an idiot. I’m clean-cut much of the time myself, for cripes-sake! I own khakis. That has nothing to do with my point. I just want more variety. That’s all.
I value my clean-cut friends very much, but I also value dearly my less “mainstream” friends. I want a broader, richer, fuller experience than Provo/Orem (or even Salt Lake, for that matter) can offer me. I don’t want to live in any place, be it Orem or Kabul or Jerusalem, where one religion dominates and overshadows everything. Do I have any problems with Mormonism, Islam or Judaism? Don’t be stupid. That’s the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m saying I want ALL those things in my experience– in abundance. I want to live in a place where my neighbor to the north is a gung-ho conservative and my neighbor on the south is a radical liberal. I want my kids to know black people and Chinese people and White-Mountain Apache people. I want to discourse with African nuns and assistant ambassadors from Austria, and refugees who barely escaped with their lives from Algeria. These are all people I have had the honor of meeting, talking with, learning from. I would never have met any of them if I were in Orem.
And don’t think I’m naive enough to think that there aren’t people from other cultures in Happy Valley. They are just much fewer and farther between. Much more frequent are people who speak the language of a culture from a mission, than anyone who is from that culture themselves.
(As per Pam’s request, U.S. census stats: Utah County- 94% white; Salt Lake County- 88% white; New York County, NY- 56% white. Also, American Religion Data Archive stats: Utah County- 89% LDS; Salt Lake County- 57% LDS)
I have other objections as well. The requisite facade of happiness and perfection that “good Mormon families” hide their problems behind- families in serious crisis who cannot or will not seek professional help because of the shame and the sense that they should just let their well-meaning-but-untrained bishop handle it. The pressure to conform politically, religiously, and even recreationally- to act and believe like everybody else. People who say they “hate the sin and not the sinner”, but conveniently don’t happen to hang out with anyone who’s gay, lesbian, a drug-user, etc (let us recall that Jesus didn’t just talk about loving sinners, he hung out with prostitutes, thieves, etc). The preponderance of clogging.
Don’t bother getting in a huff about these observations. I know they aren’t provable. They are just things that I have seen enough of first-hand and heard and read enough about from reliable sources to feel plenty confident in their common existence. If you disagree, fine.
This is the truth about how I see Utah County, Utah (and places like it). I have not attacked any person, religion, or way of being. I don’t think my way is right and another way is wrong. I am merely declaring how I want to live my life, and how I don’t.
I don’t “disdain” anybody, Erik. Chris, I believe that stating a perceived problem, declaring its existence and starting a dialogue is the first and most important step toward making positive change. It isn’t just shouting at the darkness. Differing views should be cherished as valuable, not dismissed as annoyance or regarded as an attack. Ames, I had to look up petard (did you know it was from the French meaning to fart? really!), but here’s what you can do with me: instead of sighing, rejoice that there is someone who is intelligent who has looked at the same world you have looked at and seen something different. You don’t have to agree with me, but if you’re careful, hearing what I have to say could broaden your understanding of your beloved home. Broadening is good.
I’ll close by saying this (my turn for a proverb): remember the blind men examining the elephant. It is only through the sharing of many diverse experiences that we may more fully come to know anything. You or I may think we feel the trunk of a tree, and until we ask for (and incorporate into our understanding) the observances of others, as well as be brave enough to share our own experience, we will never know that it’s not a tree at all, but the leg of an elephant. Is a tree worse than an elephant? I don’t know. I know this, though: I sure-as-shooting want to know which one I’m dealing with.
How’s THAT for a post-lude?
Preachin’ to the choir.
Speaking of the choir, am I the only one singing?
“WITH EV’RY STEP I TAKE
LET THIS BE MY SOLEMN VOW . . .”
“AND LET IT BEGIN WITH ME!!!!!” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAmen!
I’m not sure I’m pleased with those U.S. census stats, Dan. Would you mind posting them in a pie chart?
Also, with interest rates so low and all, I’ve purchased you a nice bi-level home out in the Tree Streets in Provo. An intervention will be staged in your behalf next week, and you will be forced to move to Provo and live next to BYU and the MTC forever. Daily freshmen student forums will be held in your front yard at dawn, and weekly hikes up Y Mountain will begin from your driveway. I just want to cure you of your phobia. You need to OWN the problem, Dan. None of us can do the work for you.
xoxo,
PPK
P.S. Jenny: Speaking of vomit on your back (which is definitely worse than a monkey on your back, if you ask me), do you remember when Amy spent an entire day walking around BYU with a big Ding-Dong crumb (from breakfast) stuck to her lip and NO ONE told her? Now that is intolerant, right-wing, gun-lovin’, homophobic freakishness if I ever heard of it.
P.P.S. We all need to get together and have a party soon, so we can eat fondue and fight in person.
Pam’s the WINNER!