HOSED

I just saw a developer’s honest presentation, the other day, that showed 10,000 new units planned for the Park City Area and another 10,000 in Summit County and 10,000 in Wasatch County in the next Umpteenth years.  That’s 100,000 people and 200,000 new vehicle trips per day.  We are Hosed, I thought.  Then I read a climate review that showed India and China building dozens of coal-burning power plants in the near future to keep up with their growth and the rise in their standard of living. Hosed again.  Then I saw compounding figures on the concentration of wealth and couldn’t believe it could get worse.  Hose-a-menudo.  Finally, I saw the number of people on this planet increasing exponentially to a certain point, before mysteriously flattening out in a few decades.  The flattening was more concerning than the predictable growth since it usually represents a big change or something really bad.  What causes that; war, genocide, plague, asteroids, wealth, education or restraint?   Still, Hose-o-Rama.

So, what is the answer, what are we going to do to solve these unsolvable problems.  We are the generation that is responsible for this, the worst generation, who knew it was happening and refused to do anything about it, because it was expensive or inconvenient.  What are we handing to the next generation.  It seems worse than the depression and war that our grandparents handed down to our parents, the political unrest and moral bankruptcy our parents handed to us or the loss of trust and truth and interpersonal relations we have handed to our kids.  But I guess every generation feels that they are handing down a shit-show or are inheriting one from the generation before.  Every generation has something to apologize for.  One hundred years ago the biggest worry was that the streets would be covered with twelve feet of literal horse shit by now, but that didn’t happen.  So what’s the big deal, the kids will figure it out so don’t fret the hypotheticals.  The kids are all right. 

But that does not ring true this time.  We have science and sociology, economics and demographics pointing in the same direction.  Hose-a-la-mode.  We are too old to solve these issues so the best we can do is educate and encourage our leaders and the next generation to do the right thing and make the best choices, no matter how hard they seem.  Change the system to persuade them to do more long-term planning with horizons longer than 2-4-6-8 years and to think about sustainability and resilience and existentialism as more than mere buzz words.  Humans don’t solve anything until we are in catastrophe mode and then it is too late, like climate, Social Security, traffic or environment. How do we change human nature to be more proactive by rewarding it.  Throw a larger and longer economic net and show everyone the folly of our short-sighted ways.  Live for the future, not the past, and for the next generation. 

It will take a combination of regulated capitalism and socialism, government and democracy to ensure everyone and everything is considered and not dominated by an unlevel playing field or vested interests.  I’m afraid that human nature is not to be trusted to prevail objectively and that market forces alone will not provide balance and fairness.  We will have to rise above ourselves and our base nature to survive, thrive and flourish.  We have to quickly evolve away from our harmful individual instincts to include an enlightened institutional intuition for the survival of all.  This is possible since evolution usually happens as a series of necessary bursts instead of a long slow plodding trend line.  Survival of all species will be incumbent on revolutionary change and conscious evolution.  The odds are long, but the time is short.  Otherwise, we are Dinosaurs, and we are likewise, Hosed. 

 

Matthew Lindon

Waterandwhatever.blogspot.com

IRONY

Isn’t it ironic that; with 60% of the homes in Park City second homes and mostly vacant, we have a housing issue.  That; 10,000 people from PC travel down to SLC to work and 10,000 people from SLC travel up to PC to work each day so we have a traffic issue.  That; with these traffic issues we are planning for 30,000 more units in Summit and Wasatch counties each with no discernable plans for infrastructure improvements or funding or slowing growth.  That’s 100,000 people and 200,000 new vehicle trips a day.  I was aghast that they wanted water for 500,000 people in St George, but they are going to need that up here before they are thru.  That; in the second driest state in the Country where we have the cheapest water and the highest per capita usage.  It’s that Irony thing, sir.  It’s personal, prevalent and ubiquitous.

That; we pay our laborers $8, our teachers $25, our Lawyers $500 and our Real Estate Agents $1000 an hour.  That; 20% of the people control 80% of the wealth in this country.  That; we spend a trillion dollars a year to prevent war and nothing to promote peace.  That; we constitute 5% of the world’s population but account for 25% of consumption, waste and pollution.  That; the moon (and most women) cycle around the earth 13 times a year, almost exactly every 4 weeks, but we still have 12 uneven months.  That; in the greatest age of communication, we are all looking down at our phones and not at each other. I could go on. We all could go on.  It’s a little too ironic.  Don’t you think.

But what does That mean.  Things happen that are silly, random, quizzical, amusing, curious, coincidental, contradictory, accidental, fortuitous, paradoxical, unpredictable and don’t make sense.  What’s up with that.  But we have a hand in it at times and some control.  Does that mean we like it that way or are predisposed for that kind of order?  We all love an ironic twist in a story or a song lyric, a chord that does not fit directly with the others, the white negative space on a painted canvas, or the intentional flaw on a woven Navajo blanket.  It upsets our expectations for order, rhythm, consistency and predictability. Is irony human nature, to zig when they zag, to not give them what they want. To question consistency, ceremony and authority?  Or is it evolutionary, for us to reject the status quo and the numbers and swim against the currents of society’s slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  Is it free market-based economics of supply and demand or some derivative of a natural function solved for zero to maximize and minimize. 

It’s That Irony thing, sir.  It’s personal, prevalent and ubiquitous.  We either look at it and say, ‘Huh’, or’ that’s the way it is’, and we take some responsibility for it in our own human nature, science, sociology, mathematics or karma and try to explain it.  Like most things it all goes to motive.  So ask yourself ‘why are things like that and who does it benefit, fairly or unfairly’.  If it does not benefit all, or at least most, it should be questioned, justified, changed or repaired. 

Living wages should be paid for all employees or affordable housing for workers should be provided by major employers (or perhaps with caretaker unit ncentive in empty homes) and more residents here should be encouraged to work at home.  Maybe we should cut our own lawns, paint our own houses and clean our own bathrooms.  Development should pay its own way, including infrastructure, resources and services.  No jumping on the band wagon of infrastructure that already exists.  Zoning should be often downgraded and never upgraded.  Build what you bought.  Water should be priced for its worth so it will be used more wisely.  Conservation should be encouraged on all fronts. 

People should be paid for the value they add to society, the risks they take and the difficulty of their education, not randomly in a race to the bottom or a slice off the top.  There should be a department of Peace to focus on and foster the relationships we need to get along with everyone consciously and conspicuously.   There should be taxes on consumption and waste and not on income and wealth.  We should develop global funding for global climate solutions.  The calendar should be repaired to coincide with our celestial and human rhythms.   Believe none of what you read and half of what you see.  Lastly; blow up your TV, throw away your iPhone, try to find Jesus, on your own. 

There that was easy, if I were king, but I’m not.  I can only encourage people to recognize the irony in their lives and the world and take a moment to address it and if necessary, change it.  If not, let the mystery be and take it as itcom comes.  Revel in it.  Embrace it.  Enjoy it.  Explain it.  Own it.  Live with it.

 

Matthew Lindon

Waterandwhatever.blogspot.com

LET'S KEEP PARK CITY COOL

I rode by a guy the other day and like usual, I said ‘Hi’.  He ignored me and looked away.  Weird.  Maybe he is just tuned out or in a bad mood.  Later I rode by several folks with the same reaction and response.  That's not cool.  It seems like less people are being friendly these days, or are too preoccupied, to say ‘Hello’.  Don’t they know it is kind of a Park City custom to say ‘Hola, Howdy or Hey’, wave, nod or at least smile?  Do you know it takes more muscles to frown than to smile and it must be very hard to not say hello and turn away.  Smiling is kind of automatic human nature, bonding and politeness.  You never know who you will see coming back the other way and who might need help.  It could be you.  It could be them and you would help, or not.

Motorcycle riders all give each other the ultra-cool, low left-hand salute, even Harleys.  Drivers on bad dirt roads often give the two-finger salute off the steering wheel, never one finger, with a sense of solidarity and camaraderie for their shared experience.    Charlie Sturgis and Mountain Trails invented his 10 seconds of trail courtesy for saying ‘Aloha, Caio, Lo or Yo’ and my PC Leadership Class 17 invented our Civility Bells on our bikes to warn and inform others of our presence.  And then of course there was the ‘Say Hey’ Kid – Willie Mays, who started it all.  It is only common sense, common practice and common courtesy. 

So, what is it with these sour folks?  Are they new and don’t know the tradition?  We used to say ‘Hy’ to everyone on Main Street until there got to be too many of them and all we said was ‘Hi, Hy, High,’.   Now the trails are more crowded but not enough to feel dour or down.  Is it the young people who were not taught this or are so introspective and distracted with their lives, music, podcasts and phones to look up and see the trees, smell the roses and say ‘Hello’?  Hang up and ride.  Is it the old people that are so shaky and one dimensional that they can’t look up and say ‘Hey’ without crashing?  Slow down and relax. Is it the e-bikers that are shunned from an un-inclusive society because of their mechanical advantage and reluctance to do work?  Get over it.  Is it snobby trail hoarding locals that don’t want to acknowledge any one for not being from PC?  Get over your selves.  Is it people in matching Lycra kits and fancy bikes looking down on the rest of us on our K-Mart bikes, sneakers and Grateful Dead T shirts?  Uncool.

Perhaps it is just a matter of edification and acknowledgement that we are not out there alone, for better or for worse.  We all need to recognize each other, our commonality and community.  Celebrate the sharing of our great resources and good fortune to be out-and-about.  Next time you are out hiking or biking or skiing, say ‘Hy’ to others, and if they do not respond, say Bye.  Lets keep Park City cool.

And if you see me today with an illegal smile.

It don’t cost very much but it lasts a long while.

Won't you please tell the man we didn’t hurt anyone.

We’re just trying to have us some fun.  

John Prine

 

Matthew Lindon

Waterandwhatever.blogspot.com

Ol’ Blue Eyes

I didn’t notice it until I was 40 or so, but my dad had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.  My folks were passing through the local airport, on their way to my sisters, and I went to join them for lunch on their layover, back when you could do that kind of thing.  Dad had had some sort of eye treatment or operation and was not wearing his glasses for once.  He had been wearing glasses nonstop for 60 years, since sometime between the depression and the war, when they discovered he couldn’t see the black board and he was hopelessly behind in his studies.  

He came out of the jet way and I did not recognize him at first, but I remember thinking, ‘man that guy has blue eyes’.   Then he stuck out his hand to shake, before he got used to hugging, and said as he always did ‘hello Matthew’. I was so surprised.  You think you know a guy….

 A few years later dad was on his deathbed gently succumbing to COPD and lung cancer at a Hospice Care unit near my sister’s home.  As his time drew near and we were all gathered around his bed, he sat up out of morphine stupor, opened his bright, baby blue eyes and looked around the room and at all of us one more time.  Then he fell back into his bed and slowly passed away, allowing, relenting, and permitting death to take him.  His pulse in my hand receding from a frantic 200 beats a minute to nothing at all, in a matter of minutes.  I remember thinking again, ‘man that guy has blue eyes’.

 They were kind eyes, humorous eyes, serious eyes, encouraging eyes.  Empathetic eyes that could see the adult in every child and the child in every adult.  Knowing eyes that saw the value of hard work and honesty, eyes that showed respect for everyone and saw that everyone had their own form of intelligence and integrity, perspective and point of view.  Stern, strict eyes that help you know when you are wrong, that build discipline and character.  Gritty eyes that looked up to the heavens for inspiration and down at the ground with perspiration, head down in determination, taking each task one step at a time, doing what he had to do to get it done.  Loyal eyes that stuck with you, thru thick and thin, like the family and friends and the sports teams he adored.  Irish eyes, between a smile and a tear, confidence and fear.

 Tired eyes that surrendered in his last years to a philosophy of ‘whatever’ and ‘what are you going to do’ when he lost interest in the politics and the pettiness of the world.  Resolved eyes that teared up and winked at me the last time I saw him while he gave me the thumbs up, saying that he was OK, and to my relief, that I was OK.  Non-judgmental eyes of acceptance and approval, respect and recognition, strength, and surrender.  The clear blue eyes of a simple, good man and my everyday hero.

 

I have seen it in your eyes

You’ve got those bright eyed baby blues.

But there is one thing more,

I was hoping you might do.

Take your hand and lead me,

To the hole in the garden wall,

And pull me thru.       JB

Megan McKenna - Snyderville Address

Two score and several years ago Megan McKenna came to Summit County, conceived in liberty and the proposition that all men are created equal.  We knew Megan McKenna from the days when she was a bony kneed young girl riding her oversized bicycle around Silver Springs.  She is from a solid blue-collar family who bought a home here when it was possible.  Unlike so many new interlopers, Megan is actually from here, skiing our hills, riding our trails and educated in our schools.  She is of the people.  Megan envisions a sustainable, affordable County, with responsible growth and regional collaboration, so that this County, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 

Next, we saw Megan burst into the good-old-boys-club and serve on the ski patrol at The Canyons. When she wasn’t throwing avalanche bombs or evacuating yet another torn ACL she was fighting for worker’s rights and employee contracts.  After that long and loyal stint she started a local’s petition for backcountry access to our public lands and received thousands of signatures of local support.  The stakeholders agreed to meet with her until this problem was hammered out.  Then Megan moved to educating our students in science at PC High School.  Her students recognized and respected her, as they do all good teachers.  She loved the work but could not make ends meet after 11 years. Finally, she found her new passion fighting for the Mountainlands Housing Resource Center for moderate income families as she fought for her own affordable housing on the paltry wages we pay our essential employees. She is now running for Summit County Council, for the people, for her family and friends.  She is a fresh face and perspective, untarnished by political history or histrionics.  We need to elect Megan to the Summit County Council because it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do so.

I favor Megan for the Summit County Council because she is from here, she is one of us.  She understands our history and our experience, our aspirations and our ambitions.  She is empathetic to the diversity of the east and west County alike and understands their respective positions and perspectives as a team player and critical thinker.  She understands the nuanced, complex and contiguous problems facing the County and can communicate them and solve them with our public input professional staff assistance and fellow council collaboration.  Megan Mckenna will ensure that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from this County.

 

Matthew Lindon, PE   ‘79

Snyderville Utah

Graciously

 We saw Peter Frampton the other night in Salt Lake City, and he was great. We go way back together.   I felt like I was hanging from a tree in Central Park watching his free concert in ‘75 or dancing in my dorm room playing my lacrosse stick, before he came Alive.   This was the ‘Never say Never’ tour and it was bittersweet, but I like my friend Terry’s tour title of ‘Frampton is Still Alive’.  Frampton covered Georgia on my Mind early with no words and finished with While my Guitar Gently Weeps that was a great sentiment but it was ultimately not Prince, who now owns that song. In between he played his schtick songs as the structure for some great jams.  Even the mouthpiece stuff was unabashedly good.   ‘Lines on my Face’ was my favorite, whether it is about grief, age or cocaine, I still love the practical line, ‘I still got a house I got’ta heat’.   His big hit ‘Show me the Way’ surprisingly felt like Peters rendition of a wanderers Ripple by The Dead.  When he sang the line from ‘Shine On’ -  ‘Find it hard to see you in the darkness, I looked around, you were besides me’, I turned to my wife Tracey, smiling next to me.

Salt Lake was great with easy travel and parking and a dinner at a nice old speakeasy cat-house on Franklin Street in the Tenderloin.   It is a good size city now with critical mass and there is finally some there, there. The Eccles theatre is a modern version of Carnegie Hall that I didn’t even know was there. There are high rises going up even taller than The Church, and large apartment buildings employing structural architectural gymnastics just for post-modern style.  We arrived in Salt Lake in the 70’s when the Central Business District was vacated by an exodus of business to the suburbs and the malls.  We fled to the hills and small town Park City.  There were less than a million people in Utah at the time and Frampton was an unknown outside of NYC.  Since then SLC has enjoyed a resurgence spurred by the 2002 Winter Olympics when ‘The World Was Welcomed Here’ and they stayed.  Throw in a successful conservative State Economy, the marketing moniker of ‘The Silicone Slopes’, the diverse beauty of the state with the heavily promoted ‘Mighty Five National Parks’ and 80% of the state being federal land, as well as the acceptance of the quirky but friendly Mormons and you have one of the most successful cities in the country.  They announced recently that we will get an NHL hockey team, and possibly a MLB baseball team and the 2034 Winer Olympics.  The sky is the limit for ‘This is the Place' and with its rebuilt International Airport, and growing cultural diversity, Salt Lake City, as well as Park City and Peter Frampton, grew up with us.

The all-star band was on stage right that night, admiringly facing Frampton on stage left. They were good but it was his show.  There was a video screen behind the band showing Monte Python type clips like ‘Frampton Comes Alive’ on a rocket blasting off into space. The band was rocking, and Peter’s fingers were dancing dexterously with upbeat tempos and solos.  He still has it. He was very gregarious and personable. Sounding Happy. Lively. Fun and funny. Frampton is the rock sound and attitude that I grew up with and brought here, and thereby compare it to all other rock.  Peter is sick and dying and came onstage with a cane while I had brought my Sciatic cane for walking in the big city.  I held it high during the encore and he acknowledged.   There are no coincidences.  Peter and I, Salt Lake and Park City had come a long way and successfully grown older graciously, together.  Frampton left extorting the crowd to consider that we are all struggling with something in this life, and to try not to be judgmental of others, not knowing their trials and tribulations.  Like the Grateful Dead ask in 'Uncle John’s Band', Peter asked us, "Are you kind." 

Special

 It struck me as funny, the day of the eclipse, watching Totality race across the country on TV and looking up at the sliver of Partiality in my own backyard, and I thought how special we must be.  Days before I saw the perfect crescent moon rising before dawn, racing unknowingly to its new-moon rendezvous with the sun in a few days, unaware of its effect on the scurrying humanity below.  All of us looking for a higher universal perspective, human bonding experiences, or something else to do.  This random, light bending confluence seemed inevitable by now, and I was amazed that science could predict its conjugation to within a second, years ahead of time. Two, seemingly independent, celestial objects on their gravitational orbital dance with destiny.  It was special.

Is it a coincidence that the sun is 400 times as big as the moon, but 400 times further away, giving us the perfect eclipse geometry?  I think not. There are no coincidences in nature’s design of the universe. It all has a mathematically balanced plan. There are, in fact, several moons, around dozens of planets, around millions of stars, in billions of galaxies, and that is just in the universe that we know of today. There are, realistically, millions of eclipses going on in the universe at any given moment. In the trillions of places to live out there, the probability that there is Not life on one of them is almost zero. If there is an eclipse happening out there, and there is no one to see it, is it really that special?

We are separated from each other, in this vast universe, by the current Einsteinian limitation that nothing goes faster than the speed of light.  He said that if you stood on a train going the speed of light and shined your flashlight ahead, the light beam would only go the speed of light.   So, we are separated from the rest of the universe by great distances and the speed-limit of light, which is 186,000 miles a second, or 700 million miles an hour, or 6 trillion miles a year.  Wicked fast.

In Star Trek their Warp Speed number is cubed and multiplied by the speed of light to get their actual speed.  So, Warp speed 2 would be 8 times the speed of light or 6 billion miles an hour.  Peak Warp Speed 9.6 is 1900 times the speed of light and that is 12 quadrillion miles per year.   That is tremendously fast but that is science fiction.  We still do not believe that Warp Speed is possible without a theoretical Warp Drive, Worm Hole or Quantum Tunnel taking short cuts through the space-time continuum.    

 According to our current physics, if you stood on the closest star today and looked back at the earth, you would see the light from the Insurrection at the Capital 4 years ago.  If you were on one of our closest galaxies and looked back at the earth, you would see the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.  Light is really fast, but the universe is really big.  And getting bigger.

Even if there is life out there, it could not get here if it wanted to. They are protected from us by our own isolation and the speed-limit of light. Which is good since we would probably beat them up, because they were different from us, or start a war with them because they want our stuff.  Either there is a lot of life out there in the universe that just cannot get here from there, or we are really really really special.  The Garden of Eden. As special as The Dark Side of the Moon or a Total Eclipse of the Sun