Someone recently told me that I was on the verge of becoming a hoarder. Yikes! My wife smiled and agreed that I have eccentric tastes, and a lot of original art by local artists, and art made by my own hands hanging everywhere, plus too many books and altars. I responded, “It looks crowded, but that’s only because we need more room!” I don’t have papers stacked floor to … [Read more...]
Babs De Lay – Repurposing History
I have a home for sale that has hardwood floors re-purposed from the old Deseret Gym. Don’t you love it when people salvage great old hardware, doors, windows, and flooring to put into their new homes? It’s like adding instant history as well as charm. There are two types of people in Utah: 1) those who went to the Deseret Gym, and 2) those who didn’t. The gym/spa closed in … [Read more...]
Babs in the City – A Short History of Utah Beer
My wife hates beer. If it was the only liquid she had access to on a deserted and arid island, she would die of thirst. I’m the weirdest beer drinker. I down a lager when my stomach is upset, and in the summer I’ll drink one over ice from time to time. No Guinness for me. That’s like drinking a glass of liquid wheat bread. So why would I pen some words on beer? Because its … [Read more...]
North American Handmade Bicycle Show – Babs in the City
Do you remember your very first bicycle? One year, when I was very young, my grandfather got my brother and me matching John Deere three-wheeled green tractors to race around the pool. When I graduated to a two-wheeler, I had to have training wheels, but only for a little while. A few years later my parents got me my dream bike; a Schwinn “Fair Lady” Sting-Ray … [Read more...]
Utah’s Red Air Got You Hacking? Babs In The City on What To Do
Cough, cough, hack. Those are the sounds you hear no matter where you go in the Salt Lake Valley during January. People don’t believe me when I tell them we used to have air so dark and black that it was no different than a pea soup fog in London. If you walked outside in the morning in the early 1900’s dressed in a white shirt, you’d come home wearing a gray one. The air … [Read more...]
Babs in the City: Gee-Ology
I have had many clients over the years who are geologists. Funny sort, they are. Often socially awkward from spending too much time bonding with dirt rather than humans, I find they are full of swell trivia you can use to win a party game or two. Like the facts that our Uinta Mountains are the only mountains that lie on a horizontal axis in North America, that they took about … [Read more...]
Babs in the City: Petal it Forward
Kindness comes in many forms. I know, it may have been hard in this past election season, full of absolute, unadulterated meanness, to sift out kindness from all the B.S. that fell from the sky. But kindness is delivered every darned day, often by florists, on behalf of lovers, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, kids and cousins, friends and neighbors. Last month, a … [Read more...]
Babs in the City: Tailgating Season
The Olympics are long gone and school for many is half-way done for the fall semester. That means we’re deep into football and tailgating season! The first two football games at the U of U were against the YMCA and the the Utah Agricultural College, now known as Utah State University, back in 1892. The first BYU football team played the U of U in 1896 and won 12-0. That … [Read more...]
Babs in the City – Cash Crops
Utah is a unique place to grow gardens or be a farmer, mostly because of our unique altitude, geography and geology. Our highest point is 13,528 feet above sea level and our lowest point is merely 2,000 feet with a mean of 6,100 feet of elevation. According to the extremely nerdy ‘U.S. General Soil Map,’ we have actual soil orders, ranging from alfisols and entisols, … [Read more...]
Male Violation
In most states, the legal definition of rape is ‘the forcible penetration of a female’. The director of the Rape Recovery Center in Salt Lake City, Mara Haight, tells me that “This narrow definition makes it difficult to estimate the number of sexual offenses against men.” That being said, the Health Department’s ‘Cost of Sexual Violence Study,’ conducted in 2015, estimated … [Read more...]