Baile Tehuantepec

Diego Rivera

I work in the Book Repair Deptartment of the BYU library, and I run across some pretty interesting books as I work. In the past few weeks my favorites were How to Lie With Statistics, Zsa Zsa Gabor's How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, and How to Get Rid of a Man, and a book containing Diego Rivera's complete works. Its been making me miss California real hard. And not just because the paintings often have that southwest, Mexico feel, but because so many of his paintings were murals done in public places and beautiful homes. You were a lot more likely to run across public art in California than here in Provo or up in Kennewick where my family lives now. Even though I grew up in a small town, it seemed like there was more value placed on the beautification of public places than there is out here. There may not have been a whole lot of people in town, but the places we visited were always asthetically pleasing, unlike here in Utah where the goal seems to be to get as much building or advertisement as possible into every space. Views are blocked, spaces are crowded, and everything seems to sprawl without direction or meaning. It makes me feel like a hamster thrown into one of those complex system of tubes. Everything is well maintained and organized, but its full of unnecessary turns and hills that could have been avoided if anyone had taken a little while to plan instead of just connecting tube after tube. As Anne would say, there is absolutely no scope for imagination in a place like this!