Scholarship Essay #2

I don’t think that just by looking at me you would assume that I’m all that diverse of a person. I’m a 30 year old, Caucasian male. That’s what people see when they first meet me and I’m ok with that. I’m also gay. I’m ok with that too. In fact the narrative of my life since “coming out” has made me the diverse man that I am today.

I was excommunicated from the LDS Church for falling in love with another man. I was expelled from BYU and had to face my family with the grim news upon my return home to Denver. All of this occurred just four weeks after I came home from serving an LDS mission in Eastern Europe. While that experience was one of the most difficult of my life, it has made me the person I am today and I wouldn’t change a thing.

In Utah, I have the best of both worlds. I can converse as fluently in the culture of the dominant religion in the state as I can in swapping stories with my friends over a beer. To be frank, I love being able to do both. I find tremendous value in being able to relate to others regardless of their backgrounds, to find some common bond, to connect on the human level.

Being a diverse person, to me, is of course shaped by your heritage and your life experiences. But those are inward looking traits of diversity. It is the ability to project an outward embrace for everything and everyone that may come into your life that is the hallmark of a truly diverse person. It is the ability of seeing past the black and white in life and celebrating all the beautiful shades of grey.

A diverse person is someone that truly reflects the attitude of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” While admittedly I fall short at times, this is a philosophy that I strive to live by. It is within the grey of life that I tend to find the most joy.

It stands to reason that the urban planning program attracted me for just that reason. It is the responsibility of our profession to see our communities as the sum of many parts. To be effective, we must be able to see that the many aspects and needs of responsible, sustainable planning are intricately woven together. The issues that we address are as diverse as the people that populate our towns and cities. We are required to make decisions that have an immediate impact on the parties involved, but also have the awesome responsibility of being able to shape our communities for generations to come. It is difficult to do this wisely when only viewing the world through a black and white lens.

I am excited to be the first planning student from the University of Utah to participate in a study abroad program. As our college diversifies and matures, it is imperative that we reach out on a global scale to experience and build upon the successes that other societies and cultures are enjoying.

I am honored to represent our college and the GLBT community in this pioneering effort. I am confident that we will set the standard with future exchanges in being able to see the many diverse shades of grey.

Scholarship Essay #1

Before the various colored revolutions made their way through much of Eastern Europe, the “singing revolution” set the stage for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The tiny Baltic nation of Lithuania bravely threw off the shackles of nearly 50 years of occupation; not by guns or violence, but by gathering in the tens of thousands around their parliamentary building, joining arms and singing their beautiful national hymns that had previously been outlawed.

I was privileged to live in Lithuania ten years into their newfound independence. Their sense of national pride was still palpable at the time. It was there that I learned firsthand, that it is impossible to repress the human soul. While I had no cultural or familial ties to Lithuania, it was hard not to fall in love with a nation and her people, in whom, the reawakening of a culture and society was occurring.

The sense of national identity is not something easily defined for the crucible that we call America. Yet, for a place like Lithuania, the simple beauty of celebrating their heritage, through everyday life, was breathtaking to behold. I will admit that it took me some time in the region to fully grasp the intricate dynamics that were taking place. I don’t pretend to be able to understand it fully. How can I?

Being aware of their struggle for freedom though, I began to see the world through a different lens. My old thoughts of the superiority of the American “way-of-life,” slowly left me and a deep sense of reverence and respect crept in for things that I once viewed as foreign and inferior.

When the orange revolution swept through Ukraine in the winter of 2004, I was inspired to watch the national awakening of that amazing country. While they have struggled politically to make progress on the orange promises, the nation is alive.

When the parliamentary elections were scheduled for 2007, I knew that I needed to be there. I convinced my father to go with me amidst the general confusion and scorn of our friends and family as to the purpose of the trip.

To be there though, out on the public square with thousands and thousands of Ukrainians, was something that makes me emotional to this day. We talked with them, looked in their eyes and saw the glimmer of hope that comes along with the mantle of a national awakening. It is inspiring and for me borders on the holy.

There is nothing that can substitute for the experience of actually being there, cheering on the similarities in our cultures and celebrating the differences. It is only by seeking out the cultural differences that we grow in appreciation and respect for one’s own.

As the first urban planning student to go abroad for the University of Utah, I will seek out the similarities in Argentina, but more importantly, I will look to harvest the successful differences in their planning approaches. As the saying goes, “Think Global, Act Local” and within this opportunity comes an important first step for the University and our College in becoming a leader in sustainable planning for the future.

My Codependency

So I was feeling pretty good about my green footprint when it came to transportation.  I traded in my ’99 Toyota Tacoma for a ’07 Honda Civic.  I went from getting around 20 mpg in the city to nearly 38 mpg.  I’m only filling up a 10-gallon tank twice a month instead of an 18-gallon tank every week.  The prompting for this came when gas prices were hovering around $4/gallon.  $80 versus almost $300 per month is a no brainer.  Now that gas prices are even less, I feel even better.  That is until I hear the chatter coming from my fellow students and professors in the department of city and metropolitan planning.  For fear of a Monty Pythonesque witch-hunt, I keep the fact that I drive to campus everyday a closely guarded secret.

  I will freely admit that I am completely codependent on my little car.  I drive everywhere.  What will compound the level of consternation even more on behalf of my colleagues is that I literally have a bus stop in front of my house.  I know, I know, the urban planning gods have sealed my fate.  However, I have absolutely no plans of changing my habits anytime soon.  I simply do not live in a walkable area.  I’ve done a brief survey (thanks to Google Maps and UTA’s very cool trip planner) and I have compared walking times, transit times and driving times from my home to various locales that I frequent.  (The gods already know this, but prefer to keep this information stuck in committee somewhere).

Place	Distance	Walking	Transit (transfers)	Driving
Smith’s 2100 S.	1.3 miles	25 min.	18 min. 1 trans.	5 min.
St. Paul’s Church (On Sunday)	3.9 miles	1 hr. 18 min.	49 min. 1 trans.	12 min.
U of U Campus	5.1 miles	1 hr. 45 min.	32 min. 1 trans.	14 min.
24 Hour Fitness	3.2 miles	1 hr. 3 min.	17 min. 0 trans.	9 min.
Tryangles (bar)	3.5 miles	1 hr. 8 min.	31 min. 2 trans.	10 min.

  Walking is totally out of the question.  A bicycle may be a bit more realistic, but I know myself well enough that the convenience of the car still outweighs any other perceived benefit I may attain from utilizing a different mode of transportation.  I think Salt Lake will get there.  I rode the light rail everyday back home in Denver when I went to school, but parking was at a premium downtown, so it was worth it.  Here the costs are low to drive and park, everywhere.  So the question is, for this city studying capitalist pig, how do we provide the proper incentives for people like me to ditch their cars and try something else?

Goodbye Old Friend

I am surprised at the emotional reaction I have had to the announcement that the Rocky Mountain News has shut down. I haven’t lived in Denver for over six years, but I read the Rocky online everyday. Along with the other major daily in town, the Denver Post, the Rocky was the way that I stayed connected to my hometown. While the Rocky was known as the more “conservative” paper, I appreciated that I would get fair reporting and thoughtful editorials. I may be a little biased since I was a paperboy for the Rocky in my youth. I think my feelings go deeper than that.

When it comes to print journalism, I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where the integrity, ethics and truthfulness were never called into question. Aside from the editorial page, with which we are welcomed to agree or disagree, most people in Denver take newspaper stories at face value. I can think of few print equivalents to Bill O’Reilly.

Print journalism has a long tradition of being ethical. Its entire existence relies on the public’s trust. While tabloid rags sell well, few people really expect to find any semblance of truth written amongst their pages. No, for things of import and substance, people turn to the written word.

The problem for traditional print journalism is that their business model hasn’t evolved quickly enough. I suspect that more and more people are like me. I enjoy my cup of coffee in the morning while perusing the online versions of the newspapers, rather than thumbing through pages of their paper versions. I read the online versions just as methodically and deliberately. I have a very set pattern of the order of news that I read. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the medium.

I don’t have any brilliant suggestions for how to solve the issues facing the newspaper industry. I only know, now, what it feels like to have one of them collapse. It’s not unlike a family member dying. The Rocky connected us to what was happening in our community. It helped to foster debate and dialogue about those events. It facilitated a common experience between citizens simply by reading the same story.

The writing is on the wall for many traditional newspapers across the country. Even here in Utah, the owners of the Deseret News are quietly transforming their paper into a publication that is solely focused on the predominant religion of this state. This move effectively leaves the citizens trusting and hoping that the Salt Lake Tribune will honor the public trust as the last daily voice of professional print journalism in town.

I’m not sure how long I will leave the link to the Rocky Mountain News as a bookmark on my browser. I checked it again this morning like I usually do, only to find, to my dismay, no updated content. So I guess this is goodbye to my Rocky. Thanks for being such a trusted friend . . .

The Snipe Hunt

I am a son of the West. Born on the genesis of the plains, in the shadows of rocky giants, I had the best of both worlds. One of the rituals of experiencing the outdoors in the West involves a pillowcase, a flashlight, a heavy jacket and at least a medium dose of gullibility. Why anyone would believe that a roadrunner-like bird would dash into your pillowcase because it was enticed by the light of a torch is beyond me. (Some versions of the hunt include an equally gullible partner banging on a pot with a wooden spoon).

For the perpetrated, this rite of passage certainly leaves them with trust issues for at least 24 hours, after the realization that the car that dropped them off in the wilderness has fled and probably wont be back for a few hours. For the perpetrators, there are lots of snickers and plenty of material for healthy teasing in years to come. I will admit that I have participated on both ends of this event.

After the fear of death-by-coyote has passed and you’ve stumbled your way back to the road, there isn’t much else to do but walk and listen. You finally realize that you can actually see more when you are brave enough to turn off your flashlight, and if your lucky enough to think about it, you look up and for the first time in your life you can see the milky way as people have been seeing it for millennia.

When your ride finally does come rumbling up the road, blinding you with its headlights, you leave a little bit of youthful naïveté behind with an appreciation for how wide-open the world is and that it is filled with quasi-jerks (like the ones who sent you on the hunt in the first place).

The discovery of that wide-open world is chronicled brilliantly in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. The book records his deeply intuitive relationship with nature as he travels back and forth between the big city and his property in the woods of Wisconsin. Leopold’s attention to nature’s detail and complex dynamics are so beautifully described in his prose that you can’t help but be transported into his world and to fancifully imagine his vivid descriptions:

The Geese Return

ONE SWALLOW does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.

A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges.

A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew an educated lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers. (19-20)

I often wonder how many of us that live in urban environments miss the call of the geese? How many are content to see the colors of the autumn leaves on the television rather than to see their splendor first hand? I would posit that those of us that consider ourselves urbane notice the rhythm of the year in a different way. The urban way. The planting of gardens, the mowing of the lawns, the raking of the leaves and the shoveling of snow are about as close as we get to nature anymore.

I’m not complaining though. The more refined a person may become, the more fun it is to take them snipe hunting come spring . . .