Ogden | Pat Bean's blog

Posts Tagged ‘Ogden’

Who We Were Doesn’t Have To Be Who We Are

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Familes Alive Conference, Maya Angelou, Ogden, postaday2011, Standard-Examiner, Utah, Weber State University on February 21, 2011| 3 Comments »

Maya Angelou reading her poetry to the nation during Clinton's 1993 presidential inauguration. -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

“I always love to hear people laugh. I never trust people who don’t laugh … I also like people who love themselves. I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves.” — Maya Angelou

Travels With Maggie

I was asked this week, after I wrote about David Hasselhoff (Feb. 17^th blog), who had been my favorite person to interview during my 37 years as a journalist. Without a second’s hesitation, I replied, “Maya Angelou.”

I had the honor of spending an hour with this earthy, acclaimed poet before she gave the 1997 “Familes Alive” address at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Amazingly, I found this very same speech online at http://tinyurl.com/63tg8eo I suggest, if you have time, that you read it.

Angelou had been 69 at the time, She stood six-feet tall and had an ample body that should have made her look grandmotherly. It didn’t. She oozed confidence, and sexuality in a way I had never seen before. I remember thinking back then that if this what age had in store for me, bring it on.

My first introduction to Maya Angelou came in the early 1970s when I read her "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

A huge audience had come to hear Maya speak. I, for one, drank in every word she spoke. Here was a woman who had risen from suffering racial discrimination to reading her poetry before the nation during a presidential inauguration.

Her life is clear evidence for all of us that where we start out in life isn’t where we have to stay.

The newspaper story I wrote from my interview and Angelou’s speech stirred one angry letter, however.

I quoted Anglelou quoting a 1950s’ folk song that had a Black man saying: “The woman I love is fat and chocolate to the bone, and every time she shakes some skinny woman loses her home.” Angelou demonstrated the shaking, and said she loved to make people laugh. And everyone in the audience obliged her.

In response, the letter writer accused me of encouraging discrimination against “skinny women.” I suspected she was a woman who had never laughed at herself. How sad.

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Horses of a Different Color

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged 2002 Winter Olympics, Dallas, flying red horse, gentile city, horse of a different color, Magnolia Petroleum, Mount Ben Lomond, Mount Ogden, Ogden, Ogden's 25th Street, Pagramont logo, Utah on October 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Ogden's 25th Street with the Wasatch Mountains in the background. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The flying red horse that once was the tallest thing in Dallas when it sat atop the Magnolia Petroleum Building.

“When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day.” — Charles Kingsley

Travels With Maggie

I was 14 years old when I saw my first mountain. It was instant love.

I was born in Dallas, Texas, when the tallest thing for miles around was the flying red horse atop the 29-story Magnolia Petroleum Building, which at the time was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. I was probably never more than 35 miles from that horse until I was invited to take a vacation to California with my aunt and uncle who wanted me along to babysit their 2-year-old daughter.

A horse of a different color -- Photo by Pat Bean

I still remember the exciting, albeit hot, August ride across the desert on Highway 66 in a brand new red and white Oldsmobile – with my uncle’s heavy foot on the accelerator pushing it to do 100. But it was the mountain views in Sequoia National Park that stole my heart away. I think I knew then that someday I would live in the mountains.

After one failed experience of doing so, and after my family had fractured and I was left as a single mother to only my youngest child, I got a second chance. I had an offer in 1979 to become features editor at the Standard-Examiner, a 65,000 circulation daily newspaper in Ogden, Utah. To accept meant leaving my job at the 250,000 circulation Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which tempted me with better career options.

The mountains, however, wooed me and won.

Ogden sits at the base of 9,570-foot Mount Ogden to the east – where all the downhill events for the 2002 Winter Olympics were held. To its north sits 9,712-foot Mount Ben Lomond, the inspiration for the Paramount Pictures logo.

Ogden, with its diversified population, artsy attitude, large university and its myriad outdoor opportunities, fit me like a pair of well-worn bicycle shorts. While I have no regrets for selling my home and becoming an on-the-road gypsy, I rejoice every time I go back; and my first glimpse of its Wasatch Mountain landscape almost always brings tears to my eyes.

Ogden began as a railroad town and became known as the gentile city, a tag given it by the Mormons because it was the

Ice cream anyone? -- Photo by Pat Bean

preferred residence of choice for non-Mormons, whom they called gentiles. The city’s history is colorful with tales of rowdy houses, underground opium dens (not true) and cat houses (true), all visited by tourists traveling West by train. Today it’s more gentrified, but still retains the charm of its reputation.

During my recent visit here, I was fascinated by the new influx of gaily painted horses that line the streets by the dozen. For some reason they made me think of the red flying horse I grew up with. That horse is now stabled at Dallas’ Farmer’s Market, while Ogden’s horses prance down the city’s 25th Street and elsewhere through this town that recently made my MSN homepage’s list of America’s most beautiful cities.

It made me laugh to think of all the joys and sorrows of life I had survived between a single red horse and a herd of rainbow colored nags.

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Travels With Maggie: It’s Mother Nature’s Fault That I’m Fickle

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged Arches National Park, Ogden, Utah, Wasatch Mountains, wildflower on May 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Three Gossips at Arches National Park -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye … it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” — Edvard Munch

Day 21

At this point in my journey, I had traveled 1,546 miles toward my destination – plus several hundred more miles in side trips. As always seems to happen to me in my dawdling journeys, I was now faced with a deadline. Because of commitments, I needed to be in Ogden, Utah – 260 miles away – today. It left me with too little time to visit Arches National Park.

I did so anyway.

Even if it was to be just a quick run-through, there was no way I was going to miss this spectacular place where wind, water and time have carved out a fantasy landscape. Just from the road, one can see arches, bridges, potholes, hoodoos and precarious balancing rocks. This day, roadside wildflowers added yet another dimension to this red-rock

Roadside flowers added yet another dimension to the wonders of Arches -- Photo by Pat Bean

architect of nature.

Arches is a place I visited many times when I lived in Utah. It was where I always took visiting friends and relatives, knowing that they couldn’t help but be awed – as once again I was this day. When it comes to fantastic scenery, this braggart Texan is always forced to admit that in this category Utah wins the Oscar, Pulitzer, America’s Cup and all the other awards out there rolled into one.

My few hours spent this day in Arches stayed etched on my senses all the way to the Wasatch Mountains, which cast their pleasant shadow on my life for the 25 years I lived in Ogden. I was eager to renew my acquaintance with these serene giants; and because my trip would include a 10-day stopover in Ogden, I rejoiced that I would have time to do just that.

I have a fickle heart when it comes to Mother Nature’s wonders.

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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com
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