Salt Lake City
For me coming to Salt lake City without a lot of preconceived bias was difficult but I feel that I have done pretty well, even with the amount of conflict between my beliefs and those that are embedded in the Mormon religion.
The house that we are staying in is a duplex with our part in the ground floor and it’s the bigger of the two parts. I haven’t been in the other part so I don’t know what is in it, but we have 2 hot tubs a “steam shower” and a few game tables.. so its pretty sweet.
I’ll get pictures up as soon as I can.
Salt Lake and New Orleans are the 2 big places where we are going to stay for an extended period of time meaning 5ish weeks. This is where we will be working on our main Documentary projects.
Here in SLC (salt lake city) we started out with a tour of Welfare Square, where they walked the group around to the various buildings and talked about what they did and how it helped the Mormon cause or humanitarian aid or both.
This was mixed in with being surrounded by religious paintings for most of the time.
Later we saw the Tabernacle Choir who were pretty good but it lasted to long for my liking.
The following day I believe we went to temple square, and were guided around by two missionaries which was… interesting to say the least. That weekend was either the annual or bi-annual mass Mormon Conference to hear what their leaders had to say.
Over all it was a little too much Mormonism for my personal liking, but that’s just me.
We were also given a tour of the most spifftacular program that I’ve seen so far, called “Spy Hop,” which is for students to come and work at after school. They are a lot like what BLC wants to be in a while imho. They also have a music studio and a graphics and computer game making. During those days we also got to meet some polygamists, who aren’t the stereotypical / or pop vomit view of what “Mormons” are.
They were really nice and im sure that it takes a lot of courage to do what they do, by that im speaking of the fact that what they do is breaking the law. The talk with them helped curb what bias that I had coming into SLC and that meeting.
The next big event that we did (I can remember) was a rally/protest against some of the things that the Mormon president has recently said about GLBT etc groups and on the topic in general that were really nasty.
A few us, went to the meeting site along with 4500 supporters and those that are GLBT in silent protest against what had been said. We all gathered around temple square and either sat or lay down head to foot around the square. It was a really wonderful experience.
We haven’t done much else so far in terms of big things like that. A few concerts have been seen and a few movies such as RED and Jackass 3D and the Facebook movie.
All of the kids have been working in service jobs, such as the Utah food bank, a non-kill animal shelter, a hospice center and community gardens.
I worked in the food bank for a while then moved to the animal shelter which for me was the best move and that choice has helped my on my documentary decision.
Work at the animal shelter usually consists of getting there around 10 ish and taking care of the dogs and cats. Changing the water/ food and litter boxes for the awesome and friendly cats, and changing the water, washing and sanitizing the kennels for the dogs. These don’t take that long at all. We usually follow that up with folding blankets, cleaning up the play pens and of course spending tons of time with the dogs and cats.
Work usually ends between 1 and 4 pm.
