Everybody seems to be talking about today being 121212 day and all the assorted things that are going on.  One thing that did perk my interest for a minute was an email with a printable coupon worth a dozen (12) Krispy Cream Donuts…but I don’t know where the nearest KCD is, so that one went away as quickly as it came.

And with all the 121212 stuff going on I decided to write about something else, even though the 121212 bandwagon would have been a pretty good ride.

So, let’s look at some other things that are going on today.  One thing I stumbled on was a group of young kids in Paraguay who live on or very near a landfill.  This landfill is huge and several “cities” surround it.  Nearly everyone living in these cities works at the landfill.  Most of them are ripping and tearing apart the garbage and try to find things they can sell…call them recyclers.  A very green thing these days.

You can imagine just what terrible conditions these poor people are living in and among.  As it turns out there is a ray of good hope for some of the younger people living there.  A very ambitious 3o something year old man decided he wanted to teach the kids who were willing to learn, how to play instruments.  The biggest problem was not in getting kids interested, but rather getting instruments for them to play.

Thus along comes a garbage truck and dumps its load…behold…in the trash is part of an old broken violin!  A miracle!  It is brought to him and he fixes it with assorted things he has laying all around him and suddenly he tunes it and it makes beautiful music once again!  This got him thinking and suddenly every student has an instrument to play.  Violins, Cellos, Bass’, Drums etc.  All made of trash and everyone tuned perfectly.

He decided he would make a movie to help these kids get out of the trash cities they were living in.  They have a Facebook page….”landfill harmonic”…go and look them up.  They call themselves the “Landfill Harmonic Orchestra” and you can see a trailer of the movie and see some of what they have to experience every day.   A happy-sad sort of story.  I wish them the best!

http://news.linktv.org/videos/harmonic-landfill-paraguay-kids-make-orchestra-out-of-trash

On a totally different note (so to speak) I found a story about a local, West Valley City Mayor, who got tired of hearing how his town was nothing but bad.  The news carried such awful stories about gangs, shootings, drugs and the normal news stuff we hear and read about every day.  He decided he wanted to paint a different picture of his lovely town and so he created himself a Facebook page, email address and got a job as a free lance reporter for a smaller town newspaper out in Magna…he called himself  “Richard Burwash”!  As my reading went on, he ended up getting reprimanded by his own city council, once they uncovered him.  I see nothing wrong with a man wanting to show his city in a different light than an ugly one.  I suppose he just went about it in a different, out of the box sort of way and people didn’t understand.  They though Richard was  really a  Dick.

Enjoy the rest of your 121212 and I hope if you have a KCD place close to where you live, that they send you an email with a printable coupon…if not…give me a comment and I’ll forward mine to you.

Bears Butt

December(12), Day 12, Year 2012!