Our January-February Editor’s Letter From Mary Brown Malouf:
It’s all a little crazy.
Sometime in 2020, the world stopped making sense for a lot of us. Between one of the ugliest election cycles the U.S. has ever been through and the most mysterious disease most of us have ever experienced, normal was canceled. We can’t get together with friends, hug our loved ones, be in the room with them when they die. But somehow we have to go on, right? Somehow we have to continue to work and love and laugh. This issue of Salt Lake magazine holds a lot of frivolity, the main one being an extremely silly TV show, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. There I am in a pink fur coat in a car with our cover housewife, Lisa Barlow and her boys. They call this escapism and for me it was certainly a departure from anything else I’ve ever done. But kinda fun, y’know?
Spangly clothes and high heels and tiny problems provided a respite from all the other very sad news. Like the effect of this virus on our beloved city. The restaurant, bar and hospitality business has been desperately damaged. We hope our Easy Eats article (P. 58) about how to dine out-but-in can do a bit to save gastronomy in SLC. Fortunately, Utah’s uplifting (not just geologically speaking) landscape is a spiritual comfort. Join writer Jeremy Pugh as he explores a piece of it.
A year ago, before 2020, we were worried about lots of other problems that were covered up by COVID concerns. Most of them sprang from vision disconnect between the governed and their governors, the same myopia that led us into the mess of 2020. In this new year, let’s make it real again.
