The Main Library has a new addition: two hives full of hard working bees. Housed in the rooftop garden courtyard, roughly 40,000 Western European honeybees are hard at work inside two Langstroth hives producing wax and honey. Inhabited by female workers that forage pollen and make honey, and by male drones that support the reproduction of the queen, the hives will be on the roof until late fall, when they’ll be taken away to be safely stored for the winter.

The hives can be viewed from the staircase between the Main Library’s fourth and fifth floors. The City Library’s staff is happy to find answers to any questions you may have about beekeeping, honey production and the importance of pollinators. Drop by this summer, and check out what the buzz is all about.

In the past three months, Rachel Quist has posted more than 50 stories about Salt Lake's history.

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Rachel Quist loves a good story. As an archaeologist who conducted field schools for the University of Utah and is currently the lead archaeologist at Dugway Proving Ground, she knows that some stories are buried in the ground. As a writer with a passion for history, she knows other stories hide in the pages of old newspapers or in the architectural details of buildings. In Rachel’s view, stories need to be shared, especially when they have been lost or forgotten, which is why she started to blog as the Salt Lake City History Examiner three months ago. She has already written over 50 articles.

Want to know about the Fremont people who lived here a thousand years ago? Check out “Ancient History Under South Temple.” Ever hear about the tragedy at the Buena Vista Airfield near the Jordan River or that there was once a China Town in downtown Salt Lake where a parking structure now stands? Did you know that a Salt Lake City traffic officer invented the world’s first electric traffic signal or that the community known as Hobbitville was built as a bird sanctuary?

“I’ve always been fascinated by obscure histories,” Rachel says. “In my job at Dugway,  I talk to a lot of people, and it’s given me an idea of what interests people and what they don’t know. I often find myself telling stories. The blog gives me a chance to fill in the details.”

Rachel likes history for the light it sheds on the human experience and she often writes about compelling historical figures, such as Julius F. Taylor, an African-American editor and activist who earned a living lecturing about equality during the 1890′s. In another post, she reviews Not by Bread Alone:  The Journal of Martha Spence Haywood, 1850 – 56. “Heywood intrigued me because she was a world traveler who had crossed the Atlantic three times before she joined the Mormon Church in 1848 and came to Salt Lake two years later,” says Quist. “She was very blunt about her opinions and experiences, and she provides a fascinating look into a time period.”

Quist provides a fascinating look into a wide range of time periods through her work as the Salt Lake History Examiner.  Read her articles here, and learn more about her many other interests — gardening, hiking, geocaching and primitive technology, to name a few — on her website.

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Beth Fischer jokes about her photography and unique subject matter. Jesse Stern discusses his handcrafted guitars and even strums a few chords. Matt DelPorto drops by in the 337 Project truck with an enormous ball of string and a thousand thoughts on strings. Leia Bell walks us through her screen printing process and narrowly avoids a spider attack. Shawn Hayes tells us the story of his apprenticeship in leather shoe making, and Amber DeBirk talks about her recycled glass belt buckles.

The Utah Arts Fest, going on now through Sunday, June 27.

See Beth Fischer’s photography.

See Leia Bell’s art.

See Amber DeBirk’s glass.

Read more about Shawn Hayes in the Standard Examiner.

Learn more about the 337 Project.

Learn more about the Utah Arts Fest.

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Steven Swanson combines urban gardening with inner city basketball in Sugar House. Robert Eckman from the University District keeps chickens and bees and cultivates vegetables in a community garden. Lisa McClauahan of Highland Park would like to see people who don’t harvest their fruit offer it to the public through a website.  And Kenvin Lyman has kept rabbits, chickens, goats and bees during the 43 years he has gardened in the Avenues.

How would you implement urban farming in Salt Lake City?  If you are already an urban farmer, how do you do it?

These are the questions The Hive asked folks waiting in line to talk with bestselling author Novella Carpenter after she regaled an enthusiastic crowd in the City Library
Auditorium earlier this month with tales from her book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. Carpenter turned a weed-choked lot in Oakland’s Ghost Town neighborhood (named after its many abandoned buildings) into an abundant farm with chickens, ducks, turkey, bees, rabbits and a couple of 300-pound Red Duroc pigs named Big Guy and Little Girl.  Her tales of turkeys in traffic and the fine art of butchering a chicken kept the crowd laughing and wanting more.  It also inspired them to tell their own stories.

Tell us yours in the comment area below.

Read the Salt Lake City Zoning Ordinances on keeping animals, livestock, and poultry in the city.

Read the Salt Lake City Zoning Ordinances on keeping bees.

Check out the blog, Sugar House Chicken: Adventures in Urban Chicken Farming.

Listen to Novella Carpenter’s talk at the Salt Lake City Library, June 10, 2010. Hear her interviewed by Jeff Robinson on KCPW. Read her blog, Ghost Town Farm. Check out her book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, from The City Library.

See pictures of Steven Swanson’s Sugar House garden .

See pictures of Kenvin Lyman and Sofia Angkasa’s Avenues garden.

What are your favorite local resources for urban farming?  Share them in the comment area.

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Pilar Pobil's painting of the path to her studio gives a sense of the enchanted world visitors enter during the 15th annual "Art in Pilar's Garden" event, June 18-20. Work from local artists Hadley Rampton, Polly Plummer, Edie Roberson, Susan Slade, and Judith Romney Wolbach is also on view.

You could imagine stumbling across the big, persimmon-colored house with its arched windows and wild, enchanted garden on a hilly street in a Spanish village.  Instead, it is an Avenues Neighborhood landmark, a quirky but harmonious synthesis of Pilar Pobil’s childhood on the island of Mallorca, off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, and her life in Utah where she raised a family and became a renowned artist.  Like her paintings, her house and garden are filled with color and stories.

“When you leave your native land for good your life is cut in two,” Pilar wrote in her memoir, My Kitchen Table:  Sketches from My Life. “The first part retreats inside to allow the second part to develop without hindrance.  It becomes a hidden part of yourself that not many people see.  In my case, it started showing itself in my creative process.  It showed in whatever I did: decorating the house, landscaping my garden, sewing my daughters’ dresses, and cooking our meals, and later, of course, it manifested in my art.  It appeared in my sculptures and in my paintings.  To this day, in all the diverse work of my second life, you can see the definite influence of my first life.”

Pilar Pobil's art draws on her Spanish childhood

Shaped by this creative energy, Pilar’s garden has been legendary for years.  It was a favorite on garden tours, but Pilar found that visitors were as interested in peering through the windows of her studio to see her art as they were in the flowers.  She realized that many people were shy about galleries or museums but enjoyed art in less formal ways. This sparked an idea: why not fill the garden with art – hers and that of invited friends — and have a party?  She did and started a tradition that celebrates its 15^th anniversary this year.

Pilar likes to tell the story of a young man who shyly approached her during one of the parties.  ”He was 13 or 14 years old, tall, a little overweight and ungainly.  The garden was full of people but he came up to me and said, ‘Before I came, I had heard a lot about art, but I didn’t understand.  Now, I know what people are talking about.”

Others felt the same way and soon the crowds became so large that Pilar decided to charge admission and use 100% of the proceeds to support local art.  This year, funds go to Art Access Gallery which provides programs for people with disabilities.

What:  “Art in Pilar’s Garden” featuring work of Pilar Pobil, Hadley Rampton, Polly Plummer, Edie Roberson, Susan Slade, and Judith Romney Wolbach

When: Friday, June 18 through Sunday, June 20, 2010, 5 – 9 p.m

Where: 403 8th Ave, Salt Lake City

Check out Pilar’s memoir, My Kitchen Table:  Sketches from my Life, from the Salt Lake City Public Library.

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Salt Lake's new beers feature labels that are as bold as the contents inside. We at The HIve admit a particular fondness for this one. Courtesy Uinta Brewing.

A marine biologist and a geneticist walk into a brewery.  It sounds like the first line of a joke but it’s more fun than that: it’s the backstory of Salt Lake’s newest oasis for beer, Epic Brewing, which opened earlier this month at 825 S. State Street. When it’s founders, David Cole (the marine scientist) and Peter Erickson (the geneticist) moved to Utah from San Francisco in 1992 to start a brine shrimp fishery, they brought a love of craft-made beer with them. After they sold their shrimp business in 2002, they began looking for a new entrepreneurial opportunity. As Cole told SLUG Magazine, “We like to manufacture things, make things that are special. Beer is one of those things that has always been pulling at us.” When Utah’s liquor laws changed in 2008 to allow breweries to sell “big” beers (those with high alcohol content) on site, they knew their time had come.

They hired Kevin Crompton as brewmaster and set about developing three lines of beer:  the “Classic Series,” that will always be available, the “Elevated Series,” “somewhat more creative beers that still fit within style guidelines,” and the “Exponential Series,” that are, as Cole describes them, “super creative ’out of the box’ thinking beers that will be pure cutting edge stuff.  We’re only limited by our imaginations.”

Uinta Brewing Company's new Crooked Line beers feature labels by local artists, this one by Trent Call. Labyrinth Black Ale just won a gold medal from the North American Brewers Association.

Another example of the way imagination combined with Utah’s newly changed liquor laws is Uinta Brewing Company’s new Crooked Line series of high-alcohol, oak-aged brews that come in 750 ml bottles corked and caged like champagne. One of these brews, Labyrinth Black Ale, just earned a Gold Medal in the Imperial Stout category of the 2010 North American Brewers Association Awards. An “extreme” beer, it is dark and malty and has an alcohol content of 13.2%.  Uinta named their new line “Crooked” partly in reference to such unconventional recipes and innovative brewing techniques, but it could also refer to the bold new labels, designed by local artists Leia Bell, Travis Bone and Trent Call.

Inspired brewing has a surprisingly long history in Utah.  According to historian and antiquarian book dealer Ken Sanders, a pioneer petitioned the Great Salt Lake City Council for a license to brew beer from beets in the late 1840s.  The Henry Wagener Brewery that opened in 1864 in the mouth of Emigration Canyon eventually spread over 150 acres, including what is now Hogle Zoo.  Salt Lake Brewing Company opened in 1859 and its main building still stands south of the University of Utah where 500 S. curves into 400 S.

What’s your favorite Utah brew (or place to drink it)?  Tell us in the comment area.

Read an interview with Epic Brewing’s David Cole and Peter Erickson in SLUG Magazine, where you can also learn how Greg Schirf, the founder of Wasatch Beers, helped change Utah’s liquor laws.

See all the Crooked Line labels.

Read Ken Sanders on Utah’s early beer history in Salt Lake Magazine.

Learn more about Utah’s current beer scene on www.utahbeer.blogspot.com.

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Kiplingers featured the 9th and 9th neighborhood in its video tour of Salt Lake. Carmen Gage Ackert photo, Creative Commons license.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine has named Salt Lake City fifth among the top ten cities in which to live, work, and do business in the next decade. The article noted that our city is a particularly good place for new business because of its strong venture capital community, low cost of living, and the fact that the University of Utah “is ranked by one measure as first in the country (along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in launching start-up companies from research-based inventions.”  It also stressed the quality of life here, from pedestrian and bike-friendly neighborhoods to great skiing and other outdoor recreation opportunities.

Read “Best  Cities 2010:  Salt Lake City, Utah” in the June, 2010 issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Watch Kiplinger’s video tour of Salt Lake.

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Paula and Gary Evershed built the dog fountain and soaking pond by the side of the Terrace Hills Drive entrance to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

For years, Paula and Gary Evershed would find tired, thirsty dogs in the reflecting pond by their front porch, and just as often, dusty hikers would ask for a drink from their hose. The Eversheds lived right next to an entrance to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, and they might have tried to keep trespassers out with signs or a tall fence. Instead, they built a fountain and pond to cater to the hikers’ needs.

“In the beginning,” Gary says, “the pond was small, just a watering hole.  But I’d see these big old Labs trying to get in and they’d look at me with mournful eyes.” He enlarged the pond and added steps so that now even the most arthritic dogs can cool off on a hot day.  And two-legged walkers can get a squirt of their own from the drinking fountain nearby.

Paula and Gary first got the idea for a rock fountain when they visited the High Desert Museum in Arizona, but the real inspiration came from a creek that flowed over ledges in a narrow crevice on the Dugout Ranch in Southern Utah.  ”I took a photo and then nailed it on the tree and asked the rock masons to recreate it.” The result is a delight to dogs and people alike.

Artesian Well Park, 800 S. 500 E. SLCPL photo.

Another Salt Lake City landmark popular with the thirsty is Artesian Well Park, on the corner of 800 South and 500 East.  In pioneer days, oxen hauling granite from Little Cottonwood Canyon for the Salt Lake Temple stopped here. Today, many people swear it’s the best tasting water in town. Zach Moses, for instance, would choose nothing else to make tea for his son, Archimedes.

Olympic Legacy Fountain at Gateway Mall goes off every 30 minutes from 10 am to 9 pm in the summer. SLCPL photo.

Arguably the most popular fountain in town, however, is not for drinking but rather for playing, which hundreds of kids do every hot day at the Olympic Legacy Plaza Snowflake Fountain in the Gateway Mall along 400 West, between 200 South and South Temple.  Built to celebrate the 2002 Winter Olympics, this fountain has historical roots as well for its proximity to the mouth of City Creek where the first Mormon pioneers, Orson Pratt and his scouting party, encamped on July 22, 1947, two days before Brigham Young brought the rest of the expedition into the valley. Although they didn’t know it, they were stepping in the footsteps of prehistoric Fremont people who settled the area a millenia earlier, also to be close to good drinking water. Evidence of a late Freemont-style pithouse and other structures was discovered during the construction of the downtown TRAX line and is commemorated with plaques at the Arena TRAX Station, 301 W. South Temple.

What is your favorite fountain in Salt Lake City?  Tell us in the comment area before.

Learn more about the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

Learn more about City Creek Canyon, an important water source for Salt Lake City.

Learn more about Freemont culture and the Freemont site in downtown Salt Lake.

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The eagle perched atop a beehive on Eagle Gate in downtown Salt Lake City is one of the earliest examples of public art in Salt Lake City (though the original wood sculpture carved by Ralph Ramsay in 1859 has since been replaced by an enlarged bronze casting). "Three Hummbingbirds in Blue and White" by Greg Ragland is part of "Flying Objects 2.0," presented by the Salt Lake City Arts Council. SLCPL photos.

In a city built along the front of a great mountain range, much draws the eye upward, but here in Salt Lake, you don’t have to look as far as the Wasatch Range to find inspiration. Utah has long had a high regard for public art and you can find it in public buildings, along the streets, and soaring overhead.

The Utah Arts Council is the oldest arts council in the country, formed in 1899 when Alice Merrill Horne, Utah’s second female legislator, won passage of an act that established what was then called the Utah Art Institute as well as an annual art competition and exhibition. The winning entries became part of the state art collection that now includes over 1200 pieces valued at over $2 million.

In 1985, the Utah Legislature continued the tradition when it passed the One Percent for Art Act that designates one percent of new construction or renovation costs of state buildings for the creation of art. The act has sponsored over 200 works of art around the state, including dozens in Salt Lake City.

In addition, the Salt Lake City Arts Council has its own public art program that includes projects such as Art in Transit, art for the Utah Transit Authority (UTA); the recent Flying Objects 2.0, the second group in a series of temporary sculptures located in downtown Salt Lake City; and many other installations around town.

Internationally recognized mural artists El Mac and Retna created "Ave Maria" with the depiction of a real human heart and incorporating elements of Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, graffiti art and contemporary fashion. SLCPL photo.

Public art can also enhance private property. This was the origin of Eagle Gate that sits astride State Street at South Temple and was originally created to mark the entrance to the homestead of Brigham Young, second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the founder of Salt Lake City.  A more recent example is “Ave Maria,” a mural of a contemporary Madonna on the side of the Guthrie Building, 160 E. 200 South, commissioned by Corey Bullough, the co-owner of FICE, a clothing boutique on the main floor.

Alice Merrill Horne, who inspired the Utah Arts Council over a century ago, believed art had the ability to inspire and unite us.  ”If you really want to learn what art is, live with it: make it a part of your home and of your experience,” she wrote. She would, no doubt, be delighted to encounter Salt Lake City’s vibrant art scene and engage in the lively conversation it inspires.  For a taste, check out the comment thread that followed the Salt Lake Tribune’s recent article on “Ave Maria,” including this note from a woman who described herself as a 68-year-old, LDS grandmother of 11: “I love love love love love the Madonna mural on the Guthrie Bicycle Building. I go see it every time I go downtown. Thank you to artists and Guthrie and everyone else who helped with it.”

What is your favorite work of public art?  Tell us in the comment area below.

Read more about the mother of public art in Utah, Alice Merrill Horne

Learn more about Eagle Gate and Ralph Ramsay, who carved its eagle perched on a beehive and made furniture for Brigham Young.

See public art in Salt Lake sponsored by the Percent for Art and the Salt Lake City Arts Council, including Flying Objects 2.0.

Read more about “Ave Maria” in the Salt Lake Tribune.

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The New York Times Travel Section recently mentioned the local music scene at Kilby Court. Photo by Paul Mayne, Creative Commons License

If you’ve ever had trouble describing Salt Lake City’s cool factor to a friend who has never been here, you can get some help from the New York Times Travel Section this week, whose lead article is titled “36 Hours in Salt Lake City.” The author, Jaime Gross, clearly fell in love with a place that surprised her at every turn, from its design scene (a “bastion of creativity” with shops like Salt Lake Citizen in The City Library atrium that features clothes from 40 local designers), to its vibrant night life (she partied at The Red Door and Club Jam among others), to its ever-expanding array of restaurants that offer ethnic and local food.  Gross took in an eclectic range of Salt Lake experiences in her day and a half here, including a meander through the Marmalade District, checking out the local music scene at Kilby Court, and taking in a 45-minute tour of the Church of Latter-day Saints Humanitarian Center that sends disaster relief all over the world.

Read “36 Hours in Salt Lake City.”

How would you spend 36 hours in Salt Lake City? Tell us in the comment area below.

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