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Boulder City, NV
Opinion

Positives of reality better than scary maybes

More Stories
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Alumni events, marriage and a real Nazi
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Is the grass always greener?
By Nathaniel Gee Boulder City Review
April 4, 2018 - 3:10 pm
 

Sadly, at least for the time being, this will be my last article. I have loved writing for the Boulder City Review and enjoy the opportunity to be a voice within our amazing town.

Throughout the time I have been writing I have tried to be a positive voice in our community. Since I have gotten to know many of the most vocal in our community I have noticed that all of us, myself included, have a tendency to get so passionate about current issues, both national and local, that “may” lead to serious consequences that we can forget just how wonderful our community and lives are.

Maybe climate change will lead to catastrophic sea rise and we will all die by 2030. Maybe North Korea or ISIS will get a nuclear warhead and kill millions of Americans. Maybe President Donald Trump will start a devastating trade war with China and send us into a devastating depression. Maybe our national debt becomes so high that the inflationary pressure crushes the dollar and our economy.

Maybe public-school policy ruins education for our children and they will never learn what we learned as kids. Maybe a large solar flare destroys the electric infrastructure and leads to large power failures and thousands of deaths.

Maybe Interstate 11 going around us destroys the town, plummets our home values, and our town as a whole. Maybe the mayor and City Council push a pro-growth agenda and completely ruin our small town. Maybe we live in scary times.

The reality is you hold in your hand a device that has access to more knowledge in seconds than your great-grandfather could have accessed in a lifetime. The reality is literacy rates are higher worldwide than they have ever been in history. The reality is for a few dollars you can buy exotic fruit, like pineapple, that kings of early ages didn’t have access to. The reality is you can talk virtually face to face with almost anyone in the world for next to nothing.

The reality is 99 percent of Americans and much of the world has access to clean, potable water. The reality is infrastructure is in place to support you to smoothly travel at 65 mph from city to city or to get goods shipped from across the world in a few days. The reality is, due to health care advances, we are living longer than our forefathers.

The reality is we live in a beautiful and unique town where we are surrounded by some of the kindest, most charitable people I have ever met, who are almost universally working hard each day to preserve and keep the amazing heritage of Boulder City.

The reality is there are a lot of scary maybes out there. I am not saying we should ignore them or pretend they do not exist. But, the world will always have scary maybes. Those who have gone before us worked very hard to make some wonderful realities and how sad they must be when we let scary maybes overshadow them.

When tempted to tear our hair out because an election or specific issue does not appear to be going our way, I hope we can take a step back and think how wonderful life is and how blessed we are. We can look around us and see how much we are surrounded by loving, caring fellow community members and then, in a positive way, work to keep our town moving in a positive direction.

To all those who have read my articles, written their own, been a voice for positive change and to those who continue to work in a positive direction in this town I say, thank you, keep up the good work.

Nathaniel Kaey Gee resides in Boulder City with his wife and six kids. He is a civil engineer by day and enjoys writing any chance he gets. You can follow his work on his blog www.thegeebrothers.com.

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Alumni events, marriage and a real Nazi
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Ron’s column from a few weeks ago inspired me to tell a story about a weird event from my past. Mine is not as exciting as his in that there is no wrestler named Silo Sam. But there is at least one Nazi. And, no, not the current “I disagree with your politics so you are a Nazi” version. An actual card-carrying member of the party.

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Is the grass always greener?
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Many people in the past played a golf game to cement a business deal, didn’t they? They also played golf to socialize. Has Boulder City recognized lessening play on golf courses? Or, from another perspective, what happens when million-dollar homes are placed around our open space golf course with views of the McCullough Mountains? Do fewer people play golf on the Boulder Creek golf course?

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Me, my brother and Silo Sam
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Recently, I’ve been enjoying watching shows on A&E related to professional wrestling back in the earlier days, with profiles on wrestlers I grew up watching as well as classic rivalries.

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OK, as a starting point, I must note that it’s weird to think that I might be writing something that would put me in agreement with the Language Police.

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In my eight decades of this amazing life, I have worn a great many hats: son, brother, father, major (USAF), grandfather, council member, state representative, state senator.