Lift your voices at the University Park annual Holiday Sing & Sleigh Bells event Sunday, Dec. 6—you might share all those gifts! And add “to sing” to the list as well. Come to Observatory Park from 4:30p.m. to 6:30p.m. for music, cookies, horse-drawn wagon rides and … Santa! 

As a holiday bonus, many groups are not meeting in December, so catch your breath and take time to think about the year past, the year ahead, what we did or should have done and what we can do in the future to bring tidings of comfort and joy to everyone. Yes, even to the city, which must be concerned about finding enough gifts for the vast population it invites to join us: how to find enough water, how to locate enough housing—especially for the needy, how to create enough open space to provide a respite of nature to all citizens, how to manage the increasing traffic and parking quandaries, how to secure employment for all and how to feed them all while encouraging that fine old western quality of living. Altogether now—yee-haw!

To make up for taking December off, a multitude of meetings occurred in November, and there was a cramming in of last-gasp, earnest verbiage before the holidaze took over. Our gift for you is some of that, brightly wrapped in prose and tied up with shiny punctuation and cheery labels:

TO You FROM the new Harvard Gulch group, making a list and checking it at least twice to champion University Park’s concerns and ideas for improvements. The Harvard Gulch project is part of a larger one encompassing the Gulch’s entire length, and it’s important to get into the process early in the planning. Three cheers that Tony Hurd agreed to chair this festive group. Revving up interest, especially among all who live near and/or use this trail and its parks, is a priority. University Park’s ideas will go to the powers that be before a public meeting in January. 

TO You FROM Councilman Kashmann, who tells us that from all over Denver the Council has received an earful about safety, traffic and parking problems as well as too-much too-fast density. The reply is that they are determined to do something about it. Please contact them with your pipe dreams and gripe screams to inform their ripe schemes. 

TO You FROM an angelic group of folks from neighborhoods all over town, folks who keep watch over their own friends and neighbors by night and day and, upon seeing anything amiss city-wise, react with everything from a subtle ahem! to a real zinger—whatever the case may warrant. The city-wisemen take note pretty dang often, with responses ranging from frankness to rancor to mercy—and often their actions end in good results. This outspoken, watchful group is INC, or Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation, of which University Park and about 100 other neighborhoods are members. Check ‘em out at denverInc.org.

 TO You FROM the local businesses, a bright and shiny “Welcome! Please take this DU holiday time to come to our many restaurants and shops!” It’s a perfect time to give them all a try, for there’s plenty of room at the inn and even some parking places for your burros and broncos. 

TO You FROM all the awesome elves of University Park who keep the place as well-decorated and well-lit as possible by volunteering to do all sorts of marvelous things, such as welcoming the hundreds of new-to-town folks who seldom realize that our lovely neighborhood doesn’t just run itself without people power. Don’t be selfish, be elfish! Contact UPCC President Traci Samaras at president@upcc.us or 303-282-7281. 

Every year about this time we bonk ourselves on the head and mutter that we meant to craft, arrange, or present our holiday gifts in some clever, creative way, but now it’s too late. Drat. Would that we were all really as handy with needle and thread as neighbor Gretchen Hawley who is stitching the most amazing creation, a needlework of The Mandelbrot Set, that magnificent fractal design of repeated patterns we see everywhere in nature. Huzzahs to Gretchen, who’s also a terrific weaver. 

Now may your sleigh bells jingle-jangle-jingle as you ride off to share your many gifts, and I hope you find you are blessed with many in return. Happy Yee-Haw-lidays! 

If you have news or views please contact Diana Helper: 303-733-4902 or chapinhelper@aol.com.