CityLife Books

Preserving a sense of community

By Mark Smith

Parhump Valley Times

How do you maintain a village so it remains a village?

Had a good talk Saturday morning with Evan Blythin, who recently published Vanishing Village: The Struggle for Community in the New West CityLife Books, Las Vegas.

He was in town at the community library Saturday morning, chatting with interested residents and signing and selling his book.

Evan is a sculptor and musician who holds a doctorate from University of Colorado and retired after 30 years as a communications studies professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

His book considers the plight of the small town that faces growing stress due to the anonymous urban life that looms over the horizon. In brief, where people in a small rural community know each other’s names and recognize the faces of their neighbors, the same cannot be said for those who live in, say, Summerlin or Centennial or Sunrise Manor.

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Retired UNLV professor’s book about Blue Diamond laments vanishing way of life.
By Jack Bulavsky, Special to VIEW

Photo credit: Jerry Henkel

Evan Blythin has lived in Blue Diamond for 32 years. For a number of those years, he knew he would one day write a book about his rural home. That ambition was realized when Vanishing Village: The Struggle for Community in the New West hit bookstores this month.

Bythin, 67, a retired UNLV professor of communications studies, said the book is a universal story.

“The whole world has moved from rural sensitivities to more of an urban-industrial kind of sensitivity, and what I write about can be discussed in any community,” he said. “Blue Diamond has changed dramatically, but so has the rest of the world. I don’t long for the old days, but we need to keep an eye on what we’re losing.”

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Las Vegas CityLife ~ by Amy Kingsley

Author, Evan Blythin. Photo credit: Bill Hughes

Evan Blythin is not a cranky old fart. But the 30-year resident of Blue Diamond does have a thing or two to say about village life, modern technology and the real meaning of community, which he lays out in Vanishing Village, published by CityLife Books. In it, he explains why actual reality is better than the virtual kind, and why you should work out problems with neighbors instead of calling the cops. CityLife talked with Blythin about what he’s learned from living at the lip of Red Rock Canyon.

CityLife: How did you originally find out about the community?

Evan Blythin: I was raised rural. My wife was raised urban. We started circling Vegas to find a spot that I would feel more comfortable in, and that was as far out as she would go and as close in as I wanted to go.

CL: Was there anything that provoked you to want to write about Blue Diamond?

EB: Well, I think there’s been a nagging dissatisfaction with some of the changes that have occurred, not necessarily with the physical changes, the new houses, the upgrades, but rather the type of mentality that I was beginning to see more and more. Urbanized, used to government taking care of everything, not too much into actual physical work, which had been sort of the backbone of the community.

CL: So what was driving these changes you were seeing?

EB: I believe that on a very large level, the whole world has moved to an economy of scale. Everything has gotten big. I call it — it’s a kind of urbanization, but it has more to do with scale and size and the distance now. I mean, we’re really close now with e-mail and Facebook and Twitter and all of that. We’re closer, but we’re also further. Too many damn people to deal with. I don’t think you can do it right. It needs to break up somehow.

Read the full interview here.