Colon:Oscopy

So it’s true that it’s not true
that 90% of all colon procedures
identify cancerous growths.

So it’s also true that being 50
gives you only a 50% chance
of finding polyps in the tract

where men (mostly) suffer
the indignities of being
probed for alien life.

Nothing, it seems, is conclusive
except that final breath
where all the fiber you ate

makes no difference
and the trouble you’ve feared
sneaks up from behind.

On getting back from beyond

This is a view I hope to experience only this way, through my laptop window to a big scary world of hoping your trusty avalanche beacon will help your friends dig out your remains, with their trusty avalanche shovels and probes.

[Avalanche in Pau, by an organization listed only as the "Snow Safety Center"]


Think you know how to avoid the rush, and crush of an avalanche? Here's a terrain quiz, from csac.org.

Want to know more? The Silverton Avalanche School started enrollment for their 2009 classes today. According to the website, there are still open slots.

Can't wait to start learning more? Here is a reading list, suggested by the folks at the Avalanche School. Shop indie, and find your bookstore here.

Can't wait to get started? Check the Colorado Avalanche Information Center for snow conditions, before you pack that gear and hit the backcountry, beyond the beacons and safety nets.

Welcome back to winter, gang.

Storm warning and a skiing warning

It looks like a biggie. The National Weather Service just posted this update on the big Pacific storm moving into the Four Corners between now and Thursday evening:

...MAJOR WINTER STORM WILL IMPACT THE REGION THROUGH WEDNESDAY...

.ANOTHER STRONG STORM SYSTEM WILL MOVE INTO THE REGION THIS AFTERNOON
AND TONIGHT ACCOMPANIED BY A POWERFUL UPPER LEVEL JET WHICH WILL
MOVE OVER THE FOUR CORNERS THIS EVENING. INCREASING PACIFIC
MOISTURE...COMBINED WITH COLD TEMPERATURES AND INSTABILITY WILL
LEAD TO ANOTHER ROUND OF HEAVY SNOW FOR THE MOUNTAINS OF EASTERN
UTAH AND WESTERN COLORADO THROUGH EARLY THURSDAY MORNING. THE
HEAVIEST SNOW WILL FALL ALONG SOUTHWEST FACING SLOPES...ESPECIALLY
ACROSS THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS IN SOUTHWEST COLORADO. STRONG WINDS
WILL ALSO ACCOMPANY THIS STORM.

TRAVEL ACROSS WESTERN COLORADO AND EASTERN UTAH WILL REMAIN HAZARDOUS
FOR MUCH OF THE UPCOMING WEEK.

A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 AM MST THURSDAY.

A POWERFUL WINTER STORM WILL MOVE INTO THE AREA THIS AFTERNOON AND
EVENING. SNOW WILL BECOME WIDESPREAD BY THIS EVENING AND CONTINUE
THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING. THERE WILL BE A PERIOD WHERE THE
INTENSITY OF SNOW DECREASES TUESDAY NIGHT...BEFORE ANOTHER SURGE
OF HEAVIER SNOW MOVES BACK IN WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. TOTAL SNOWFALL
ACCUMULATIONS FROM 2 TO 3 FEET ARE EXPECTED BY EARLY THURSDAY
MORNING.

STRONG SOUTHWEST WINDS FROM 20 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 60 MPH
WILL ALSO CAUSE WIDESPREAD BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WITH LOCAL
WHITEOUT CONDITIONS.

A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE
EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE. THIS WILL
MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

Also, a warning for those (us) skiers licking their chops
over this big dump:
A skier was killed in an avalanche at Snowbird Ski Resort
on Sunday after the area had received a foot of snow
over the weekend -- this even after avalanche control
had been done on the area. Watch the report here. 

It's finally come down to this...

An angry Iraqi journalist chucks his kicks at the Bush. 

Purgatory finally sees powder ...

It's been a long wait (especially with a 13-year-old powder-hounding daughter daily asking the ski-bum's equivalent of are we there yet??), but we finally got up to Purgatory ... er, Durango Mountain Resort ... today.

From Purg 14 dec 08

And it was a good day to go: although only the front-side six-pack was open and only a handful of runs were open, the skiing that was there was excellent. Employees reported the area had at last received a foot and a half of light, lovely snow.

From Purg 14 dec 08

We spent most of the day hitting Paradise and Hades, and at midday patrollers opened Lower Pando and Lower Hades -- and we were lucky enough to be standing at the rope when they opened lower Hades, which led to a glorious back-country quality float trip down Hades' steep uncut face.

Changes at Purg? Well, the base area looked quite nice. The wide entranceway courtyard has a nice, cozy, throw-back ski-area feel to it, with it brick cobblestone

From Purg 14 dec 08

and classic lamp posts. And the new Purgy's is attractive and functional (although it seems crazy they didn't put an easy-to-access water fountain near the entrance to the restaurant and bar ...). Out in front of the restaurant, a bonfire gave cold folks -- and it was a cold day of alternating snow squalls and sun bursts -- a place to sit and enjoy a day in the hills.

From Purg 14 dec 08

But, rest assured: other stuff that classic Purgatory haven't changed. My favorite personal gripes were left in tact:

• It was still that familiar unmanaged chaos at the six pack loading area - people trying to figure out how to merge the entrance lines, and six-seater chairs going up with one or two people while dozens wait below -- while at the loading area three employees, oblivious to the line-mess behind them, rake the snow and watch people load.
• The lifts and base area are still aurally sterile -- devoid of the festive music that imbue powder-day spirit at the base area and the tops and bottoms of lifts at most ski areas. Even the soundtrack to Purgy's restaurant of was the indecipherable mumbling from the TVs broadcasting two different football games.

It's refreshing to know they're not improving everything at Purg.

And today, it would've been hard to improve the skiing.

From Purg 14 dec 08

It has begun ... Check out the slide show:



And more snow is a'comin' ...

Silverton Mountain owner clarifies backcountry access issue

Aaron Brill, owner of Silverton Mountain ski area, sent the Almanac this clarification of yesterday's posting about public access to backcountry in the upper end of Cement Creek, above Silverton:

There was no request to discontinue plowing by me. San Juan County informed me they had decided to stop plowing the last .3 miles of the road to save money this year. They actually posted signs as such this October near Gladstone. I simply pointed out that since they had already decided not to plow to the end of the road and we would have to ski further to the shuttle, they could likely add another .5 to it without changing how badly it affected us as we may be able to ski down part of the way until it flattened out about .4 miles north of the ski area.

The lack of plowing would have a negative impact on us as we prefer to drive to the end of the road for emergency reasons and our skiers prefer the shuttle from the end of the road, but I suggested we could groom it to make it more tenable. We would still have to run our shuttle up the road, as there is another .4 miles from the end of the plowing to the base area.

There was no request to stop running our shuttles. This decision to terminate plowing early is all San Juan County’s deal and really has nothing to do with me other than I was trying to help them with their budget woes by being unselfish and cooperative when they told me about it. The lack of plowing will create some hardship for the ski area as we also prefer that they plow the road all the way, but we understand that they have serious budget woes and may need to make some sacrifices.

We all need to make sure San Juan County has enough money for county road avalanche control or the entire road won’t be open much at all, which is not a good alternative either. We pay thousands of dollars in direct payments each year to San Juan County for winter road maintenance to help keep the road open and know how bad their budget for CR 110 is this year.

Backcoutry skiing access above Silverton threatened

An alert from the 4cornersbackcountryskiers listserv reports that Aaron Brill, the owner of Silverton Mountain Ski Area is requesting the county cut winter access to the popular backcountry skiing terrain in and around upper Cement Creek, in the San Juans above Silverton. The alert says:

Aaron Brill has asked the San Juan County Commissioners to not plow Cement Creek road past his lift. He doesn’t want to run the shuttles anymore [don't know any more motivation beyond that]. This would make the approaches to Bonita Peak/Gold King (Minnehaha), Corkscrew/Hurricane, Gwendaland, etc excessively long. The San Juan County Commissioners are meeting at 8am on the 15th and this topic is on the agenda. If you have an opinion on this, please contact the commissioners at the following by tomorrow, Friday at noon!

View Larger Map

Those concerned are urged to contact the San Juan County to ask the county to continue to plowing the and maintaining access public trailhead and ski access at the top of the Cement Creek road.

Email sanjuancounty@frontier.net or call the San Juan County Administrator, William Tookey, at 970.387.5766

The alert suggests points to make:

1) The parking area/trailhead at the end of Cement Creek Road has been kept open by the state or county plows for many decades. It leads to many backcountry areas used from October to May. Backcountry access is important for the county to maintain as it is what makes the Silverton area so popular with backcountry enthusiasts.

2) Those who use this particular trailhead do not wish to ski at Silverton nor do they do want to park along the already crowded road near the ski area, which is a half-mile from the current Cement Creek trailhead.

3) Backcountry skiers from Ouray and Durango help support and "grow" the local San Juan economy, by buying gas, supplies, and other sundries in town.

4) The decisions to purchase many homes and properties in San Juan County have been spurred by the county-supported plowed access to higher elevation trailheads.

You can also contact Silverton Mountain at info@silvertonmountain.com.

'Tis the season? A tale of headlines

Food bank's shelves empty
(Durango Herald, November 22, 2008)

Church continues serving meals, despite losing use of Manna Soup Kitchen
(Durango Herald, December 9, 2008)

Not so many years ago, I traveled to a ground zero of disaster headlines with bags of clothing, food and a bit of money (all donated), to help spread around supplies that were dribbling in from all over the country. I'll leave description of the specific place to memory and imagination, but will say that the regional food bank was under water, normal methods of distribution and communication destroyed or, at best, intermittent and unreliable. I stayed until money, supplies and my energy gave out, searching out start-up food banks, meal and soup lines; and helping deliver whatever we could find to keep them going a few more days. They operated out of churches, in parking lots, and at private houses. Warming up with a meal revives hope, and a food bank sustains it with a promise of more to come.

Entering the most dangerous season for living on the edge, the two headlines above are storm warning signs for our little corner of paradise. People need food and warmth all year, 7 days each week. There is urgent need to explore and address the problems described in each story, while realizing that helping sustain hope, through seasonal and economic shifts in supply and demand, is up to each of us.

Here are a couple of places to start:
View Larger Map


View Larger Map

Unlike the disaster tale I told above, none of this is a start-up for Durango, and the Women's Resource Center has already put together a list of food resources.

Point of Interest: Durango high school students make their own damn ski movie

A couple of weeks ago we quenched our ski hungering for a while by going down to the Abbey Theatre and checking out Point of Interest, a ski film entirely shot, performed, edited, and produced by some Durango High School students.

I left hungrier than ever to get out on my boards -- and happy and chipper and feeling damn fine about the shape of the next crop of ski bums.

Filmed in and around Purgatory, and other familiar local San Juan locales, Point of Interest is imaginative filming of good action melded with cool music and laced with witty humor. Produced and edited by the talented Matt Mulligan, and starring the skiing and boarding of Mulligan and other students, including David VanAtta, Ben Southworth, Cedar Jocks, Aidan Sheehad, Jenna Mulligan, and Derek Macguffie, the film was full of spirit and creativity and good fun.

And it struck me as a good, healthy, mountain-town rite of passage: the kids taking over the terrain -- done watching, and out doing.

The future of the mountain culture, I think, is in good hands.

Check it out:



POINT OF INTEREST (FULL MOVIE) by SHADOW PUPPET PRODUCTIONS from Matt Mulligan on Vimeo.

Craig Childs defends the modern forager

I've never been one to try to keep up with the Joneses. I just wait for them to have a yard sale.

As a long-time bum (fishing, ski, van, river, desert, mountain, etc. etc.), I've found there are few things in life that are worth acquiring new. And that there are many, many ways -- many underground economies, and even many sources of free pickings -- to get goods that are plenty good. And cheap.

Which is important when you have built your life around living in the hinterlands of the American West, and around building the time in that life -- generally (at least in my case) at the expense of a more abundant income -- to get out and enjoy it.

Want less; do more. Know what I mean?

Hotchkiss, Colo.-based writer Craig Childs (author of the excellent and engaging House of Rain) knows what I mean. And he waxes philosophic about it -- his own and others' adventures in 21st century scavenging -- in a recent column in the LA Times.

Read Craig Childs' "Man as Scavenger." Then raise a tin-cup toast to hunting and gathering in the modern world!

From the change research facility...

Odetta (December 31, 1930 - December 2, 2008)

(Video produced by Playing For Change.)

Here's a Bill Moyers interview with the producer, Mark Johnson.

And today...


A Solar Taxi finished an around the world tour at the UN climate change talks in Poznan, Poland.

The ill effects of less habitat and fewer hunters

Every night lately when my dog and I head out to practice our before-bed ritual of sauntering the neighborhood, we've seen the new neighbors. Sometimes they're standing in the dark in the backyard next door, silently eyeing us. Other times, they're in the yard of neighbors on the other side, munching the last apples of fall that lay on the ground under the now-bare apple tree. Sometimes they're just moving down the alley in a gang sporting their (ahem) leather jackets, acting like they own the place.

The deer move as freely through our little city at the foot of the big mountains as do my teenage kids on their skateboards and bikes. We all share this space, even if warily. As do the other longer-term denizens of the Animas Valley, home and byway for wildlife since the glaciers went back to the hills for more rocks 10 millenia ago. Still wandering through our town's alleys and taking residence in our privately-owned backyard pastures are, along the with usual assortment of rodents and varmits, more wild wildlife: bear, elk, coyotes, and mountain lion.

And it's not just here in the remote San Juan Country where this is happening: Wildlife are moving into and squatting on suburban and urban landscapes all over the country. And not without consequence, for both human and non.

The causes and implications of this re-wilding of our urban habitat was the subject of an interesting discussion yesterday on NPR's "On Point," with host Tom Ashbrook. The show looked at the question, "Are animals crowding humans, or is it the other way around? Is hunting the way to solve problems between people and animals?"

Guests discussing the issue on the show were:

• Matthew Teague, a journalist whose work has appeared in National Geographic, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. His article in the Nov. 24 issue of Sports Illustrated is “A More Dangerous Game: How the decline of hunting is changing the natural order of predator and prey.”

• Doug Inkley, a wildlife biologist for the National Wildlife Federation, specializing in ecology and wildlife management.

• John Rocchetta, a land steward who manages properties on Long Island.

• Brian Vincent, founder of Big Wildlife, an Oregon-based conservation group.
  

It's worth giving it a listen. There's an interesting discussion in the comments on the webpage, as well.

Here, too, is the recent excellent piece on the state of hunting by Matthew Teague in Sports Illustrated.

Indian Dances

Anyone interested in Christmas Dances at the Pueblos in NM please go to: Calendar of Native American Events and Dances in Central New Mexico -- terrific cultural experience and well worth freezing your butt off. Pick your pueblo - great excuse to go to Santa Fe, the City Different. Xmas in NM is like no other. For Feast Days throughout the year at all the pueblos, check out www.indianpueblo.org.

Group fights for southeastern Utah forests

Looking for a Christmas gift for that person who can't keep away from the wonders of southeastern Utah? Give that high-country canyoneer a membership with Red Rock Forests.

Red Rock Forests is a Moab-based 501(c)3 non-profit formed nearly 10 years ago, in 1999. Originally called "Friends of the Abajos," the group is now dedicated to the protection of southeastern Utah's unique and fragile high-desert forest lands in and around the Abajo and La Sal mountains.

The organization's staff of six (including Monticello wilderness activist and writer Amy Irvine-McHarg, author of Trespass: Living at the edge of the promised land), with the help of volunteers, is working on several campaigns, including an updated inventory of legal and illegal roads in the Abajo Moutains, monitoring and commenting on Manti-La Sal National Forest management plans and proposals, and an outreach and education campaign on oil-and-gas and mineral development in the Canyonlands area.

They describe themselves thus:

Red Rock Forests strives to protect the sky-island mountains and plateaus above America's Redrock Wilderness in southern Utah, emphasizing the La Sal Mountains, Abajo Mountains, and Elk Ridge in the Canyonlands Basin. We recognize the vital ecological role these ranges play in sustaining Utah's desert wildlife and waterways. For this reason, ecology is our guiding principle, though we use education, public policy, the law, citizen action, and collaboration with other organizations and agencies to achieve protection for these irreplaceable high desert oases.

Read more of their "about us" here.

Check out their newsletters and donate to join here.

Contact Red Rock Forests at info@redrockforests.org.

Best Novel of the Year

Time Magazine just named 2666 the Best Book of the Year. I would argue that it's the most important piece of fiction to come out in the last 50 years... which is just a large blanket statement designed for impact... a statement for which I have no argument or proof.

It's virtually impossible to describe this book. I can say that you haven't heard from me in a while because of it, I've been so immersed and so traumatized by it that my dreams have been infected, and I see visions of unnameable and indescribable...discomfort. There are 5 stories, all loosely connected to the enormous number of rape/murders that remain unsolved in the bordertown of Santa Teresa in the Sonoran Desert. Hundreds and hundreds of women have been brutally tortured and murdered without respite for the last decade and a half. The crimes remain unsolved.

Bolano dances around the issue in the first three parts of the book, but part four... part four. Each woman killed, how she was found, who she was, what they did to her. It's awful. He names them, describes them, and humanizes them enough in a paragraph or two to make each one devastating. the sheer number of them, though, no matter how well we know them, or how personal it gets, we just cannot remember them, and therein lies the genius of this section. Each becomes part of a faceless mob of corpses, and they just keep coming. This is why nothing has been done, Bolano seems to be saying. The sheer overwhelming numbers almost makes each death meaningless in the face of the bigger atrocities.

By no means an easy read, but as Kafka says:

"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us."

Giving Thanks for...

,

,


and our famous foursome of Durango breweries: Ska, Steamworks, Durango, Carvers. Holiday "Cheers!" to all brewmasters, in no particular order.

For a fine head of Guinness foam, check out the scene at Durango's Irish Embassy, and give a shout out to Lani or Sarah. If you'd like 12 or 16 inches of pure pleasure with that beer, better give our hometown Home Slice pizza guys a chance to pull one for you.

(Both videos are courtesy Science Friday's online archive, and here you can find a beer science story.)

One last touch of the river

Today the air thickened and the sky paled with the welcomed sensual early symptoms of an approaching winter storm. And I feel all the better for winter's imminent arrival because I got in a last blast of river season over the weekend.

It was a cool blast, for sure. When the sun was out -- or was shining on the same side of the canyon I was paddling -- it felt like we were really in the desert outback of Utah's San Juan River. But when the sun's low near-solstice slant was sliced by the canyon rim or, more so, when it made its early-evening descent behind the sandstone landscape, the cold grabbed hold and was held at bay only by the thickest polyester shields and the primeval radiant warmth and security of a driftwood fire.

Colors, too, were subdued, robbed of the life of summer -- but offering up a purer, deeper sense of raw bone against the bottomless blue of the November sky. And at night? The stars were ridiculous.

We were too, probably, seven guys away rom work and family and the general demands of the daily business's busyness. But we sucked up every glorious minute of it -- three days of paddling and guitar playing and bocci throwing and beer drinking and talking and sleeping out for two glorious and treasured bonus nights alongside the river.

Remembering yet again why we live here. And love it here. And fight for here.

And now we turn our eyes toward that slow-building proto-river we call the Snowpack ...

Click on the slideshow below for mo' and biggah pics.

Writers in a rush

While the militiamen and enthusiasts of Montezuma County are stocking their arsenals by purchasing every available gun in the Four Corners, many of us writers are quietly wondering what will happen once President-elect Barack Obama takes the next logical step and bans the use of writing utensils in America. I think the saying goes something like "The pen is mightier than the sword." As soon as the President realizes that pens are more dangerous than conventional weapons, we’re going to see a police state where liberals remove the ink cartridges from perfectly good ballpoints in order to destroy them.

When will America wake up and read the calligraphy on the wall?

Local writers, take a stand! Go to every stationary store across the Four Corners and purchase all the ordinary ink pens in stock. If you can afford it, buy the fancy fountain pens, gel tip gliders, graffiti markers, highlighters, mechanical pencils, regular wooden pencils (in all varieties of hardness), and laundry pens. Especially laundry pens.

A bullet only leaves an impression, but a good ink pen can make a point.

Amps, Gas, Grass or Algae; Nobody Rides for Free

Congratulations Durango Transit, for announcing that Main Avenue Trolley rides will be fare free in '09. While this covers only a small part of my little corner of self-chosen paradise, it's about time.

Let's not strain anything patting ourselves on the back just yet though, because we're running several decades behind the curve on this one. Many lost ideals ago, I was an operational cog in a couple of free transit systems, in other self-congratulatory paradises far, far away from home...

One system moved a large percentage of 4 million+ yearly visitors from one grand national park view to the next. The buses carried up to 100 people each and ran on propane. The talk was of banning all private cars from park roads in the near future. Then oil prices dropped. The last time I visited, smog from power plants and internal combustion engines clouded the views; and the roads were clogged with cars, SUVs, and tour buses. The free bus system belched diesel smoke, service was reduced to an inconvenience, and the buses ran half-empty.

The other - ah, paradise, at any price! I lived in a cheap trailer slum just outside of a ski town, and drove a free bus for a decent wage. I carried local paupers and self-anointed royals, on my appointed rounds through neighborhoods ranging in price from the low-shelters to the high-exorbitants. An abandoned rail-bed through the valley was on track to become a bike/ski commuter path. We were on the way to post-car craze enlightenment. But housing costs kept rising, chasing job-holding locals down-valley. A few years later, the bike path plan was shelved for lack of interest, the bus system carried mostly visitors, and the 'local' work-force commuted from up to 60 miles away. My 'decent wage' was pushing me down-valley with the rest, so I just kept going.

Now, here we are - fresh from a round of oil industry rapaciousness that pushed Durango-area transit use up 30-some percent over 2007. Our president-in-waiting promises to move us toward alternative energy, and Colorado governor Bill Ritter's statewide focus on renewable energy production seems to be bearing local fruit in last week's announcement of a plan to make oil from algae near Ignacio, and last spring's exploration of solar power farming near the same town. With all this and the promise of free buses to keep us warm, what could go wrong?

Yesterday, I filled my old Subaru up with good old, bad old unleaded gas, and the total on the pump didn't make me cringe. Don't get me wrong, I'm still living in a trailer just outside of town here in our paradise, can't afford $4 gas, and am not advocating the tough love of keeping energy costs at luxury levels. I am pointing out that cost-based conversions are notably temporary. Though there are plenty of reasons (a tanked economy, climate change, trade deficits, etc.) to replace fossil fuels with other means of warming, cooling and transporting our society, faith in change fades with falling prices at the pump. Unless pushed by a committed and vocal citizenry, no administration will be able to convert us to alternative, renewable, sustainable energy production and use.

Though my once high ideals are long tempered by broken promises and the pragmatism of survival, I've lived long enough to prove that change is always possible, so I've been exploring some options lately.

Amping up the ailing auto industry was discussed on radio program Science Friday this week, and here are some avenues for further exploration:

• Plug In America promotes nationwide development of all-electric vehicles. One currently in production goes over 200 miles per 4-hour charge on recyclable batteries. Though the current sports-car model is way, way out of my price range, the Tesla Motors rep revealed that his company has applied for a bit of the guaranteed loans being promised by our government, to jump-start production of a sedan at half the price.

Half of a hundred thousand is still too high for me, so I may be electrifying my old Suby someday:

Whether vehicles have electric, internal combustion, or hybrid engines, energy has to go into the tanks and batteries. Whether it's pond scum algae, solar or wind generated electricity, gas from grass (corn and sugarcane), or the same old fossil technologies we've loved and hated for several lifetimes - should be up to us, not to the rising and falling fortunes of energy corporations and politicians. If you want more information on sustainable energy and economics, check out a Green Festival near you:


If you still have a few bucks to spend, a Green Festival is coming to Denver next year; but why wait? With the economic wounds of fuel price gouging still bleeding, and more corporate bail-outs blowing in the wind, it's time to press the loan officers known as Congress, Colorado's Legislature, Governor Bill Ritter, and the incoming Obama administration to require corporate business plans that deliver sustainable energy production and use to the masses, rather than continuing to transport massive wealth to self-proclaimed oil royalty at home and abroad. It's long past time to press the political brain-trusts of La Plata and San Juan (N. M.) counties to institute a transit system up and down the Animas River valley, to connect the economic zone that stretches from Purgatory to Farmington. We elect them to represent our interests. Now times are hard again, and it's time they get to work.

questions from a 5 year old

My daughter as of late has been firing off questions only like a child can. Lots of them. So many that I haven't had time to write all of them down, which is a shame because I for the life of me can't remember the best ones. But I'm sure there's more coming from this 5 year old that already thinks she has all the answers. But if she has all the answers, why all the questions? Maybe that question is for Monkeywrench Dad.
Here are some good ones....

When you put in a DVD, how does it know where to find the show?

When are you going to get "real" TV, you know, with channels?

How does a camera work?

Why are we walking through the alley?

When can you get me a turtle?

What does "combination" mean?

Why don't people like John McCain?

Why don't people like Barack Obama?

Have you gotten TV yet?

How does the radio know where to go?

What's reliable?

What's a moron?

Anybody that wants to fill in this answers is more than welcome to, I'll relay the information.

Here's a Bit About Breaking the Silence:

Sexual Assault Services Organization (SASO) of Durango has just released their collection of poetry and art of survivors of sexual violence.

This is a really well done and very intimate collection from local women that speaks to the hope that comes from healing, or maybe the healing that comes from hope.

$10. Maria's. All proceeds go to SASO.

Speaking of Silence - more from the research facility...

Want change? If you want to do something about it, maybe you should take a walk and (to quote Dr. John Francis ), "Shut up."

Once past a somewhat ill-tuned banjo intro, the good doctor spins a humor-filled tale of revulsion, confusion, defiance, compassion, exploration, conviction, and dedication to an ideal grounded in respect for the physical (and emotional) environment we all inhabit.



Check out some more "ideas worth spreading," on the TED site.

Sell public lands to pay off the national debt? Some think so ...

Ed Quillen, writing on High Country News' Goat Blog, says that the idea of selling public lands to help pay off the nation's bloating national debt -- now at more than $10.5 trillion -- is, like chronic heartburn, bubbling up again.

Quillen cites in particular a blog post on Marginal Revolution, in which economist Tyler Cowen argues:

The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming … It is time for a sale. Selling even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars — perhaps trillions of dollars — for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes. At the same time, a sale of western land would improve the efficiency of land allocation.

Does a sale of western lands mean reducing national parkland? No, first much of the land isn’t parkland. Second, I propose a deal. The government should sell some of its most valuable land in the west and use some of the proceeds to buy low-price land in the Great Plains.

The western Great Plains are emptying of people. Some 322 of the 443 Plains counties have lost population since 1930 and a majority have lost population since 1990.

Now is the time for the Federal government to sell high-priced land in the West, use some of the proceeds to deal with current problems and use some of the proceeds to buy low-priced land in the Plains creating the world’s largest nature park, The Buffalo Commons.

The idea of whoring -- um, liquidating -- public land comes around whenever the Treasury seems in need of a quick and easy infusion of class. And there is some historical precedent for this, Quillen writes. "The only time in American history that the federal government was totally out of debt came on Jan. 1, 1835, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, and it was land sales that provided much of the federal income that made this possible."

In another interesting instance, Quillen explains why Texas has so little public land:

Texas has very little federal land. That's a result of the Compromise of 1850. Recall that Texas was an independent republic from 1836 to 1844, and ran up some bills. It also claimed half of New Mexico and a strip that extended north through Colorado into Wyoming. In the Compromise, Texas agreed to its current boundaries. In return, the federal government agreed to pay off the old republic's debts, and the public lands inside the Lone Star State were turned over to the state government instead of being retained by the federal government. Texas managed to get someone else to pay off its "national debt," and got title to its public lands -- that's a better deal than we're likely to see if the federal government starts offering land for sale.

And in recent years, there have been similar, very serious (regardless of how preposterous) proposals. For example: The Forest Service planning to sell some 300,000 acres of public land to pay for a federal program; Sen. Richard Pombo’s proposal to sell some national parks to help pay off the national debt; and the Cato Institute, the highly influential free-market think tank, arguing in favor of selling the Grand Canyon to the Disney Corporation.

The reason this can happen today, Quillen argues, is that most people don't understand what public lands are or are for. And one of the reasons for that is that so much of the nation's federal public lands are in the West.

States with highest percentage of state area that is federal land:

1. Nevada 84.5%
2. Alaska 69.1%
3. Utah 57.4%
4. Oregon 53.1%
5. Idaho 50.2%
6. Arizona 48.1%
7. California 45.3%
8. Wyoming 42.3%
9. New Mexico 41.8%
10. Colorado 36.6%

While most of the states with the least federal public lands are in the East:

1. Connecticut 0.4%
2. Rhode Island 0.4%
3. Iowa 0.8%
4. New York 0.8%
5. Maine 1.1%
6. Kansas 1.2%
7. Nebraska 1.4%
8. Alabama 1.6%
9. Ohio 1.7%
10. Illinois 1.8%

(Stats from Strangemaps)

This, in my mind, is one of the greatest challenges to the long-term protection of our public lands: Not just fighting the legal and legislative battles, but also giving people -- everyone -- the whys to go along with the whats and hows. We need a re-engagement with the idea of The Commons, and a re-enchantment with the future generations that those Commons are held in common for.

We need to put the public back in our public lands!

More to come on this ...

I Needed Some Milosz Today...

A few selections from, in my opinion, the greatest of the twentieth century poets, Czeslaw Milosz:

A Study of Loneliness

A guardian of long-distance conduits in the desert?

The one-man crew of a fortress in the sand?

Whoever he was.  At dawn he saw furrowed mountains

The color of ashes, above the melting darkness,

Saturated with violet, breaking into fluid rouge,

Till they stood, immense, in the orange light.

Day after day.  And, before he noticed, year after year.

For whom, he thought, that splendor?  For me alone?

Yet it will be here long after I perish.

What is it in the eye of a lizard?  Or when seen by a migrant bird?

If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?

And he knew there was no use crying out, for none of them would save him.

I saw Milosz read once whilst working my way into complete and utter "disenchantment with it all" at Westminster College in Salt Lake City during the mid 90's.   Westminster was the recipient of a huge grant...or something, which funds the incredible Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series, a program that allowed me to see and even learn from the likes of Mark Strand, Adrienne Rich, Agha Shahid Ali, and Mark Doty, all under the brilliant tutelage of the current Utah Poet Laureate, Katherine Coles.  A pretty amazing atmosphere in which to discover you're not a poet.

  The night with Milosz, though, was incredible, and ever since I've collected pretty much anything he's written that I can get my hands on.

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago.  Today neither of them is alive,

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

And one more:

Ocean

A gentle tongue lapping

Small chubby knees,

Envoys bringing salt

From a billion-year-old-abyss.

Here are violet thistles,

Peached suns of jellyfish,

Here with airplane fins

And skin of graters, sharks

Visit the museum of death

Under water-towers of crystal.

A dolphin shows from a wave

The face of a black boy,

In the liquid cities of the desert

Graze leviathans.

A Bridge to Somewhere Fine and Free

It's a long stretch from the American Dust Bowl to a concrete-lined riverbed at the foot of southern California's mountains; and it's almost as far from that dry ditch to the River of Lost Souls draining the south side of my home range. Last night I listened to a bridge, designed by roots musician Dave Alvin, that connected these three pieces of our common past.

Crystal Bay NV
2007_10_05

Guitarist Chris Miller's hands helped Alvin build this bridge on the Durango Arts Center's new and improved performance stage, in front of a packed house of appreciative locals. Like Dave Alvin, most of us were too young to remember the Great Depression evoked by Alvin's cover of Woody Guthrie's "Do Re Mi," but old enough to recall seizures of family farms and homes in the late 1980's, that signaled the demise of our nation's last embrace of 'free-market' economic fantasy.

For the young and/or innocent among us, a short history follows. Savings and Loan Associations were once the less regulated half of our banking industry (think of the lately lamented 'sub-prime' mortgage industry, except with at least a little in the cookie jar). 1932's Federal Home Loan Bank Act encouraged citizens to borrow money to buy a home or farm, using S & L's to finance the endeavor. In the early 1980's, deregulated free-marketeers mined S & Ls' assets to fuel a false economic boom. The inevitable collapse helped ensure that the first president named Bush would leave office four years later in disgrace, derided as one of our least competent chief executives, with a deregulated billionaire named Perot helping apply a boot from the right wing as Bush went out the West Wing's revolving door. Most of us voting in the recent election remember at least a part of what followed (boom, crash, wars, bail-outs, hand-wringing, etc.), and as our economy spirals into depths not seen since the 1930's, 70% to 80% of us now place our current Bush president in the running for least popular decider-in-chief in U. S. history.

But I digress, for last night's performance was presented more in the spirit of a peoples' music, than the dry language of economic politics. The bridge grew from roots of folk, blues, rock and jazz rhythms and riffs, and it drove the crowd from the depths of rivers, through the dives of Dave Alvin's late and lamented youth, past fallen heroes and knaves, and into a vision best described by Alvin himself, in this 1987 performance of his Jubilee Train.



The roots of American music seem to always revisit a theme of movement, and more of us than not have recently jumped on a train to change the place our country has become. It wasn't easy in 1932. It won't be easy now, but at least there are still bridges, and musicians helping us remember just where we can go.

(More about Dave Alvin is here, and you can also preview a new compilation of his music online.)