TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT…Jim Stiles Election Blues…Speaking of Elections, Hate Bain Capital? Now Go Look in the Mirror…The Stiles Job Plan: “Do as the French do.” SOWING CLOVER… Tonya Audyn Stiles “The Walnut Desk” THE POETRY of DAMON…
Election Blues… I have little or no enthusiasm for this election campaign. Nor do I think the outcome, either way, will dramatically change anything. The election of 2008 was supposed to change EVERYTHING. It didn’t. Whether you want to blame…
Dove Creek I know how my father Picked through the desert Looking for ruins. I know the golf clubs He carried to ward off snakes, Swinging them through sage And dens made uneasy In their own shadows then. All for…
I don’t live in Moab anymore. It’s been a decade since I packed my bags and slipped south (and then east) to smaller, quieter communities. Last week, after 37 years, I closed out my box at the post office. Box…
…As Urban Sprawl and “Civilization” swallow us up, a second look at the ‘Hooved Locusts’ by Dave Jarvis It was just after two in the morning and I heard the soft putter of an All Terrain Vehicle drive past. My…
The first time I went to Big Bend I drove all night. West of San Antonio on US 90 the land emptied into flat black space and one or two distant lights. After two hundred miles I crossed the wild…
Thirty Years in the Beehive State & Still a Heathen After All These Years… For most of my adult life, I’ve lived in Utah. I discovered the canyon country when I was not much more than a kid and…
Visions… Once in a while something very like a vision comes along. Those, as we all know, are not scheduled in advance. They happen in subways, tangled woods, high plains, classrooms, prisons, battlefields. There are many recipes, special behaviors,…
Paul Vlachos is a New Yorker who understands The West. And he is a New Yorker who understands New York. Wherever Paul goes, he finds signs of life… 1. Texas billboard on the interstate. Four sheets of plywood and…
The Imaginary West We love our myths here in America, and where would our beloved West be without them? After all, reality is complicated; myth is tidy. Here I’ve tried to take on the myth of the cowboy artist, a…