GRUMPIER THAN ME?

Jim,

In “Take it or Leave it” in the December/January issue you referred to someone “even grumpier and more cynical than I am perceived to be, if that’s possible.” If people perceive what you say as cynical they have it backwards. Here’s what cynicism is. It?s the standard attitude that you must, in dealing with people and problems, discern what not to talk about and what stands not to take, thus avoiding the painful but crucial issues. The environmental magazine, for example, that’s sleek with quality and deals with global warming by offering expert advice on lowering one’s personal “carbon footprint,” but won’t take on overpopulation and the emerging end of the growth economy for fear of unnerving subscribers. I can hardly imagine a more cynical attitude than this. I’m drawn to the Zephyr because, by contrast, you and your compadres are crazy enough to write about what’s actually going on in the West, no matter who gets riled. You Know Who did that, too. Getting to the heart of the matter was all that mattered to him. Plus, of course, throwing beer cans on America’s highways.

Keep giving them fits,

Scott Thompson,

Beckley,

WV A LATE PERFECT MOMENT

I miss an issue of the Zephyr and am denied the opportunity to put in my 2 ¢¢ worth of perfexion?! Shux. Ne?er-the-less, should the Zeph continue to mull such moments in upcoming episodes... (1) There have been a few moments when I?m on a plane and/or ?back east? -- anywhere far from my beloved west Colorawdough: I have an issue of the Zephyr (and the Mtn. Gazette) and sometimes while immersed in reading I “forget” where I axually am and am transported “back there.” (2) February 2004. Glenwood Springs. Before the day’s business commenced, I had an exhilarating pre-dawn run from the hotel up the pedestrian/bike path along the river. My day’s business was attending/being a servant at a regulatory confab, which I ducked out of in search of coffee. Garfield County Commissioner John Martin, as pleasant and sincere and enigmatic a throwback to the old west as there could ever be, invited me to his office to drink from the spring, so to speak. Sitting there with steaming cup in hand, looking out the window, conversing about nothing in particular, I felt a sensation like the jigsaw puzzle pieces coming together. It didn’t last long, except that the memory has stayed with me. (3) May 2006. Orchard Mesa/Palisade. Betty and I went to the Whitewater Winery to listen to a jazz combo a relative was in. This was part of Palisade’s Wine Festival. It was borderline chilly for May -- we wore light coats. Sitting outside, sipping a sweet dessert wine with cheese and crackers, “Influx” into an extended jam, the sun filtering through the scattered clouds, I felt the puzzle pieces come together again. Even if this is too late for the Perfect Moments issue, thanks for the opportunity to reflect.

Rosco Betunada

Whitewater, Colorado

ANOTHER BELATED PM

Mr Jim Stiles,

A perfect moment? No, I don’t think I’ve experienced one of those. But hey, I’m not even half way through the journey yet, though the road ahead looks less promising than the one behind. Perhaps to a mind uninformed I might be what is referred to as a pessimist, for the lay person, a downer. But let me say that I have found myself in the company of potential perfect moments, but I was unable wash away that bittersweet taste of inevitability from my mouth or my mind, and time has yet to take my innate urge to care more about my environment than myself. I will say this though. My potential perfect moments, aside from the clothes on my back, have had nothing to do with any man-made-lead-debris-of-life.

Regards from the Black Swamp,

Timothy Fritz

FROM THE VILLAGE HAT GUY

Hello Jim - Thanks for the kind words. (SEE TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT...DEC/JAN 2008) It’s not always easy holding back the capitalist swine in favor of the honest merchant (so feeling just a ?little? less cynical is about right.) As I am certain you know, it is a very good feeling indeed when one’s writing strikes a chord. Best wishes, Fred Belinsky The Village Hat Shop SO WE GET THIS... Editor’s Note: I’d said a few kind words about Fred Belinsky’s Village Hat Shop in the December Zephyr. Days after the story was posted online, I received this note from a hat company in the former city of Saigon...wow...JS Dear Sir, We manufacture and export straw hats and palm hats. Our products are good in quality, beautiful in design, reasonable in price. Could you tell me the product that you looking for, we will try best to satisfy your demand. Because our products are very diversified. If you are interest in our products, please contact us. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours faithfully,

Ms.Huong Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

wood_hxexp@vnn.vn

IN DEFENSE OF MAINSTREAM ENVIROS

Dear Editor,

Beautiful Hope Valley in Alpine County, California was a favorite weekend destination for Herb Ringer and his family and friends decades ago. If they were to return to Hope Valley now, they would be pleased and very likely surprised to discover that there has been almost no development in Hope Valley, whose broad vistas have changed very little since the 1940s. The absence of development is especially remarkable because Hope Valley is immediately over the south rim of the Lake Tahoe Basin from the frenzied urbanization of South Lake Tahoe. Furthermore, Hope Valley is now almost entirely in federal and state ownership and will remain undeveloped in the future Many organizations and individuals share the credit for this remarkable result. The ranching families who had owned Hope Valley since the late 1800s were willing to sell to public agencies. The Trust for Public Land purchased options on the lands, played the major role in lobbying for Land and Water Conservation Fund appropriations for the purchases, and carried out the real estate transactions. The Alpine County Board of Supervisors supported the proposed acquisitions. Local chapters of the Sierra Club worked hard for years to build public support, as did Friends of Hope Valley, an environmental organization in Alpine County. In those years, the Wilderness Society annually collected and published environmentalist requests for LWCF appropriations and lobbied for them. The Planning and Conservation League, a California statewide environmental organization, led the campaign for a state bond issue that contributed $4 million for the purchases. The Hope Valley campaign also acquired other private lands in the vicinity: Faith Valley south of Hope Valley, inholdings in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, and lands along the West Walker River. Recent articles and letters in the Zephyr have harshly criticized mainstream environmental organizations. The saving of Hope Valley and nearby lands from development is an example of the good that these organizations accomplish.

John K Moore

Sacramento CA:

ANTI-GUIDEBOOK FEVER

Dear Stiles,

Reading the Zef-saw the bit about guidebooks. Yes, Google Earth is Our biggest enemy! And GPS is about as evil a tool as anything I have ever seen in my life. But the real instigator of the explosion of tourism when it comes to print media is the Pope of the Church, Edward Abbey, and he inspired hundreds of others to pile on and now I have read so much ?poetic? spew about how pretty the rocks are that it makes me puke-flowery words are not flowers at all and that is why those words inspire travel. As you know, I wrote a guidebook. I knew that someone was going to get the job writing that book (imagine it written by some idiot like Ron George), so I jumped on the job for the sake of the environment, as a responsibility-I gave away nothing that was not already in another guidebook ON PURPOSE and then was attacked for ?copying.? I dropped other, more lucrative projects to work on that stinking book because I felt it was a responsibility to a place I have grown to love so much that I cannot be away for more than two weeks without a gnawing feeling in my gut that I might die too far from it. Oh, and if you think this is a promotion of the book, I want to tell anyone who is interested to find a USED copy of the 1St edition on Globe Pequot Press, the one with the restaurant and tourist service reviews-the “what were you thinking” part of the book that Terry Tempest Williams said was the “best portrait of Moab I have ever seen in print.” Or steal the new one-I don’t make any money off of it anyway, but whenever I get an email from someone who stopped riding the 24 Hours of Moab Race because of the book, it is all the payment I need. And if you don’t love Moab in winter, you just don’t get it! It is the best time here-the damn tourists go away, and so do people like you. Just my 2 cents,

Lee Bridgers

Moab, Utah

Knowing that friends like Lee miss me so much during the “off season” makes me want to race home as fast as I can, to the loving embrace of people who really care! As for picking on Cactus Ed...come on, Lee. That’s like blaming overpopulation on the inventor of the zipper...JS

"HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS!" SAYS THE REDROCK FOREST GUY

I could not have been more delighted to see that my suggestion in the Moab Times Independent last January, that 'quiet' recreation should come to places like the here-to-for unknown Abajos Mountains, in order to save them, touched off a bit of a discussion not only from the Canyon Country Zephyr, but from a few other circles as well. For those of you who haven't been following the thread, the argument went something like: "We need to tell the quiet recreation world about the secrets of the Abajos in order to get them to come and help us wrest the place from the bear hug resulting from the love-fest between San Juan County and the thrillcraft industry." In the time-honored spirit of debate I hoped to start, I would like up the ante a bit by suggesting that the question we should be asking ourselves not only for the Abajos, but the entire SE Utah, is unless people who appreciate the unique and mystical attributes of such places start to come here to enjoy it, how can we encourage them to join forces with us to protect it? And if we can't do that, how do we plan to fend off the real threat?

As an example, if you think the problems plaguing SE Utah are bad now, you may not have heard the plans of those who want to turn our red rock canyons and high elevation ecosystems into an industrial zone, such as has not been seen in these parts in the last four decades. For starters, there is the proposal by an upcoming Bureau of Land Management (BLM) environmental impact statement to develop tar sands on lands directly adjacent to Glen Canyon Recreation Area and in the San Rafael Swell. The proposed area impacted by this development makes the map of southeast Utah West of Glen Canyon look like a shotgun blast of tar sand sites.

Also, there is a proposal by the BLM to open over 800,000 acres of public lands for oil shale development just north of Canyonlands National Park that the agency admits will, not only, use huge amounts of water and devastate the land and water of central Utah, but will preclude the use of the land for just about every other public (and private) purpose. Not to be outdone, oil companies predict that over 500 oil and gas wells are anticipated to be developed in Grand County alone over the next 5 years. Meanwhile Grand and San Juan counties have been opening their doors to oil and gas wastewater repositories like never before. Denver-based Running Foxes Petroleum's CEO Steve Tedesco is so excited about this new trend that he says: "We may have a total of 100 locations over the next three or four years [in Utah]. Grand County is welcoming it."

Uranium mills to process the ore from several nearby uranium mines, which have re-opened on Forest Service land in the La Sal and Abajos Mountains, are proposed for Paradox Valley (just across the board in Colorado) and 10 miles south of Green River. Just last week, the paper announced bid solicitations for 19 parcels of "uranium-rich federal land" in the Uravan Mineral Belt between Gateway and Egnar, Colorado which might help that area catch up to the largest underground uranium mine in country located just southeast of the Henry Mountains in Utah and for which the BLM granted an extension last fall.

Where will all this uranium go? Maybe to the new nuclear power plant proposed for south-central Utah, of course! On January 30, 2008, Transition Power Development LLC notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its intent to submit, as part of the Blue Castle Generation Project, a permit application for two nuclear power plants to be located in East-Central Utah near the town of Green River by April 2010.

I could go on (really) but I've run out of space.

Harold Shepherd

Issues Director Red Rock Forests

Yes, Harold...we all know about the threats from oil and gas and uranium. But again, the question is: Do you see any correlation between the amenities economy you want to promote and the need for ever greater quantities of natural resources to keep the tourists coming (and staying)? And please note that in a future issue, The Zephyr will show you the biggest eyesore between Gateway and Egnar. And it's wrapped in "green."...JS

"DOWNWINDER" Part 2

Dear Editor,

In a meeting with our Wayne county commissioners on March 17th, several individuals in the audience (of about 25 county residents from all walks of life) spoke up with their particular concerns about the proposed coal-fired energy plant in Sigurd. The facts were troubling, as they reveal the mounting pressure within the coal industry to push hard and fast to procure permits for more traditional coal-fired plants (like the one proposed in Sevier county) before the Bush administration leaves office. Lately, ads in print and TV media have been painting "new" coal energy as "green." These ads are aimed at reducing our anxieties about coal. But under today's EPA, there's no requirement for coal plants to use the new "clean" coal technology.

The Sevier Power Company coal plant by its own data is expected to emit 5 tons of toxic ash per DAY out of a 462 foot tall smokestack, designed to release emissions high into air currents where they disperse to outlying areas, such as Wayne County.

The Dept. of Energy and many political leaders proclaim that "clean coal" energy, the kind produced by new and expensive gasification plants, should be part of our overall energy portfolio. However, the Sevier County Power plant is NOT one of these. It will use traditional pulverized-coal technology with modern "scrubbers" that do very little to clean up the pollutants. The Dept. of Energy acknowledges that even new pulverized coal plants that meet today's EPA standards emit dangerously high levels of toxic mercury, sulfur, and high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) that are a major contributor to global warming.

One of the facts of burning coal is that mercury falls to earth in a 100 mile radius from a coal plant and further if it is "downwind." And once it gets into a watershed, the effects are felt as far as that water moves downstream, as well as deep into soil and aquifers.

Meetings are being held in Richfield and decisions will be forthcoming in the next few weeks. We need to have our views heard by contacting the Sevier County Commissioners Gary Mason, Ivan Cowley and Ralph Okerlund, at 150 N. Main Street, Richfield, UT 84701.

And you can "cc" to Governor Huntsman or call his office to leave a message. Sincerely,

Ty Markham

DREAMS OF REVOLUTION

Jim, Rich people have a hand in our wallets, but we cannot see it. It's hidden. That's how rich people get rich. Thats's what capitalism is all about.

Capitalism is the economic system that rich people use to steal money from workers and poor people.

Rich people laugh at us. They can't believe we haven't caught on to their trick. They know that someday we are going to understand how they steal from us. They are afraid of what we might do to them. That day is coming. That day is the beginning of the revolution.

John Cassella

Denver, CO

The Revolution? Maybe. But what worries me is this...when we finally "understand how they steal from us," will we stop it? Or become just like them? JS