REMEMBERING DEGLES

Dear Jim

Bob Degles and I were friends. The ninth anniversary of his take-out is May 1, 2006. I'm submitting these poems in honor of my friend. Thanks.

LAST CALL

Degles was the finest kind of scoundrel,

told the truth, banged pots at daybreak

bellowing "Last call," passengers asleep,

confused, getting a ration of a river day’s abuse

before political correctness when Moab men

were men, as were the women. Local sheep

moved to Nevada while we pursued

the Utah stretch of Jim Beam’s amber rivers,

other-worldly, icy-footed, wild-eyed, alkaloid-crazed

running Rattlesnake, Brown Betty, Boxcar, Capsize,

Big Drop, Satan’’s Gut; a lot more like we were then

than we are now.

Oleh Lysiak

Moab, Utah

LOCH WADE CLASS CONSCIOUS ENVIRONMENTALISM

VERSUS NAKED REALITY

Dear Jim,

Loch Wade has some interesting ideas about environmentalism and I applaud a viewpoint which furthers the effort but I would like to point out that Wade seems less interested in environmentalism and more interested in the phenomenon of "Movements". Especially movements which define struggles of class. Wade suggests that the environmental movement is operating at its best when it favors one economic class over another. I disagree and so do most sociologists and progressive politicals. Wade also suggests that we can help the momentum of the environmental movement if we look to engage the working poor and working class and develop their sensitivities towards the topic. Possibly, but the working class and poor can only effect the movement in an evangelistic sense. As a contributor to the environmental course of mankind, the working class is nearly irrelevant and most likely a detriment. I'll admit, I enjoy Wade's pastime of romanticizing about environmentalism, sitting in the middle of a coffee house, surrounded by hippies and a Huka or two. A filthy 20 something with pierced navel romantically eying me as she scribbles away in her recycled paper sketchbook.

Great. Now back to the reality of my mortgage and the cultural wasteland of my country after the fallout of rap music’s nuclear apocalypse.

The lower class defined environmentalism in the seventies and eighties. From the gardens of Texas Co-Ops the hippies put environmental philosophy into the common political dialog. Real change however, measurable stuff like elimination of 1000,0000’s of tons of solid waste or lawsuits filed by millionaire firms to punish polluters, That stuff happened at the corporate level and big business can take full credit for the lion share of what has and has not been accomplished. Hippies may have evangelized the movement but it was hippies turned C.O.O. who had real effect.

It's a bad myth that corporations are anti environment. Corporations are driven by the bottom line. More often than not, the environment suffers no consequence for this. Furthermore, the nineties and the Clinton administration left us the important message that big corporations could grow and make money and make jobs while helping the environment. In today's world of image and PR., Corporations can forward their financial goals by being on the right side of the environmental issues. Technology is the heavy lifter here. Corporations, along with private and public research are where the majority of environmentally useful technology flows from. Not from the lower and middle class. They are the ones who drive out to the middle of the desert, throw away an old refrigerator, drink a few Old E's, change their infants diaper and leave it stuck to a helpless Saguaro. That's what the lower and middle class think of the environmental movement. Indeed, elitist, low income, masters degree seeking, student loan paid for I-Book and tattoo above the ass intellectuals are so few in number and so busy rolling J's and sipping Lattes they couldn't ellect a soccer mom to the school board if you gathered every one of them in a town much larger than Yuma. They are not a factor to the market or to the movement. So here's the real movement. The one that’s happening without a grass roots. The one that never needed a working class, only a free market. Here's the real environmental movement. TV: Television is a big corporate product. TV keeps millions of people content to stay at home and rot their brains in front of bad culture instead of driving around in their SUV's looking for something else to do. (I'd like to continue my explanation of this but trust me, studies have been done and television is one of the most pro environment products the human race has ever developed.) Once we figure out how to completely recycle a broken TV we can sit back and admire ourselves. This example is a bit ludite but I am staging a point here. Without the technology of TV, human behavior would in some cases have an ill effect on the environment. Bear with me, Here are some better examples.

Electronic Data Storage and the Internet: If Things stay on track, we will be able to stop making videotapes and CD's relying only on long term silicon based media storage. I can't tell you what a big deal this is. It's too bad that VCR's were ever invented. All those chemically toxic petroleum based mag tapes are headed to a landfill near you. The only argument I know of to counter this one is that Internet technology requires computers and cables which require rare earth metals.... Again, here is another field where recycling is the cottage industry making jobs and profits for the next generation and if we continue our march forward with spectrum reallocation of the VHF frequencies then we can look forward to high bandwidth wireless (1-2mbps) to be ubiquitous.

Junk Mail is the new vanishing forest.

If mail carrier delivered junk mail doesn't upset your environmental sensibilities then find a new cause. Junk mail is not an issue we fix with recycling technology as the solicitors claim. The infrastructure behind it is damaging on multiple levels while the amount of it seems trivial to us with only a few pieces into our recycle bins a day, we must visualize that every home rich and poor receives these deliveries. Ending it through government regulation would be the single most pro environment stroke of a pen to ever occur. Junk Mail is a tree killing, chemical-in-the-river polluting, mail truck polluting, huge factories cranking out the ink and whatnot scourge to the planet. The tree spikes were misdirected. The attack should have been on the printing press responsible for the 100,000,000 3 color department store catalogs and the 4 million requests I have received to refinance my home. As you may gather, for environmentalist reasons, I am opposed to junk mail. I doubt that any elected official will stop it. My best bet is that Google will force them to move their market share to an electronic format or simply close shop. Three Cheers to one of America’’s all time biggest corporate giants and the environmentally sound electronic advertising they promote.

Bio Engineering / Genetic Engineering: Most environmentalists think of BE/GE as an evil science forwarded by huge corporations with maniacal scientists carelessly playing god for the sake of a buck. It's not that simple. Yes! it's for the buck or it never would have made it out of the University lab. Is it careless and evil? Why would it be? When the Chairman of a well heeled multinational corporation decides to throw his paper stock wealth on the fire because he desperately wants a lawsuit to cut him down for feeding the famished then let me know. Corn resistant to pests and able to grow where it could not before is feeding the famished and there is no scientific reason to believe it isn't safer than the original. Period. Its good science and we need to get behind it and master it so that we can do it with confidence.

These are just 3 items. There are more. And they are more important to environmentalism than co-ops or car pooling. Grass roots environmentalism is good because it evangelizes the movement but I have to repeat, it is not the heavy lifter. The real progress is done in the free market by private and public companies motivated by profit. We need to acknowledge where the progress is happening so we can evangelize it even more. Moreover, corporations need to be applauded for their positive economic contributions to society not protested against at WTA rallies by crowds of bong smoking refuseniks.

Starbucks: Starbucks pays market rate + a premium to its bean growers. Starbucks gives health insurance and a fair wage to its employees. Sorry globalists, Starbucks is a wonderment to modern capitalism and it is an American success story we should be proud of no mater how many are built or where they go. Hurray for Starbucks. People complain that Starbucks drives economic diversity out of the coffee house marketplace. Wrong. They made the marketplace and have left in their wake a marketplace willing to pay $2-$5 for a coffee beverage. If any mom and pop coffee houses who paid their staff minimum wage plus tips and no health insurance feel bullied and out marketed before being sprayed into the Starbucks grass catcher then so be it. Tra la la la la.

Big Box Stores: Home Depot and Costco provide centralized distribution. The centralization is an environmental success because centralization is environmentally more efficient. In the case of these two BIG BOX stores, they pay employees well and give benefits. (ACE and the smaller stores never did) Hurray Home Depot and Costco. Some environmentalists prefer to drill down past the operations level of the store and point to a particular product carried by the store to weigh it's environmental merit. Good, let's keep the pressure on them to hold their vendors to a standard but let's be fair about it and try and negotiate win-win scenarios rather than sling mud like children in the mixt of a temper fit. Big Box stores are not an environmental problem. They are a fix. They give everyone fewer places to drive to. Ultimately, every part of town could benefit by a centralized shopping megaplex. I don't know If I like it that way but environmentally, it works. Lastly, Loch believes the working and lower class feels disenfranchised by the cold reason of the upper class wielding the hammer of science. So be it. Environmentalism is a science. It is a social science designed to weigh the impact of the human condition upon the environment. It is not Wheatgrass and Aloe Vera. It is not camping in the woods and watching two chicks braid each others hair while some bohemian Jow Blow meditates in the dirt. It is not vegetarianism, spirituality or rainbow colored kites. It is building a better drill bit so that we can tap the oil reserve lateral to our position without sinking a new vertical well. It is unified messaging to our PC so that you can send and receive a fax without paper and ink. It is the patent issued in Denmark over a hard tablet which turns into hydrogen gas when dropped it into water like an Alka Seltzer. It’s a gizmo 20 years away the size of an Oreo Cookie and it holds every movie you ever liked and every book you ever read and the ones you want to. And every song you like and the ones you use to like but now you think are gay and every email you need to reply too and your last 200 grocery lists and a voice memo you left yourself and the contact info for all your friends and 28 Mpxl image you took of a girl you saw while you were riding the solar train and an offer every 1/2 hour from AOL.

As unromantic as it seems, as un-bohemian, as much as we want to refer to imaginary specters like "The Man" and even when we wake in the middle of the night to hear the AM radio and a crusade against the "Fascist Industrialists Globalists Pigs". It’s all us. Its yesterday’s hippies and the new blood from India. "The Man" used to surf your beach, maybe he still does.

Peter Sills

Location unknown

COMMENTS ON APRIL/MAY ZEPHYR Stiles:

My knee jerk impressions regarding Zephyr's The Big Adventure issue --

1. The photo of Ken Sleight and his horses (page 13) deserves to be the cover of a rock band's album. 2. Moab's lucky to have a "neighborhood radio station" (page 5). 3. The Pointblank piece would make sense if the so-called "working and peasant classes" gave a shit about the environment, beyond purely anthropocentric [read: self-interested] concerns. 4. Your definition of adventure gets the nod. Send it to Wikipedia. 5. The Bulletin Board of Doom should be a regular feature. 6. If you have any photos of the model for Lost River clothing company, feel free to e-mail them to me. 7. The picture on page 16 looks like a guy wearing neck gear designed by Master Rapper Mojo Fly. I suggest simply cutting his head off in PhotoShop. 8. The image of Cactus Ed on page 17 is descended from a photo of Ed working atop one of his lookout towers. I saw the pic for sale on E-bay recently, probably a laser copy, for too much money. 9. Regarding the subject of Scott Silver's essay, I suggest we all re-read Dave Foreman's The Big Outside, followed by William Catton’s Overshoot. 10. Not only is Moab lucky to have neighborhood radio, but a Chevron station serving bio-diesel is downright snazzy. Being a Diesel man myself, I salute you. 11. The quote on page 29 regarding "The relevance of Christianity to most Americans...." is suitable for framing. Hats off to Gwendolyn! 12. After reading your account of trekking down the Gunbarrel Highway in 100+ heat, it’s apparent you’re crazier than I thought. I felt the same way about myself after reviewing Ned Mudd’s work in said issue. You need help. 13. The more I learn about Moab, the less I believe in basing a town’’s "prosperity" on tourism. There’s no end to that rat race. It only gets weirder.

The Desert Rat Commando

Parts Unknown

BICYCLE OFF ROAD DAMAGE Jim,

As a Moab tour operator, I continue to find fresh mountain bike trails, caused by allowing mountain bike singletrack trails to be built next to Klondike Bluffs on state land in an area that was virgin just a couple of years ago. Once the state allowed IMBA and local mountain bikers to build trails, multiple tracks began to appear every one hundred feet or so along the old mining road circling to the north and west to the Bluffs.

It appears to be a free for all and anyone can go out there and just start building trails. This is also happening all over Courthouse Pasture, Amassa Back and Behind the Rocks with the motors joining in. These pirate trails get wider and wider, propagating at an alarming rate.

One trail goes through and over the only fine examples of dinosaur tracks in the immediate area that haven’t been ruined by amateur casters! It appears that local mountain bikers have forsaken the environment (and our future livelihood) for an image as constructive members of the mountain bike community, like George Bush.

A local mountain biker, an upstanding member of our community, like George Bush, said to me, "Some areas have to sacrificed." He was referring to the act of claiming virgin lands for mountain biking recreation. It is sad that these white people do not know the difference between "sacrifice" and "exploit." I want to sacrifice one of these turds to the Rain God. Want to join me?

Lee Bridgers

Owner of Dreamride Mountain Bike Tours and Equipment

Moab, Utah

A FELLOW GRUMPY LUDDITE

Dear Jim:

Regarding so-called "adventures" in this day and age:

If we can justify banning "mechanical" devices from designated federal wilderness areas, we can justify banning electronic devices from the same areas, based on the same policy considerations.

Any f'ing Nancy-boys and Nancy-girls that wanna take cell-phones and GPS and Blackberrys on their wilderness "adventures" should be mocked and ridiculed and banned from Mother Earth. Ban wristwatches while we're at it.

The nicest thing about this proposal? The "collateral damage" ... just one more way to cut down on the number of those offensive, useless humans crossing my field of vision while I'm deep in the bowels of good old Mom.

Just one arrogant opinion.

Brian K. Alvord,

Salt Lake City

A DOUBLE SUWA WHAMMY

Dear Jim Stiles,

I didn’t think anything could surprise me more than reading that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has almost $5,000,000 in net assets. I agree with you, how can an environmental group claim to be working for the cause of conservation when they have a Board Directors who seem to spend more time counting its revenues than it does talking real conservation issues? Why does SUWA need a million dollar headquarters? Why should they have a party for a multi-billionaire? It looks to me like he can pay for his own party

But my second surprise came when I read SUWA’s Scott Groene’s silly but hateful retaliatory comments in the Salt Lake Tribune. I’ve read some pretty harsh rebuttals to you before but this one took the cake. I like how he only referred to The Zephyr as "a Moab tabloid," as if your paper was printing soft-porn or something. Didn’t he and SUWA write for your paper for years. Was it a "tabloid" then?

And then he wrote, "Jim's rant says less about SUWA than about Jim's own curious little world. As its only resident, he's in charge. He gets not only his own opinion but his own facts."

I don’t know where he gets HIS facts, or what he thinks the word means, but I looked up YOUR facts on the internet and checked the SUWA tax records myself. Your facts were exactly right. The same for their chairman of the board’s multi-billion dollar wealth. Groene presented no facts at all, just a diversion from the truth. He went on about protecting Washington County wilderness but does SUWA have any opinion on what a St. George population of 500,000 in 30 years will do to surrounding public lands? And his diversion was one of the meanest "rants" I’ve ever read. How he could call your essay a rant is crazy. I remember when you did a Zephyr called "It’s Time to Look in the Mirror." I think SUWA and Mr. Groene need a full length mirror right now.

Keep up the good work. Some of us appreciate candor.

A. Alyea

Denver, Colorado

SUPPORTS SUWA...WANTS STILES TO SHUT UP

Editor,

I read your latest diatribe against the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and in addition to Scott Groene’s comments in the Salt Lake Tribune, I must come to their defense. This is the 21st Century and whether we like it or not, politics is a money game. It is unavoidable. In order to wage any kind of balanced battle against the Bush Administration and its relentless assault on the West, we will need all the money we can get our hands on. For you to criticize SUWA at a time like this can only give comfort to the enemy.

I suggest if you can’t say something nice about SUWA, keep your mouth shut. I think Scott was being too kind when he wrote off your SUWA criticisms as "eccentricities" and he was way too generous to refer to you as "our own Barney Fife." But he was exactly right when he said, "We have to clean up after you from time to time." We don’t need traitors like you at a time like this.

Sharon Bennett

Scottsdale, Arizona

A ‘FAT CHECK’ FOR SUWA

Jim, I missed Scott Groene's response to your April-May 2006 "Take It or Leave It" column, but apparently it was not received well by many. My comments reflect my direct reaction to your column, not an attempt to enter any fracas that may be ongoing. I don't presume to speak for SUWA, though I have been a member since the mid-1990s, more active then than now due to growing family responsibilities.

Lately, my membership has been maintained through contributions, a mindset and land use ethics that I hope spill over to those with whom I travel. I make regular contributions to the Glen Canyon Institute and Grand Canyon Trust, but know of no other local organization more aligned with my interests or poised to make good on its mission statement than SUWA.

Upon learning more on SUWA's financial status, my only reaction was "good!" I'd like to see more of that kind of fortune. A primary goal of any serious grass roots conservation group should be to grow into a real, potent advocate for its mission, capable of effecting actual results. Given who and what SUWA is up against, that requires raising a lot of money and building assets. While a few million dollars sounds like a lot to most, it is not much compared to the resources of the ORV industry and other anti-wilderness interests with friends in the current federal administration.

Bush and company do not compromise and they are not friends of wilderness designation. A spending spree by SUWA in the current political climate could be suicidal. Similarly, spreading resources around would only handicap the organization. At the moment, a maintenance strategy where battles are very carefully chosen seems wise. Chances are the next administration will be more moderate and less antagonistic to wilderness than the current one. SUWA's mission is direct and focused: secure wilderness designation for and protect qualifying lands in Utah. There is no group better positioned to facilitate this goal than SUWA, which seems to be making wise decisions on how and when to expend resources.

Personally, I would withhold contributions if I saw that they were compromising effectiveness by divesting or wasting money. However, I am inclined now to write them a big fat check, in addition to my annual membership contribution.

Tom Thorne

Salt Lake City, UT

EDITOR’S NOTE: In case you’re not a Salt Lake Trib reader and wondering what all this is about, I thought it might help if I just printed my reply to Scott Groene’s April 22 commentary to the Tribune. My letter appeared in the same publication on May 8:

I read with interest, but not surprise, SUWA Executive Director Scott Groene’s somewhat nasty and desperate rebuttal to an essay that I wrote recently and which appeared in the Tribune on April 15. Scott is very upset that in the last few years, I have dared to disagree with a SUWA blinders-type strategy which ignores ever-growing impacts to southern Utah public lands from the "amenities economy," an economic "solution" for the Rural West that SUWA has embraced and encouraged for more than a decade. If anyone has visited Moab or scores of other New West towns lately, you might know what I mean. Scott wants to believe that I’m the only person alive with such a concern, but if he really believed that, he wouldn’t have bothered to write a rebuttal in the first place.

SUWA does good work and has for two decades, but the West has changed since 1985 and so have the issues. The human urban invasion of rural lands in the American West, in numbers almost too staggering to grasp, will ultimately have a more devastating impact on public lands than any threat we’ve ever witnessed; yet SUWA’s own literature even praises the growth.

Ironically, a couple years ago, when the Glen Canyon Institute gave me its David Brower Award, I was honored when Scott wrote to me, "I can’t think of a better choice than you. You’ve done an enormous amount of work for the Colorado Plateau." Now that I have had the gall to disagree with some of SUWA’s strategies and to suggest that it might want to share even a fraction of its $5 million bankroll with other enviro groups, I appear to be in the doghouse. And with Barney Fife no less.

I remember what Edward R. Murrow once said: "We should never confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the Loyal Opposition dies, so does America." Scott Groene does not grasp that concept at all. I hope other SUWA members are more open-minded.

I must also say this...while I may be sort of a little guy, I insist that I’m much cuter and I shoot straighter than Barney Fife...JS