This is Hank Schmidt’s Monthly Report from December of 1940. He’d been the park custodian at Arches National Monument for roughly a year. CLICK HERE TO READ THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS OF HANK SCHMIDT’S MONTHLY REPORTS… * NOTE: Thanks to former…
David Swift was a gifted photographer and one of the most interesting men I’ve even known. I met him decades ago in his beloved Jackson, Wyoming, but Swift loved to come south to warm up in the Spring. He became…
Author’s Note: In the last few months I have talked with several people who have some misunderstandings about commission districting in this county. They felt it might be good if I wrote something to give a little background regarding this…
Note: This ‘Dimformation Age’ first appeared in the December ’05 Zephyr… If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the…
30 YEARS AGO…FIRST BIG SIGNS OF CHANGE And the first Zephyr Christmas 1989 in Moab January of ’90… 20 Years Ago: Christmas from 1999 11 Years ago…Wait, what? (It’s worth it for the) PERFECT MOMENTS: CHARLES MILLER…HUNTLEY, ILLINOIS “May, 1955.…
In this issue… Take it or Leave it: FUTURE NEWS! Utah Wilderness Debate, 2039-style… by Jim Stiles The Sanitized World is Here (So Pass Me a Cigarette) … by Tonya Audyn Stiles WHO IS NED MUDD??? … by Jim Stiles…
DATELINE OCTOBER 1, 2039 UTAH WILDERNESS NEWS FROM THE FUTURE! EDITOR’S NOTE: And now, some editorial humor from “the Future!” (a modified version of this story first appeared in The Z several years ago. It has been updated and revised)…
“After twenty-six weeks of sunlight and stars, wind and sky and golden sand, I want to hear once more the crackle of clamshells on the floor of the bar in the Clam Broth House in Hoboken. I long for a…
Almost 30 years ago, not long after I’d started The Zephyr, one of my favorite parts of the paper was the ‘Feedback” section. I always looked forward to the letters—and in those days they really were letters, on real paper,…
Democracies are, by design, competitive and thus often messy….. As voters become increasingly frustrated with a lack of results, they will look to ‘more effective’ strongman models of the type embodied by Russia and China. …At the end of the…
Zephyr readers consistently demonstrate a high degree of insight and engagement. Last issue, for example, Doug Meyer left a response to my column that steered me to a selection of smart essays and other writing about the meaning of big…
South of the Clouds he discovered an insectbiting his handand said this could be the beginningof something. three weeks laterhe diedsomewhere southof the clouds. actuallythis is a poem about drinking tea. Objet d’Art a man found the key to longevity…
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… When we last convened on this page, I was making insane promises…
They came from the four corners of the continent—from Northern Utah and the Rocky New England coast. From the Jersey Shore and the Texas plains. Four pilgrims pursuing a dream. They found it right here. Doug Travers. Dale Stevens. Ed…
Q. So, how would you describe your music? “My old guru, Fat David, called it, ‘music to execute criminals by.‘” In fact, I invented the goat cheese and chicken skin pizza, extra crust. I heard they still sell like hotcakes…
I woke up early this morning. Early is 3:30 am, this after an 11:30 bedtime. I sometimes hear people talk about how they can’t sleep. I wonder if they mean what I mean when I say that I can’t sleep.…
Almost 40 years ago, I bought some land in San Juan County. The property was part of what had once been an 800 acre ranch. Not long after, I went on a reconnoitering hike and discovered a small wooded side…
First of all, there’s no such thing as objectivity. How you see the world depends on where you stand and who you are. There’s nothing anybody can do about that. So my solution is to tell readers where I stand.…
On August 22, 2019, a town hall-style meeting was held in Mexican Water, Utah. The gathering was open to all citizens of San Juan County and it was attended by the county’s three commissioners, Kenneth Maryboy, Willie Grayeyes and Bruce Adams.…
THIRTY YEARS AGO… These were our fourth and fifth issues of the then-monthly Zephyr and our first election issue. I interviewed both mayoral candidates for the November issue, Bill Meador and the incumbent, Tom Stocks. Even then, the issue of…