What do oil companies & environmentalists have in common? Sometimes their money comes from the same ‘donor.’ A few years ago, High Country News and Writers on the Range published an essay by Gary Wockner called, “Can Billionaire Philanthropy Save…
GLEN CANYON, A HALF CENTURY AFTER THE DAM… In all the years and centuries and eons before it was flooded, only a relative handful of people saw the untamed, free and flowing Colorado River in Glen Canyon. When the gates…
BRIAN O’REILLY lived in Moab for years and sometimes without a roof over his head. He was a handy man and did odd jobs around town. he gave an hour’s work for an hour’s pay and wouldn’t do it otherwise.…
Herb Recalls Shorty Yarberry & the Grand Canyon… One of the great characters of the Grand Canyon was Shorty Yarberry. His whole name was George Armstrong Custer ‘Shorty’ Yarberry. He was born on the day of the Battle of the…
One of my favorite poet/songwriters, Utah Phillips, once wrote: “I’ll sing about an emptiness the East has never known, Where coyotes don’t pay taxes and a man can live alone. And you’ve got to walk forever just to find a…
Fuzzy 1992-2012 We don’t choose our cats. They choose us. One afternoon in the late autumn of 1993, a small grey cat appeared on my back porch and would not leave. I tried to chase her away—I was not a…
John DePuy: Let me read you something. It says it all. It’s all I have to say. “Madman and seer–– Painter of the Apocalyptic Volcano. Campañero, I am with you forever in the glorious fraternity of the damned.” Jim Stiles:…
I went West to find Edward Abbey in the 1970s, determined to give him a drawing I’d done in his honor. It was a doodle of Glen Canyon Dam in serious disarray. A few weeks later, The Monkey Wrench Gang…
BILL KOCI came to Moab in the late 70s and was a familiar and colorful presence in town for decades. He ran the Parkside Trailer Court until his death in January of this year. I miss Bill… MARIE LARKIN, brilliant…
One morning, many years ago, when I still had the energy to hustle for new advertising, I stopped by a new store on Center Street. It was called Walkabout Travel Gear and I hoped the owners might want to promote…