UBC913 ... Ken Salazar Comes Home

Ken and Art at Center of the American West conference, 2012

The Denver Post opined that Salazar, stepping down from his post as Interior Secretary for the first term of the Obama administration, was in a good position for any number of future possibilities. The headline Feb. 17^th read, “Ken Salazar returns to Colorado with image intact and many options.”

According to co-writers Karen Crummy and Bruce Finley, “Some see Salazar as governor. Others see him as a high-level envoy or ambassador. A few consider him a good pick for a presidential ticket down the road.”

But for now, Salazar says he’s going to focus on finding a money-paying job and spending more time with his family.

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt touted Salazar's "consensus-building magic" in many of his accomplishments over the past four years. "The environment he stepped into was impossible,” insisted Babbitt. “The economy was really struggling. He was trying to figure out how you get anything done when everyone's attention in Congress and the administration was on economic issues and jobs. And he set in motion things that are quite powerful."

Added Gov. John Hickenlooper, "He brings integrity everywhere he goes. He's always going to do what is right for the country, right for Colorado, before he does something that will benefit himself. He is, by nature, someone who thinks of others. His default position is to help someone else."

UBC1013 ... The Talking Gourd

Text scraping the ink
off my pages, sending it
for biopsy

-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Placerville

UBC1013 ... Catching Up on Our Neighbors to the South

DOVE CREEK PRESS … Living in the upper watershed of the San Miguel River, our newspapers have a very hip upscale look separating us from this more traditional rural weekly. And the prevailing community attitudes and op-ed spins are often diametrically opposed … I’ve written about Linda and Doug Funk’s DoveCreek Press. The newspaper serves the county seat of Dolores County, our neighbor to the southwest (Rico having once been the county seat, until dryland farmers and uranium miners wrested it away from hard rock mining-camp-gone-bust holdouts back in the Fifties). Folks over in San Juan County, Utah (Blanding and Monticello) read it. The Press also serves as local news organ for San Miguel County’s far West End: Egnar, Slick Rock, Disappointment Valley -- all of it located in the Dolores River watershed and San Miguel County Commissioner District #3 … I subscribe. It helps keep me in touch with all the different perspectives that make up citizen views in my bifurcated constituency. And last week’s issue couldn’t have showcased those differences more.

Gunnison Sage Grouse

SAGE GROUSE LISTING … Usually sporting a local snapshot of some rural landscape scene, the Funks’ front page for Feb. 21^st featured a color (rare) map of proposed U.S. Fish & Wildlife’s Gunnison Sage Grouse Critical Habitat – both occupied (40,000 acres) and potential (108,000 acres). The front page headline, below the fold, told the story: “County hires experts to fight sage grouse designation as endangered” … Dr. Rob Ramey was granted a $6,000 contract to help oppose listing, and “a GPS company” $5,000. Here’s some direct quotes from Doug Funk’s article … Commissioners lamented over the fact that Dove Creek/Monticello has few birds but a huge area of critical habitat… [County Attorney Dennis] Golbricht said he talked to a big wig in Kinder Morgan and was told that if sage grouse are designated endangered, drilling in Dolores County will cease … “Without oil and gas and farming, we’re done,” said [Commission Chair Doug] Stowe …As I understand it, some sixty percent of Dolores County revenue comes from oil & gas extraction. Depending on how the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service meshes with local farmers and how much truth there is in Golbricht’s rumor, listing could shut things down in Dolores County worse than the Bush-era Banking Collapse … In the Letters to the Editor section, Corinne Roring of San Juan County (UT) explains how her family has for years tried to protect the grouse, never killing them, and how they’ve worked with Utah Fish & Game to transform their windmill into a solar bird watering facility. But she believes, like many farmers and ranchers, that predation is the root cause of grouse declines. Roring writes, “It is a losing battle if the Fish and Game does not manage the predators, especially the raptors, with eagles at the top of the list.”

SHERIFF’S PERSPECTIVE … An occasional columnist, Dolores County Sheriff Jerry Martin weighs in, later in the paper, on gun control … “I am sure the potential terrorists will only show up with weapons and ammunition clips allowed under the new law. This makes about as much sense as buying a guard dog and then having his teeth extracted” … “Chicago and Washington D.C. have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation and also lead the nation in homicides. Is there a lesson to be learned here?” … “I support the recent decision by the school board to designate select school employees as school source and protection employees and will work closely with them to see that they are trained and able to respond.”

FRONT PAGE NEWS … One of my favorite regular features (along with Doug Funk’s own rural life column, Phunque’s Desk) is this summary of regional stories from newspapers in other communities. Telluride doesn’t make it very often, but the Cortez Journal, Dolores Star, San Miguel Basin Forum, Pine River Times (Bayfield), the Palisade Tribune, and the San Juan Record (Monticello) are all regulars … Here’s the Funks’ take on a Record story: … “Sally Jewell has been nominated to replace Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar. San Juan County residents fear she may be in favor of more National Monument designations.”

UBC913 ... The Talking Gourd

The Female Form

Girl Dressing Hair by Ito Shinsui

Yes, I posed nude for him.

But he wasn't like any

other artist I've ever

worked for. I'd sit on

his lap, his left arm tightly

around me while he painted

with his right hand. He said

he didn't want to paint

the way I look, only

the way I feel.

-Valerie Haugen

Carbondale

Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Pati Temple (1951-2013)

Pati Temple

Wild mustangs and McElmo Canyon progressives lost a great advocate with the passing of Patricia Ann Draheim Temple at Trail Canyon Ranch in Montezuma County this past January. She and her devoted husband David were partners for 38 years and together ran Trail Canyon Ranch.

Wild Horse, Spring Creek Herd, photo by TJ Holmes

Pati and I served together on the BLM’s Southwest Resource Advisory Council, and we became friends – both for our shared care for wild horses and environmental sanity, as well as our love of Colorado’s open spaces and wildlands.

I know I speak for a lot of good people in Southwestern Colorado when I say that’s she’s going to be dearly missed.

Overflow

-for Pati

She whirled a big lasso

& roped us all in

Took a shine to wild

mares & mustangs

Loved Trail Canyon

Ranch & its mysteries

Gave David a full mug

& most of her life

Shared the overflow

in McElmo & beyond

Her love a gust of wind

galloping through your hair

 

Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Poetry & Writers on the Western Slope

Cally Conan-Davies performing, David Mason listening

David performing at Cortez Library

DAVE MASON … Colorado’s accomplished Poet Laureate and his dynamic Aussie wife, Cally Conan-Davies, were the featured readers at a well-attended poetry reading at the Cortez Library last week. Montezuma County residents turned out in force to hear the duo alternate readings as they inspired the crowd with personal vignettes, narrative delights, lyric love poems and playful interactions … Kudos to librarian Kathy Berg for once again making Cortez a magnet for poetry performance in the Four Corners.

ERICA OLSEN … In attendance at the reading and the potluck reception for the poets afterwards was emerging Four Corners writer, Erica Olsen. Her first book is newly out from Torrey House Press, Recapture & Other Stories … As author Kevin Canty explains, “Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself. A swift and lovely debut from a writer of real gifts.”

Erica Olsen

ERIKA MOSS GORDON … Speaking of new writers, this intriguing Ridgway poet with a similar first name has a great website, “unlearning through poetry”, and is coming out with a chapbook soon, Of Eyes and Iris … Watch for it.

Erika Moss Gordon

Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Regional Recycling at Critical Juncture

Recycling bales at SMARTS Park (San Miguel Area Resource-Recovery Transfer Station)

After taking up Jonathan Greenspan’s invitation to visit Telluride's SMARTS Park single-source recycling center in Illium, I have to say I was impressed. No, it wasn’t a slick, glitzy sight. It’s an industrial park, and sorting trash into recyclable components is anything if not messy. Plus, citizens regularly drop off all manner of unwanted trash after hours, some of them thinking it’s a county facility, which it is not.

But clearly it’s an essential public service. If our county and the communities of Telluride and Mountain Village are serious about reducing carbon impacts, keeping our waste stream out of the landfills and re-using what can be salvaged is critical. And it’s a focus for more than a handful of jobs – scarce commodities in this economic climate.

Still, trying to do the right thing environmentally is expensive and difficult in our isolated region, far from major shipping points. There’s a chance to get some major grants to upgrade our capabilities for recycling in the region, but the community needs to figure out how much it wants to deal with trash as a major focus of reducing our carbon footprint

Greenspan has put a lot of time and money into keeping our recycling options open in the region. But it’s not going to survive without financial support from county citizens.

We’re at a critical juncture in our ability to do more than landfill the waste we produce in this county. And we’re also at the most dismal point in 30 years for local government funding. How we’re going to afford to do the right thing is by no means certain. But to take a step backwards in regional recycling would be a terrible shame, even as we claim to want to work towards a sustainably resilient mountain community.