Up Bear Creek / 31j13i2 / Gun Control

Photo from Radically Christian website

A hot button issue, red/blue conflict written all over it. Or is it? I find myself, living in Norwood for some 30 years now, having watched my neighbors, most of whom have guns, be respectful, not harm anyone and not negligently allow arms access to their youngsters, so I’m having a hard time endorsing a letter supporting Pres. Obama’s gun control measures in this country, when this is the same president who’s using drones to kill terrorists and terrified children in foreign nations, in open violation of the U.N. Charter (why host an international alliance if you aren’t going to honor its charter?) 

Okay, that was kind of a non-sequitur. But I think we have to face up to the facts. Ours was a nation born in revolution. We owe our independence to a citizenry who threw off the yoke of a King and founded a democratic union wherein they had the right to bear arms – not just for hunting or for sport but for self-defense and against ill-doers or (goddess forbid) a government coup.

Yes, I’ve walked for peace in Telluride on the 11^th of almost ten years’ worth of months. I deplore state violence beyond our borders, except for the most egregious situations – of which ‘Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan did not qualify in my book. And as a commissioner, I’ve sworn an oath to uphold and defend our state constitution, as well as our federal one.

But I also think, as Americans, we have a responsibility to defend ourselves, families and friends and a duty to defend our nation. Let’s start giving our society new tools to prevent mass killings (mental health programs, youth mentoring, etc.) rather than taking away our rights to defend ourselves.

Up Bear Creek / 31jan26013i1 / Jill Stein, Pres. Obama & Drones

Green Presidential Candidate Jill Stein

 I told my friends I wouldn’t start criticizing Barack Obama until (and if) he won a second term. I voted for him a second time, even though the Green Party had a wonderful, competent and visionary candidate in Dr. Jill Stein of Massachusetts. But it feels like we’re still semi-trapped in the social and economic collapse of the Bush/Reagan dynasty, and it was important to move this nation off center right, and back to center left. I think the swing won’t be complete until the Dems regain control of Congress.

Then will be the time to mount a hard push to the left to enact a New Green Deal like Stein was advocating – putting America back to work with a Full Employment Program to be co-developed locally and nationally; moving towards green energy and sustainable small businesses; regaining public control of our domestic monetary policy; abolishing corporate personhood; instituting regulatory safeguards for voting rights; championing local control over federal pre-emption, defending civil liberties; and financing new programs by cutting military spending in half; closing our 700+ American military bases around the world; and starting a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.

But with the president formally inaugurated into a second term, I have to raise my voice in public opposition to his use of drones -- officially UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) – a program begun under the previous administration and continuing now into Obama’s second term.

Extra-judicial state murders of suspected terrorists, with its collateral damage of civilian casualties, is illegal, unethical, and just plain wrong. It violates the U.N. Charter, and constitutes a thumbing of Uncle Sam’s nose at international law – just like the previous administration used to do. If George W. Bush should have been charged on the world stage for war crimes, and Ronald Reagan likewise for his Contra War in Nicaragua, funded by covert illegal drug smuggling, what should we do with Barack Obama’s drone strikes?

According to the website Global Research, an estimated 800 or more innocents have been killed by UAVs in Pakistan, including up to 168 children, and only 22 Al Qaeda commanders. And according to the Council of Foreign Relations website, by 2010 there had been 79 drone accidents, costing $1 million each

 Maybe we ought to stop trying to limit Americans’ citizen access to guns, and stop slaughtering innocents in drone attacks world-wide. Just because we don’t see it, don’t read about it in the corporate media, and it doesn’t happen to us or our neighbors doesn’t mean a terrible thing isn’t happening -- paid for by our tax dollars

Former President Jimmy Carter has come out publicly and voiced opposition to Obama’s drone assassination policy. So must we.

Up Bear Creek / 24j13iTG / The Talking Gourd

The Death of a Fly Fisherman

After his death

she tidied his desk,

all but the vise

which she lovingly left,

his last fly untied.

-Kyle Harvey

Fruita

Up Bear Creek / 24j13i3 / GJ Art Mag

WESTERN COLORADO JOURNEYS 

The amazing Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer at a reading in Grand Junction

Kat Rhein of Wild Kat Media has published a second edition of the Grand Valley’s premiere regional art, media and poetry guide. There are marketing sections on all the local hotspots surrounding Grand Junction, luscious photographs of impressive artwork, arts-related stories, and a selection of regional verse from place-based poets.

To get your own copy of what are quickly becoming collectors’ items in their own right, or to learn more, visit westerncoloradojourneys.com and enjoy the work of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Malcolm Graeme Childers and Frank Coons.

Up Bear Creek / 24j13i3 / Sheridan Celebrates Anniversary

100 YEARS 

It’s wonderful celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Sheridan Opera House, although it didn’t start out that way. Originally the Segerberg Theatre when it opened as a “picture show theatre,” according to the Telluride Daily Journal of July 2, 1913, the name was later changed from a theatre venue for silent films to an “opera house” and a mainstay on the state’s vaudeville circuit. There were several earlier opera houses in Telluride, both long gone. Opera houses not only hosted performances and lectures, but they served as community centers for dances and fancy dinner parties … The surviving Segerberg/Sheridan has become the town’s cinematic landmark, thanks to the annual Telluride Film Festival and its international following. And blossomed as well into an intimate performance showcase, “Telluride’s living room,” thanks to the Sheridan Arts Foundation.

Up Bear Creek / 24j13i2 / Tamiflu to the Rescue

INFLUENZA 

Sad Things by Diego Kricek Fontanive

It didn’t seem like a big deal. Gorio was home sick last Monday [Jan. 14th] with a headache, bit of a sore throat, cough (but no fever). And then Tuesday. But when it stretched into Wednesday, I took him to the clinic. And glad I did, because he tested positive for the flu … 

Both of us got Tamiflu pills (for which Don at the Apothecary Shoppe in Nucla saved us mucho dinero, as those little drug cures cost a pretty penny). And we stayed home all week. Him in bed, and me sorting through Mary’s things and being caretaker single dad. Lots of chores at Cloud Acre – wood heat means hauling logs from the shed to the stove and keeping the fire banked and burning, hauling water, preparing meals, washing dishes, shoveling snow -- the list of rural Wright’s Mesa what-to-do’s goes on a spell … 

I did get Saturday off to visit friends up from Shiprock for a dip in the pool at Ouray. But missed Sunday’s 49er game, which was tempting (especially as I love it when they win – Giants in the World Series and now the Niners in the Super Bowl – what a year for the Bay Area!) … Friday there was this dinner party in Telluride, but Gorio and I watched movies, played games, stayed up late and slept late … 

Sometimes being sick is the only way to slow the world down and sleep a lot.

Up Bear Creek / 24jan26013 / item one

On the trail of the Trogloraptor

SPIDERS … Like snakes, I was afraid of spiders as a young child. We lived among black widows and my mom even got bit by one, hiding in the sleeve of a jacket she put on. She was sick for days … But meeting an herpetologist at Pinnacles National Monument in California, I learned to love snakes – recognizing the danger but respecting their power and beauty. And after 30 years living in Norwood on a property with many old outbuildings and in a house with many resident spiders, I’ve come to an arrangement of sorts. I like to say, they don’t bite me and I don’t kill them. Both of these statements are true, although there may be no direct correlation between them. However, in my own magical worldview, there is. And I take great care to escort spiders out of my home (where a good number provide fly-catching webs, eliminating one of the area’s summer pests).

My success in doing so relates in no small way to making use of that wonderful humane spider trapping tool, the BugZooka – an air gun that sucks up spiders and lets you relocate them outside, unharmed … Having become a fan of spiders now (one of the great Diné feminine deities), I was delighted to learn in a recent issue of Science News of the discovery of a whole new family of spiders, Trogloraptoridae. Tens of thousands of new species are discovered every year, but finding a new family of critters is very rare. These new specimens sport big, three-part claws and spikes on curved feet and measure about three inches with feet extended. So far, this spider family has only one genus and only one species. It was discovered by cavers in southern Oregon, and was dubbed Trogloraptor (“cave robber”) marchingtoni (for amateur spelunker and deputy sheriff Neil Marchington). However, specimens have also turned up in the redwoods of Jedediah Smith State Park in California, and may be a second species of the genus Trogloraptor.