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http://www.backofbeyondbooks.com/events.cfm?mode=detail&id=1345846361880

AN EXCERPT:   In an Aug. 6 letter to Lamar Whitmer of Confluence Partners LLC, President Ben Shelly threatened to withdraw his support of a proposed resort in Gap/Bodaway Chapter unless the partners can prove “solid public support” for the massive project by the end of the year.

“Though we would like to see this project move forward, if solid public support cannot be attained before Dec. 31, 2012, the Shelly-Jim Administration will have to withdraw our support for the project and the MOU,” the letter reads, referring to a memorandum of understanding established between the tribe and the firm in February.

“It has always been my position; in order for this economic project to succeed it is imperative to have local support,” Shelly wrote, noting that the MOU stipulates that Confluence Partners will obtain “approvals from the affected customary land users and home site permittees, as well as presentations to the local Chapters.”

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http://navajotimes.com/politics/2012/0812/081612pro.php

Adult male desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) waits out the hottest part of the afternoon under a creosote bush. This tortoise was just seen yesterday in the Nopah Range Wilderness Area, California. The tortoise was spotted about two and a half miles away from the proposed Hidden Hills Solar Energy Project. BrightSource wants to remove 3,277 acres of habitat to build this project.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR FRIENDS AT ‘BASIN & RANGE WATCH’

If President Obama is re-elected, he will follow George W Bush and Bill Clinton, who were also re-elected. When was the last time three consecutive presidents won a second term?

You’d have to go all the way back to the very early days of the 19th Century…

THOMAS JEFFERSON,  the country’s 3rd president served from 1801-1809

JAMES MADISON followed, 1809-1817

and JAME MONROE…1817-1825

It’s never happened since.

Jefferson

Madison

Monroe

AN EXCERPT:   “Our solution is our problem,” Richard Heinberg, the author of “The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality,” told me when I reached him by phone in California. “Its name is growth. But growth has become uneconomic. We are worse off because of growth. To achieve growth now means mounting debt, more pollution, an accelerated loss of biodiversity and the continued destabilization of the climate. But we are addicted to growth. If there is no growth there are insufficient tax revenues and jobs. If there is no growth existing debt levels become unsustainable. The elites see the current economic crisis as a temporary impediment. They are desperately trying to fix it. But this crisis signals an irreversible change for civilization itself. We cannot prevent it. We can only decide whether we will adapt to it or not.”

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AN EXCERPT:   The plight of elephants in Africa is being explained, in graphic and saddening detail, in a new series of stories by my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times. “An epic elephant slaughter,”he calls it, with poachers wiping out tens of thousands of elephants a year for their ivory.

The killing has now reached a kind of frenzy, and even military units in central Africa are involved, gunning down elephants from their helicopters. Ivory tusks, most of them bound for China, have become the new blood diamonds.

The poachers have already done their worst in Vietnam. Along with developers, loggers, villagers and negligent bureaucrats, they have conspired to reduce the wild elephant population to just a few dozen.

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AN EXCERPT:   When it comes to decorating their dorm rooms, some students aren’t even attempting to give it the old college try — they’re hiring the pros…Coeds and their parents are turning to interior designers to transform the traditional linoleum-and-cinderblock caves into spaces worthy of magazine spreads, complete with upholstered headboards, wallpaper and crystal chandeliers, for $90 to $175 an hour, plus the price of the posh paraphernalia.

“I’ve seen some residence hall rooms that look like they’re straight out of Southern Living,” says Auburn University housing director Kim Trupp.

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http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/home/story/2012-08-31/dormitories-interior-designers-universities/57561112/1

AN EXCERPT:  A Dutch company that aims to land humans on Mars in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent Red Planet colony has received its first funding from sponsors, officials announced this week.

Mars One plans to fund most of its ambitious activities via a global reality-TV media event, which will follow the mission from the selection of astronauts through their first years on the Red Planet.

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My buddy JOHN FAYHEE has two new books out— “Smoke Signals: Wayward Journeys Through the Old Heart of the New West” &  “The Colorado Mountain Companion: A Potpourri of Useful Miscellany from the Highest Parts of the Highest State.”

John will soon be on the road and making the rounds in Zephyr Country. Look for him at these locations if you’d like to hear  the incomparable  Mr. Fayhee read from his latest creations.

• Thursday Sept. 29 at 5 p.m. at the Spruce Tree Coffeehouse in Cortez.

• Saturday Sept. 29 at 7 p.m. at Cavalcade in Fruita.

• Friday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City (reading from “Smoke Signals” only).

• Friday Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. at the Grand County Public Library in Moab (reading from “Smoke Signals” only).

• Saturday Oct. 13 at 2 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Grand Junction.

ALSO CHECK OUT JOHN’S WEB SITE:

http://mjohnfayhee.com/

AN EXCERPT:  September 1, 2012 – Ocotillo, California. As Pattern Energy erects the first giant wind turbines on the once unfragmented Colorado Desert landscape, local and regional activists and residents continue to monitor construction. Many violations have been recorded, such as access roads much wider than in the environmental review documents, night lighting disturbing residents, equipment leaking hazardous fluids, and more.

The photos of the green leafing Ocotillo Forest being bulldozed and trampled are tragic. This is not green energy.

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http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/Ocotillo-Aug12.html