Zephyr Extra: NOTE: This is a followup to a story that appeared in the Aug/Sept issue of The Zephyr. Read that story here. On August 4, Grand County Councilwoman Mary McGann proposed to change the name of Negro Bill Canyon…
For the last couple of years, a ‘place name’ debate has raged in Moab, mostly via the letters column in the weekly Times-Independent. Some Grand County citizens think the name ‘Negro Bill Canyon,’ is racist and offensive and should be…
Consider, for a moment, the horse. Your average horse is still a romantic figure, evoking a rich historical relationship of labor, war, and transport. Horses made the journey across the Oregon Trail. Horses marched into battle, and lay among the…
NOTE: I first wrote this in the mid-1990s, when I thought there was a chance our little town of Moab might avoid–or at least try to avoid—the kind of fate that it has eventually been consumed by. It was also…
THANKS to Tom McCourt & the Tibbetts Family. For years, I have been watching Moab move farther and farther away from its roots, to the point where it seems few people even know the history of the place anymore. Some…
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… I have been in a funk for a while, so I’m going…
I grow plants in the desert for planting in yards and in unirrigated revegetation project areas in SE and Central Utah. Almost every day from February through October I talk with people about how to water plants – how much,…
Editor’s Note: Sixteen years after this article was written, life for LGBT Utahns (and elsewhere in the United States) has changed for the better. As Stephen Clark, the ACLU legal director quoted extensively in the article, noted, “Progress goes basically…
Former County Councilman and Allen Memorial Hospital nurse Peter Haney swears that what follows is true… It was 12:20 am on Thanksgiving Day 1986…I had just finished my midnight rounds at the hospital. I went to an empty patient room…
In the last years of Herb Ringer’s life, he began to lose his eyesight from macular degeneration. There were many photographs he wanted to caption but blindness had stopped him. But Herb was convinced he would remember the photos, if…
From the Zephyr Archives… In the 21st century, it is ludicrous…indeed, quite tragic, to have to defend the actions taken by Congress on August 25, 1916 when it established the National Park System. The American people purposely, in the creation…
From the Zephyr Archives… Nostalgia, from Greek nostos, a return, and algos, pain or grief. Somewhere in its long journey through languages the word, at least in American English, acquired a shift that turned pain and grief to something like…
From the April/May 1999 Zephyr: My cousin, Zeke, is about two years older than I am. I only saw Zeke on infrequent visits from San Francisco, when we traveled back to the old Flocko homestead in French Lick, Mississippi, where…
“There are two different types of change: one that occurs within a given system which itself remains unchanged, and one whose occurrence changes the system itself.” – Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch, from their book Change. For years now Jim Stiles…
For decades, the Meador House was one of the most prominent homes on Main Street. But it sat vacant for years and in the late 90s, the house was torn down. A few years later, after a contracted battle with…
After Pete and his brother Jack were through shearing our sheep they went on other sheep shearing jobs. I did not see Pete again until June 1st. I was home to make preparations to move the sheep to Dry Valley…
Last year, I became aware of a new (at least to me) environmental/progressive activist in Moab named Darcey Brown. She’s become a voice for “New Moab” and has been a frequent contributor to the Letters section of the Moab weekly,…
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TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT…Jim Stiles ON THE FACTS, DARCEY BROWN & MOAB ‘THEN & NOW’ SOWING CLOVER By Tonya Stiles “SORRY. THE COMPUTER SAYS ‘NO.’” BEFORE & AFTER…Moab, Utah…then and now Dewey Bridge: 1982 & 2008 MOAB GROUND ZERO:…
I’ve been a devoted reader of the ‘Letters to the Editor’ page in the weekly Moab Times-Independent for almost 40 years. Some of my fondest Moab memories are sitting in publisher Sam Taylor’s office on countless occasions, discussing the issues…
I’ve always liked to think that I have pretty decent luck. But it turns out that everyone has good luck until, suddenly, they don’t. On April 17th, I was on a camping trip with my husband, Jim, when I received…