In this issue… Take it or Leave it: “OK BOOMERS?” GOOD LUCK, “DOOMERS:” A Recent History of Generational Fear, Angst and Loathing … by Jim Stiles The Other Lonely Rangers: The Forgotten Lives of America’s Basque Sheepherders… by Tonya Audyn…
Until recently, I was blissfully unaware of the internet’s latest trope/meme/catchphrase. “Okay Boomer” is supposed to be a snarky put-down of my admittedly disgraceful generation by our younger nieces and nephews. For the most part, I couldn’t agree more. But…
It was the trial of the year in Moab, Utah. The courtroom was packed full by Ten in the morning, November 18th of 1921. Tensions had been brewing a long time between the cattlemen of Southeast Utah and the encroaching…
For those of you who have been regular Zephyr readers for years, I don’t need to introduce Herb Ringer to you. Herb’s brilliant, historic photographs of the American West have been a regular feature in The Zephyr for almost as…
We are particular to preserve the buildings, but fear, unless the Gov’t sees proper to make a national park of the Cañons, including Mesa Verde, that the tourists will destroy them. B. K. Wetherill, 1890 Into the silent stone building…
Perhaps light is the first thing that appears when I think of this place, light, the way it textures the world here. True, I see places where I have camped and fished and walked and drank coffee. I see cairns…
Those who know me, along with those who read my pieces in the Zephyr, are familiar with my hatred of what my neighborhood has become. It is not the same place it was when I moved here as a young…
Every year, seasonal and permanent rangers at national parks across the fruited plain gather for their annual law enforcement training refresher course. The NPS takes itself pretty seriously these days. It’s been decades since the Park Service decided to strip…
The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture. — Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization There are now a great many young…
Political clout of newly empowered Navajo Democrats helps defeat a proposal to study change of San Juan County (Utah) government “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789 Many…
Note: This story is reprinted with permission from Bill Keshlear and “Bears Ears Divide.” It first appeared HERE. (The following has been updated to include comments of Rep. Phil Lyman, R-District 73. Also, in a recorded phone conversation Juan Palma…
I first visited Moab in the brutally cold January of 1973. I returned the following summer, then again and again. And in the fall of 1975 I moved there to stay. It was an early seminal moment…Moab, I proclaimed, would…
(Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the Oct/Nov 1999 Issue of the Zephyr. Kent Frost lived until May 16, 2013. To read his obituary from the San Juan Record, follow this link: Kent Frost May 16, 2013.) Celebrated river…
This is Hank Schmidt’s Monthly Report from December of 1940. He’d been the park custodian at Arches National Monument for roughly a year. CLICK HERE TO READ THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS OF HANK SCHMIDT’S MONTHLY REPORTS… * NOTE: Thanks to former…
David Swift was a gifted photographer and one of the most interesting men I’ve even known. I met him decades ago in his beloved Jackson, Wyoming, but Swift loved to come south to warm up in the Spring. He became…
Author’s Note: In the last few months I have talked with several people who have some misunderstandings about commission districting in this county. They felt it might be good if I wrote something to give a little background regarding this…
Note: This ‘Dimformation Age’ first appeared in the December ’05 Zephyr… If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the…
30 YEARS AGO…FIRST BIG SIGNS OF CHANGE And the first Zephyr Christmas 1989 in Moab January of ’90… 20 Years Ago: Christmas from 1999 11 Years ago…Wait, what? (It’s worth it for the) PERFECT MOMENTS: CHARLES MILLER…HUNTLEY, ILLINOIS “May, 1955.…
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In this issue… Take it or Leave it: FUTURE NEWS! Utah Wilderness Debate, 2039-style… by Jim Stiles The Sanitized World is Here (So Pass Me a Cigarette) … by Tonya Audyn Stiles WHO IS NED MUDD??? … by Jim Stiles…
DATELINE OCTOBER 1, 2039 UTAH WILDERNESS NEWS FROM THE FUTURE! EDITOR’S NOTE: And now, some editorial humor from “the Future!” (a modified version of this story first appeared in The Z several years ago. It has been updated and revised)…
“After twenty-six weeks of sunlight and stars, wind and sky and golden sand, I want to hear once more the crackle of clamshells on the floor of the bar in the Clam Broth House in Hoboken. I long for a…
Almost 30 years ago, not long after I’d started The Zephyr, one of my favorite parts of the paper was the ‘Feedback” section. I always looked forward to the letters—and in those days they really were letters, on real paper,…
Democracies are, by design, competitive and thus often messy….. As voters become increasingly frustrated with a lack of results, they will look to ‘more effective’ strongman models of the type embodied by Russia and China. …At the end of the…
