In This Issue… Take it or Leave it: ‘New West Blues’ Revisited, 30 Years Later… by Jim Stiles Yes, Some People are Still Smoking. Could We Just Leave Them Alone? …by Tonya Audyn Stiles July 4, 1961: Murder & the…
The June/July Issue of the Zephyr!
Take it or Leave it: ‘New West Blues’ Revisited, 30 Years Later… by Jim Stiles
A JUNE 2021 INTRODUCTION: In June 1990, thirty-one years ago this month, I penned a Page Two essay for my fledgling newspaper, The Canyon Country Zephyr, called “New West Blues.” The Zephyr had only existed for a bit more than…
Yes, Some People are Still Smoking. Could We Just Leave Them Alone? …by Tonya Audyn Stiles
The first time I picked up a cigarette, I was probably six years old. It was late morning, mid-summer, and the babysitter had let us kids out into the park next to her home while she returned inside to begin…
July 4, 1961: Murder & the Enduring Mystery at Dead Horse Point …by Jim Stiles
CRESCENT JUNCTION, UTAHJULY 7, 1961 10:30 PM MDT. (72 hours later) In mid-summer, the days linger long in the high desert badlands of southeast Utah. On July 7, 1961, sunset came officially at 8:45 PM. But near Crescent Junction, thirty miles…
Discovery …by Harvey Leake
The Indians found it long before the white men came.—John Wetherill, commenting on the discovery of Rainbow Natural Bridge “The discovery of a natural bridge surpassing in size anything heretofore found is the news brought to this city this morning…
RANGERS & THEIR RELENTLESS BIGOTRY TOWARD DOGS …by Jim Stiles
“The kids, like all kids, loved the dog and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep the dog.” –Richard M. Nixon Many years ago, a decade after…
As Things Stand Now …by Damon Falke
—for TS— T.S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land, “April is the cruelest month,” and in the poem, “Home-Thoughts, from Abroad,” Robert Browning penned, “Oh, to be in England/Now that April’s there.” I don’t know that I find April crueler…
THE OPEN ROAD: The Suburbs …Words and Photos by Paul Vlachos
I’m stopped at a traffic light at 210th Street and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City. The young woman in the driver’s seat of the car next to me is holding up a…
“(Still) ‘Enough Rope’”: Comparison and Contrast: Moab’s Composition Lesson …by Bill Davis
During my career as a mass communications/journalism professor, I spent many years also teaching a section of English composition. Students were required to write a weekly 500-word essay using various styles of academic writing. One of those assigned categories was…
Grand Gulch Memories: A 1974 Pack Trip with Guide Pete Steele …by Becky Brock
During 1973, I worked for the National Park Service at Natural Bridges National Monument, first as a volunteer and then as a paid seasonal ranger. Lucky for me, the BLM had been gearing up to hire four rangers at nearby…
BEARS EARS’ FUTURE: Power Without Any Discernible Limit …by Stacy Young
Most Zephyr readers are probably aware of Interior Secretary Haaland’s ongoing review of the two large national monuments in southern Utah. A proper betting line would probably set the 1.9-million acre, ITC-proffered monument map as the odds-on favorite to be…
‘PEACEFUL UPRISING’ & ‘A.L.E.C.’… COMPLICATED ADVERSARIES …by Jim Stiles (FLASHBACKS #2 OCT 2012)
Peaceful Uprising is a grassroots environmental group based in Utah that was founded by activists Tim DeChristopher and Ashley Anderson. DeChristopher received world-wide media attention when he disrupted a federal BLM oil and gas lease auction in December 2008. DeChristopher,…
The Greatest Story Ever Told …by Harlan Green
I was an engineering student at UC Berkeley in the early 1960s. The student body was much smaller and campus quieter before free speech and Vietnam came along. There was no admission charge for California residents, just a $150 admin…
The Best of the April/May Comment Section…
Here at the Zephyr, we’re pretty proud of the articles we publish each issue. We’ve said this before, but we think we’ve assembled the best collection of writers we’ve ever had, all of whom are writing at a level that…
ZEPHYR AMERICA: Edna Fridley’s Signs of the Times…
Our regular readers know that we began a new project at the Zephyr last year–called “Zephyr America.” We’ve been slowly wading through the massive Zephyr archives of historic photos and digitizing them to share with our readers. To keep up…
Herb Ringer’s American West: Riding the Lost Train Route from Chama to Durango, Colorado in 1948
HERB RINGER and his parents, Sadie and Joseph, traveled across the American West and into the Canadian Rockies on numerous trips, from the 40s through the 70s. Herb was devoted to rail history, and was particularly fond of the historic…
HANK SCHMIDT’S MONTHLY REPORT: Arches National Monument, July 1941
July 21st, 1941 Travel this month, 494 Travel to date, 2881 Weather The usual brand of hot summer weather has been our lot, with a few days of high temperatures and occasional rainstorms. Fortunately the evenings are nearly always cool…
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The April/May Issue of the Zephyr!
In this Issue… Take it or Leave it: A Personal Postscript to Bill Davis’ DOXOL FIRE Story …by Jim Stiles Safe at Home: Learning to Love Baseball …by Tonya Audyn Stiles “(Still) ‘Enough Rope’”: (A Reporter’s Moab Memories. 1978-1984) #7…
Take it or Leave it: A Personal Postscript to Bill Davis’ DOXOL FIRE Story …by Jim Stiles
Regular Zephyr contributor Bill Davis sent us an extraordinary detailed account of one of Moab’s worst disasters, the Doxol explosion and fire on July 31, 1981. Bill was the chief reporter for the Times-Independent and his story in this issue is the…
Safe at Home: Learning to Love Baseball …by Tonya Audyn Stiles
Either you learn to love baseball as a kid or else you don’t learn to love it. Right? It’s just too big. It’s like any other behemoth cultural institution—Catholicism, for example. I can speak to this as a Catholic. That…