The Spokesman-Review has begun outing people who bought bogus degrees from a diploma mill based in Spokane, Wash. The Justice Department, meanwhile, refuses to release the list of almost 10,000 buyers to the public. A source familiar with the list says, “There are people in high places with these degrees, and only one of them […]
Heard Around the West
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Battle of the bag bans
It’s a battle of the uber-rich — Aspen vs. Telluride — to see whose residents can best wean themselves from disposable grocery bags. Both towns have so embraced the bag battle — aka an educational campaign — that the competition has been extended through Labor Day. Telluride’s Sheep Mountain Alliance and Aspen’s Community Office for […]
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Drivers with attitudes
Beware of vehicles that sport bumper stickers, warns a social psychologist at Colorado State University: They signal that the drivers have an attitude. It’s not only bumper stickers that tell on a driver, but also window decals, personalized license plates and other “territorial markers,” says researcher William Szlemko in the Washington Post. Apparently, it doesn’t […]
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Moe’s great escape
A chimpanzee who served as best man at his owner’s wedding has been eluding pursuers in the San Bernardino National Forest, 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Moe broke out of what The Associated Press calls a “state-of-the-art cage” at Jungle Exotics, which trains animals for Hollywood. His owners, LaDonna and St. James Davis, rescued […]
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Add Mormon flare to your closet
As the Arizona Republic put it, “Polygamy’s pop-culture moment now extends to the closet.” After the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints was raided in Texas and hundreds of children were removed from their mothers, the many wives of the sect found they needed to make a living. Thus the Web site fldsdress.com was born. […]
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Snarling from the front seat
“Here we go,” said Arco attendant Austin Egland, 20, as a swarm of vehicles pulled up to the pumps at one of southeast Portland’s busiest gas stations. “It’s going to get nuts.” Oregon mandates full-service gas stations, and until recently, nobody snarled at the gas jockey who did the honors at the pump. But with prices […]
Posted inJune 23, 2008: Peace on the Klamath
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NEVADA Debbie Rivenburgh is the general manager of a bordello in Pahrump, Nev., 60 miles from Las Vegas — one of 27 legal brothels in the state. In 21 years, she says, no college has ever called to request an intimate tour of her desert establishment. Then Randolph College in Virginia, a private liberal arts […]
Posted inJune 9, 2008: Why the West needs Mythic Cowboys
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CALIFORNIA Thanks to skyrocketing prices for gas, a new breed of criminal has begun preying on restaurants, reports The Associated Press. “It’s like a war zone going on right now over grease,” says David Levenson, who owns a grease-hauling business in San Francisco. Levenson pumps used cooking oil from 400 restaurants, but recently he’s found […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
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ARIZONA For sheer excitement, read the current issue of boatman’s quarterly review, published “more or less quarterly” by that elite group, Grand Canyon River Guides. A special 25-page section revisits the dangerous spring of 1983, when an unusually snowy winter was followed by a May snowstorm and suddenly warming temperatures. Roaring like a freight train, […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
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WASHINGTON John Slemp, a 52-year-old UPS driver from Portland, recently snowmobiled to the top of Mount St. Helens with his son, Jared, who is just back from serving a year in Iraq, reports the Seattle Times. In the cold, crisp air, the men decided to do something risky: They crawled onto a cornice overlooking the […]
Posted inApril 28, 2008: Pillaging the Past
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WASHINGTON How many ways can a neighbor’s house drive you crazy? The Seattle Weekly counts 10, with each one dreadful in its own distinctive way. Among them is the “Pig Face” dwelling that thrusts its two-car garage toward the street “like a greedy sow rooting for rotten vegetables.” This house clusters in herds, and its […]
Posted inApril 14, 2008: Taking to the Trees
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COLORADO Directors, take note: Don’t even think about staging a play in Colorado if it features a character with a nicotine habit. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals recently ruled that smoking indoors anywhere in the state enjoys no protection under the First Amendment – and that includes puffing away on a cigarette […]
Posted inMarch 31, 2008: My Crazy Brother
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WYOMING Spring really is around the corner, says longtime “Far Afield” columnist Bert Raynes in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. With keen eyes, he’s observed some of the season’s earliest manifestations: “Coyotes in pairs and in groups … Ravens in mock pursuits. Bald eagles carrying nest materials, horned and great gray owls calling, dippers in noisy, […]
Posted inMarch 17, 2008: Seeking the Water Jackpot
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UTAH Even after he was caught making an outrageously racist remark, Republican state Sen. Chris Buttars refused to resign. Buttars had criticized a revenue-sharing bill for school districts, saying, “This baby is black, I’ll tell you. This is a dark and ugly thing.” Buttars said he was sorry, but he apologized only after the Senate […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
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MONTANA Karen Craver might have one of the toughest jobs in the West. For three years, she’s been a rural mail carrier in sparsely populated northern Montana, close to Canada. “Some places up here,” she says, “it’s 10 miles between mailboxes.” Every Tuesday and Thursday, Craver hits the rocky road that takes her north of […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
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WYOMING Perhaps in jest, the award-winning Jackson Hole News&Guide wants readers to come up with a new welcome sign for the town. The current greeting at Teton Pass is definitely outmoded: “Howdy, stranger, yonder is Jackson Hole, the last of the Old West.” With the town now urbanized and chock-full of New West bazillionaires, the […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
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UTAH Jim Stiles, publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr in Moab, has been called cynical, chronically ticked off, dour and – more kindly perhaps – curmudgeonly. He is greatly annoyed by the Lycra-clad bicyclists that invade his part of the world, and he’d like the rip-’em-up crowd of ATV and four-wheel-drivers to take a hike. […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
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CALIFORNIA Snap your fans for the late Beverly Allen, a petite woman just over 5 feet tall who became a high-kicking, feather-bedecked showgirl at the age of 80 with the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies. This is a group you have to be at least 55 years old to join, and Allen, reports the Los Angeles […]
Posted inDecember 24, 2007: Last chance for the Lobo
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NEVADA Five years ago, Douglas Hoffman and his wife, Debbie, bought a house in an upscale retirement community outside of Las Vegas. The spectacular neon lights of the Strip at night were what passed for a view, and the just-planted trees were small. But as Sun City Anthem in Henderson grew to 7,000 homes, the […]
Posted inDecember 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lost Cause
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WASHINGTON Given the number of accidents and attacks against bicyclists in Seattle, riders may want to don flak jackets. In September, a cyclist was hit by a truck and killed, and in October, a rider accused the driver of a sport utility vehicle of trying to intimidate or even hit him, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. […]