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. […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inHeard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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!
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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
Heard Around the West
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. […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2007: Beetle Warfare
Heard Around the West
OREGON Lucky, an elk that was hand-raised by residents of Tillamook County, was by all accounts a cute calf. You could see the little elk along Highway 101, in a pasture where bull elk like to hang out with milk cows. He was comfortable with people and would jump into a pickup bed as easily […]
Posted inNovember 12, 2007: L.A. Bets on the Farm
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UTAH AND OREGON The West used to pride itself on a live-and-let-live attitude. No more. In Orem, Utah, on Feb. 11, a judge will begin hearing the case against Betty Perry, 70, who refused to water her lawn and then resisted arrest when a policeman came to cite her for having brown grass. The jury […]
Posted inOctober 29, 2007: Which Way West
Heard Around the West
OREGON Rick Kirschner, a naturopath who works with corporations to resolve staff conflicts, has been hired to train the trash-talking city council of Ashland, a city better known for hosting the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The therapist will have his work cut out for him. At the last meeting of the seven-member group, Councilman David Chapman […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2007: Cat Fight on the Border
Heard Around the West
THE WEST If Glen Canyon Dam were a person, says Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic, “it would surely suffer from low self-esteem.” There are several reasons: Environmentalists want to breach the dam to benefit native fish and bring back beaches, the writer Ed Abbey wrote about blowing it to smithereens in The Monkey Wrench […]