Published on the Az Republic editorial page, February 15, 2006

So you are thriving out there in the sage-brush, writing about Ed Abbey was the greeting in the last letter from my old friend and colleague. Id like to think there’ll be occasions for our paths to cross, but the chances, I’m aware, are slim. Too bad, I hear you have land-based sharks out your way. Slim has become none now that the illustrious New Jersey-based author of JAWS, Peter Benchley, has gone to the great saloon in the sky.

Being the son and grandson of famed literary characters comedic grandfather Robert and father Nathaniel who authored The Russians are Coming The Russians are Coming, Peter started out with a cumbersome cross to bear, but he carried it well, ignoring his fathers advice to avoid the family’s literary tradition and do something useful. Read More→

Like a rerun of the film Groundhog Day, fuel prices are again erupting and Arizonans feel victimized by the Big Oil, the utilities, the local gasoline station, so we shake our fists, write letters and go back to burning fossil fuels again.

Every so often, however, glimpses of the real villain are seen in the bathroom mirror. We have met the enemy, admitted Walt Kelly’s Pogo when lost in a swamp, and he is us. It is us because most of us act like the cheap fossil energy party is really over. To be fair, denial is easy because we have treated fossil fuels as income, not as capital, refusing to acknowledge their finiteness– and climate- changing impact. Read More→

Cottonwood: Scanning a map of Yavapai County in his office, County Supervisor Chip Davis, a fourth generation Arizona rancher, and self-styled Black Sheep Republican, remarked: I don’t think most folks realize what’s happening. I think there’d be more opposition if there was more awareness.

Nearby was a copy of this newspaper flashing the headline River Runs Dry above a story reporting that a stretch of the San Pedro River flowing from the mountains of Sonora to the Gila River southeast of Phoenix is dry. But Davis was talking about the Verde River – not the San Pedro. Read More→

Gaylord Nelson
R.I.P.

Back in the 1960s, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and fellow Senate Democrat John Stennis of Mississippi never had much to say to each other. Nelson was chairman of the poverty subcommittee, had been an environmental activist since the early 60s, and was the leader in the attack on the perils of the internal combustion engine. For his part, the conservative Stennis ran the Senate Armed Services Committee like a doomsday machine. But just before Earth Day in 1970, the two lawmakers had a rare meeting. I’ve been thinking Gaylord, drawled Stennis, you know you are right. I am getting concerned about the environment, too. We’ve been lax. Its time to do something. Read More→

By Bishop, Special Excentric Eschatologist (on his last assignment)

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
— Sam Goldwyn

For thousands of years, psychics, gurus, Cassandra’s, mystics, sorcerers, not forgetting all manner of hacks and scoundrels have been predicting that as lightning follows thunder, the end of the world was nigh. One of the little-known yet more eloquent prophets who sang that scary song was Montanus in 156 AD.

Counting the days to Armageddon, he announced one day that he was the earthly incarnation of the Holy Spirit so he knew for sure that the New Jerusalem soon would arrive from the heavens and destroy Phrygia where he lived. Wherever that was, whatever it is called today it is still there. Read More→