James Bishop Jr. is a writer, an editor and a creative writing teacher who has worked for Newsweek and for the White House on energy policy.

In Arizona Republic, 11/6/07 November 11, 2007   Too Much Publicity, Poor Planning and Creepy People threaten Fossil Springs-----How publicity, sleeping politicians and poor planning is destroying a Wilderness The Law of Unintended Consequences invoked As Arizona Congressional delegation sleeps By James Bishop Jr. If we have no hope there is no hope. --anon              Pausing by the blue-green waters of Fossil Creek in the Fossil Springs Wilderness  to examine a trashed campground Heather Provencio, Sedona District Ranger exclaimed, It hurts my heart to see this wilderness gem being so hammered. It makes me so very sad to see what people do, but there is hope.              Despite this newspapers powerful editorial and reportage coverage of A Jewel Befouled (10/11/07), its become abundantly clear to this observer that more than hope will be required if total anarchy is to be prevented, and that will only transpire when a hard-hitting management and enforcement regime is established; and that will only materialize in the form of a Wild and Scenic designation, the river protection law due to celebrate its 40th birthday in 2008; that will  provide  funding and enforcement power, resources that are lacking in the US Forest Service budgets.               But don't bet on that happening soon.              Camp Verde Mayor Tony Gioia recently took somesoundings in both the House,  Senate and US Department of Agriculture about a series of concerns regarding various river and stream issues including the threatened Verde River and the equally endangered Fossil Springs Wilderness. Everywhere he went he was advised not to bet the ranch on action. First he was told that Rep. Renzi, sponsor of a bill to create special resignation for Fossil Springs was radioactive and his bill is as dead as desire in the dead.                   Next he ran smack into a catch-22 situation: High officials in the US Department of Agriculture informed him that a designation for Wild and Scenic for the upper Verde River was not achievable until the Fossil Creek designation was completed the outlook for which is dim.               Before he returned home, he crossed party lines and visited Senator McCain's staff and also the staff of the Subcommittee of Energy and Natural Resource staff for Senator Bingaman. He found them helpful but also overloaded with other issues, a hearing is likely but chances for the Senate to move first are uncertain at best.                       So much for Arizona's congressional delegation - either asleep at the wheel or running for higher office, either ignorant of or oblivious to the fact that wilderness was the basic ingredient of American culture.                     An antidote for despair, Cactus Ed Abbey wrote years ago, is wilderness: We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all; but we cannot have freedom without wilderness. Ah wilderness. America is blessed with 702 wilderness areas totaling more than 100 million acres that are defined by the language in the 1964 Act as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man From wilderness insisted Henry Thoreau come the barks and tonics which brace mankind.              Few wilderness areas are more stunning, magical or legendary than the Fossil Springs Wilderness in the Coconino and Tonto National Forests located southeast of Sedona.  Sacred to the Apache, the blue-green 14-mile-long stream seems to appear out of nowhere, gushing 20,000 gallons a minute out of a series springs out of the bottom of a 1,600 foot deep canyon in probably the most varied riparian area in all of Arizona. Over thirty species of trees and shrubs and at least one hundred species of birds have been observed in this mysterious, wondrous vicinity where people lived for many years before the European incursion in the 16th century.              What began as a dream in the late 1990s, that APS would cease hydroelectric power operations so that historic natural flows would be restored and scientists would be given the research opportunity of a lifetime, has miscarried.  Sometimes you think you are doing something good, observes John Parson, longtime Verde Valley conservationist. But then the chickens come home to roost and you realize that youve invoked the law of intended consequences. APS kept the place in order, they were the de facto sheriff in town. Today its rampant lawlessness and the most crass behavior is the norm. Its going to get worse- one hell of lot worse, and may never get better or even return to a remote resemblance of what it once was. All we're getting is lip service now.              Rangers tell me that piles of human waste and trash are awful but Meth and Marijuana are more dangerous, dangerous enough, one ranger told me, but they are not usually accompanied by bad guys who want to kill you.              It is said that people never see the handwriting on the wall until their backs are up against it. For years warnings filled the air that unless a management and enforcement plan were created before Fossil Creek was allowed to run free, roads should be closed to prevent human invasion. Friends of the Forest volunteer Justine Kusner remembers the reply by telephone to one of her letters of concern and warning, Right On. And that was the last she heard. Bishop was Newsweeks Environmental Correspondent from 1968-77, then a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy under Secretary James Schlesinger

  

ELEGY FOR AN ARIZONA WOMAN 6/11/2007 11:24 AM   The Feds cut me good in '62 dropping the monstrous guillotine at beloved canyon Glen. My breasts pierced, my arteries flowed brown and  red, my soul sent careening into muddy oblivion.   Was this the best way to show man's love and respect for sacred waters, to please an Arizona woman, she who guards your oasis civilization? No answers came but even n more havoc lay ahead for me — Arizona woman.   Like mindless drunks, growth maniacs those who cannibalize nature, they were not done — they sawed my limbs, the yellow ponderosas, three shifts day and night, crippling me with chain-logging, clear cuts and dynamite all for TV cabinets? What a way to treat a woman. Hawks and condors say I should  sue for rape and pillage, and circling above me they wonder what I shall do — I wonder too. Who is able to weep for anything, should weep for me — Arizona woman.   Then came a new brand of love power plants that filled the skies with yellow poison, clogging my lungs, defacing ancient places, I am a woman in hell. So too is my sister the Green now roiling with nuclear wastes near Moab. Why why why — when, when when will I be set free, too many feelings, so many questions.   I am the cut body of a coyote, the cougar strung up on its hind legs off a trail, too close to gated communities they must have come, the condor shot from the sky by a dumber than whale shit  rancher I am the native plants bulldozed for swimming pools and timeshares, I am a desert bighorn sheep infected by disease that made me go blind. I am the antelope run down in Prescott by an 18-wheeler. Is this any to love me, your Arizona woman? Must I go dry before the warnings of the ancient ones who emerged from my waters come truethe frog does not poison the world and drain the pond in which it lives. If you won't Love me, then at least leave me alone. Thank you.

   

April 22, 2007 The Arizona Republic BUSINESS AND CONSERVATIONISTS-- KINDRED SPIRITSAFTER ALL Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Meade Cottonwood: During the annual Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival here near the Verde River here a few years ago, a woman from Seattle became so excited about the unusual bird sightings at Dead Horse Ranch State Park that she asked a park ranger to whom she should write a check?  To the Cottonwood Chamber of Commerce, she was advised. Impossible, the woman with the checkbook fussed.  Whats a Chamber of Commerce sponsoring anything to do with birding?  You should have seen the look on her face, State Park Ranger Hart recalls. I told her that birding brings business to the area, and that creates jobs and protects habitat. Visitors from everywhere have taken to call this place Birdy Valley. Still looking dubious, the lady nonetheless wrote a generous check. Another Earth Day is looming and in many places and in many articles and celebrations writers and speakers will invoke the words of one of the fathers of the conservation movement, forester Aldo Leopold. Before he died fighting a fire in 1948, he wrote The Sand County Almanac in which he evokes the American dream of perpetual harmony among self, society and non-human surroundings.   A rousing, overarching vision, but as renowned author Damon Runyon once quipped, I long ago come to the conclusion that all life is 6-5 against.  Its undeniably true that 37 years after the first Earth Day, in many places the forces dedicated to protecting nature remain at loggerheads with developers and corporations. But not here in Cottonwood, Arizona a town that literally has gone to the birds. In just a few years its become a world-renown destination for birds and birders to flock together in amazing numbers, marvel at the hawks, fly catchers, falconsand spend money. Pursuing their passion for birding, people spend some $800 million a year in Arizona, reports Sam Campana, Executive Director of Audubon Arizona, and thats a larger economic impact than golf.   And that could be just the beginning. For the festival this year from April 26 to April 29, a variety of businesses, State agencies and non-profit organizations have stepped up with support ranging from funds to manpower and vehicles. The business community gets it that wildlife, the Verde River and birding are essential to our economy, observes Ranger Hart, one of the festivals founders seven years ago along with the Chamber of Commerce.  It not like OK, Earth Day is coming and wed better protect the environment then everyone goes back to business as usual. It is widely understood here that if we were to lose the very things people come to see, like some of the best birding habitat in the U.S., they wont come back anymore.  Former Cottonwood Chamber President Pete Sesow concurs. Im no environmentalist but I sit on both sides, and I see both sides, and as a conservative I fought for the Verde River as an economic resource for years, battling the  sand and gravel miners, and more. You can say that without the support of the Chamber, well the Verde might still be the mess it once was not many years ago. No doubt about it, the Verde Valleys reputation as one of the greatest prime birding areas anywhere is rock-solidand spreading. Up to 175 different species were recorded last year--not including a Pacific Loon and a Pelican blown in by the powerful spring winds. Compared to the dig and drain we must attitude of the old days, theres been a shift in consciousness. More people are shooting cameras rather  than guns around here, and industry isnt interested  any longer in grabbing everything from the earth and nature states  Margie Beach, current Cottonwood Chamber president  who is also local business executive. Our job is to give visitors a positive experience. They spend money wildlife watching and get excited that rare species of fish  exist in the river that are not to be found anywhere else. As for ecotourism, conservation of our beautiful streams and paths of wildlife helps business. Times are changing in relations between business and conservation interests. We have to get along. Walking by the river one day recently with a friend, Yavapai County Supervisor Chip Davis mused, If more people can just understand that preserving whats important and valuable about nature can be an economic engine. What it will take is the dissolution of the groups who insist that resource conservation is the enemy of business and economic growth and visa versa. Cottonwood, at least, has gotten message that having discovered that humans can actually change the way nature operates, they also have the power to restore what was once nearly ruinedthe habitat along the river that attracts birds and birders from all over the world, where nature presents herself says teacher and naturalist Dena Greenwood always on her terms, not on ours. By James Bishop Jr, an author based in Sedona

   

9/21/2006 7:15:08 AM Living at the Pink Nectar Café Is a mirage real? Well, its a real mirage,                                   - Edward Abbey Inside the rickety, clanking airport van rivulets of sweat trickled down the drivers face, sometimes pausing to rest on his bulbous red nose which was a dead ringer for a certain Mr. W.C.  Fields snozzola.  Every once in a while he'd mumble a few words, bright stuff like Arizona is where hell spends the summer.  The only other passenger was a paunchy lady not past 40 by much who was wrapped in a heavy woolen purple sweater.  She was whiling away the seemingly endless trip to the Verde Valley from Sky Harbor by toying with a fuzzy, red hat and playing the tarty flirt with the driver.  I tried to glance away and bury myself in a copy of John Barrymore's essay, Fifteen Steps to a More Thunderous Orgasm, when she blurted out in a high-pitched preppy voice, Excuse me sir, but can you tell me where to find the Pink Nectar Café? Sometimes it makes no sense to get out of bed in the morning.  Here I was in Zane Grey country, in the land the Spanish called the Northern Mystery. It was a rainless August day and sun was beating down on our timeless vehicle which had no AC so it felt like the Devil's kitchen on wheels and the air outside and inside was 99 degrees and climbing the driver kept informing us. The Pink Nectar Café? No such place was listed in the AAA guide. Innocent as a cloistered nun, nonetheless I knew what I might be in for in the land the Spanish also called Terra Incognita. In my wanderings Id read some Stegner, D.H. Lawrence, Mary Austin and Cactus Ed Abbey. Clearly, no other region in America abounds with as many myths and superstitions except perhaps the Yukon where strange things are done in the midnight sun, indeed. But the Pink Nectar Café? If it was real, what did it have to do with mountain men, Indian medicine men, the Old West, the New West, and gold-hungry developers in four piece black suits,  not forgetting cattle, cotton or copper? My mental meanderings were interrupted by the lady in the sweater. Could I help her? What did I know about that café? Instead, I turned the conversational tables on her and asked who she was. To this day, I recall her very words: I am miserably married to an oil tycoon in Texas and I have been wandering here and there in search of who I am. It was in North Hollywood that I found the key. The key to what I interrupted. My latest psychic spoke of a place in the rocks and rills around Sedona where there is a combination saloon, Bed and Breakfast, UFO landing site and New Age meditation compound. From behind the bar made of turquoise, a lady by the name of Aurora serves up a special, sweet-tasting drink, nectar of some sort. Hmmmmmmm! Interesting details, could there be such a place?  I pressed on for more details. She then proclaimed that when one quaffs even a drop of the nectar which is pink in color, ones sexual drive is restored, ones wrinkles disappear, ones savings account swells, ones brain sweeps away all negative thoughts and feelings. She went on to talk about the different levels of consciousness that one may discover if one spends a few days around the café's underground, warm flowing salty lagoon at  least eight she was told in North Hollywood. Now I was paying attention. Pressing on for more detail, I asked her what people did there for fun besides rediscovering their sexual prowess.  Without batting an eye she said that Louis Armstrong plays there in the main ballroom every other Saturday and the lecture series features Deep Throat and Rumi. Well that was that. I knew now that she had one oar in the water. Rumi has been dead for 900 years and as for Louis, well he is now playing with the angels. Our conversation ended when the battered bus clunked to a stop in front of the Wrenwood Café. We said goodbye and I gave her the number of the hotel where I was staying in case she ever found her café. At that point a funny-looking plump little man with white beard walked up and asked whether I needed any help and he offered to purchase a beverage for me inside the smoky saloon. The beverage of choice was a Gila monster, part tequila and part grape-fruit juice, nectar of the Gods he said. After draining our goblets, the funny little man with a dirty white beard who hadn't bathed in a while asked me where I was staying. I said I didn't know yet and asked him if  he had any ideas. Sure young man, The Pink Nectar Café has rooms and the music to be played tonight is tops, Billy Holiday will be singing. Come on along, Ill drive you out there. Its just beyond the back of beyond. And don't worry about any bills, I know the owner you see.

 

Energy refugee fleeing $100-a-barrel oil James Bishop Jr. Columnist Mar. 26, 2006 12:00 AM We did not fix the levees, though we were warned. - Author William Greider Around the time of the first oil shock in 1973, columnist Art Buchwald penned a satirical column about what life without cheap oil would be like in the 1990s. One day, a father and son go out for their first drive in weeks because fuel costs $8.50 a gallon. "I feel like a steak," says the father to his son. And the boy asks, "Dad, what's a steak?" Such a scene is leaping from the pages of satire now that the phrase Peak Oil has entered the lexicon. In oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens' words, that means that oil supply was for years greater than demand but now, "Demand is equivalent to supply, and you can't get any higher supply than you're getting right now. Right now means that the world's oil producers are pumping 80 million barrels a day and demand has begun to exceed that." To many Americans, the approaching petroleum calamity remains invisible, but not to my pal John P. Like so many others, he rolled into Arizona from the Midwest a few decades ago bent on fleeing an assortment of ecological and environmental abuses in favor of adventure, clean air, cheap energy and abundant water. "You might say that I was an environmental refugee," the steely-eyed, onetime congressional candidate and former big-time river guide said as he sipped some simple black coffee on the outskirts of Sedona not far from his hideaway in Rim Rock. "I always figured that I'd stay here until the managed-care guys came to take me away." But my pal has changed his mind. "See that price?" he said, pointing to a gas station sign advertising fuel for $2.50 a gallon. "There have been warnings galore, but we've to fix the energy levees, so to speak. That's the last time you'll see it that low; denial about our oil addiction trumps any 12-step program. We are out of here because here in the red rocks and in so many other places, inconvenient facts about energy and water are taboo; oil is headed for $100-a-barrel oil, just the least shock will do it: a tanker blown in the Persian Gulf, a refinery sabotaged." Something better? So if there is no here for one of grand characters left in red rock rim country anymore, is there really a better there out there somewhere? John P. is heading for Idaho with his partner, Sultry Susuun, for some low-cost Snake River electricity and a more sustainable lifestyle, more walking, less driving. Says he: "Idaho is the place to be when the Night of the Long Knives comes. Guess you could call us energy refugees." When the talking heads on TV prattle on about the meaning of Peak Oil, that is exactly what that term means: The cheap oil party is over, no more big fields are out there, economists of all stripes are beginning to agree. And that means $100-a-barrel oil, unemployment and the collapse of auto tourism. Observes John P., it's not just the demise of auto tourism; it's the demise of suburbia in all its forms. The Verde Valley is, in effect, one large suburb, and Sedona, in particular is a classic rural suburb. All the Verde Valley's so-called cities and towns are simply classic paradigms of modern suburbia. When oil is above $100 a barrel, how will all these suburbanites get to and from their jobs, food supplies, medical needs, and - yee-gads - soccer games! Some conservative oil men even dare to say that world production may have already peaked. Their rationale: Oil production in many once oil-rich nations is declining by 5 percent a year, double the rate a year ago. To say these worries are not widely shared by our elected officials is putting it mildly. John has been paying attention to Pickens, who says that the "U.S. uses between 20 to 25 percent of all the oil a day in the world, and we have less than 5 percent of the world's population. The big fields have been found. Probably the best thing to do is raise the price to kill the demand." Our petroleum future And there is another reason to raise the price, too. To most Americans the facts about our petroleum future remain either invisible or plain boring. However, perhaps the attack on the enormous Abqaiq refinery facility that processes about 68 percent of Saudi Arabia's oil for export, 5 million barrels a day, should be regarded as a wake-up call. The reason that it should is that for all the babble about conservation, U.S. vehicles drink up 9 million barrels a day mostly because when taking the cost of living into account, U.S. gasoline prices are cheaper than their 1981 levels. Any efforts by the past administrations from Nixon to Carter to raise prices through higher taxes have landed proponents on their career's third rail. To be fair, our president, whose energy policy ideas until recently offered yesterday's solutions to tomorrow's problems, momentarily stopped denying the nation's plight and shared a fact first discovered by Richard Nixon 33 years ago: America is addicted to oil. Well said, even though his speech writer forgot to include the fact our principle source of oil imports is Canada, with whom relations are chilly. What he didn't say was anything about higher fuel efficiency, anything about a crash program to halt our nation's being swamped by oil imports from friendly and unfriendly nations - 60 percent of our daily demand. What he didn't say was how the nation must leave the Age of Petroleum behind because of a warming Mother Earth. James Bishop Jr. lives in Sedona. He is an author and former energy editor for Newsweek.

 

BAD NEWS BLUES By Bishop, Special Excentric Unlettered Sundowner You can do anything you want as long as you don't call it what it is.                            -- John Bernardy R.I.P. It is safe to say that there have been eras when the news has been better. Hour after hour, the Big Media bombard us innocents with salvos of disheartening developments. Sometimes it seems as if they sound and read all the same, especially those items about rumors that the globe is allegedly warming. Consider this one because its so typical of frantic left-wing media ranting. You see the lefties expect us to believe that thirty miles from the Arctic Circle, hunter Noah Metuq says the Arctic is changing. Its frozen grip is loosening; the people and animals that depend on its icy reign are experiencing a historic reshaping of their world. Fish and wildlife are following the retreating ice caps northward. Polar bears are losing the floes they need for hunting. Seals, unable to find stable ice, are hauling up on islands to give birth. Robins and barn owls and hornets, previously unknown so far north, are arriving in Arctic villages. How could that be? It's the damn press again, charged an elderly gentleman sipping some wine at Troia's, normally not a hotbed of civic action or intellectual disputatiousness. There's no science to support any of that crap they print day after expletive deleted day. Not faraway at Judi's, that stronghold of culinary delight where locals flock to hide from endless waves of goat-ropers, (and various office seekers that go bump in the night) an even more elderly chap pontificated while ordering still another Gila Monster (recipe is secret): The Press, rhymes with mess, power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages, pinkos all, except for Cronkite. Why don't they write the good news about Iraq? Moving along, next came another morning when the quiet was interrupted by a newspaper flopping like a fish on my front porch; perhaps some good news hoped this wandering idealist. No chance.  Now we are expected to believe that Arizona's nuclear plant is leaking tritium (don't try it, even over ice) and  that 60 % of the nations  biggest factories and sewage plants have violated the Clean Water Act by spewing pollution into the nation's rivers, lakes and bays. When Congress passed the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972, it set the goal of making all U.S. waterways safe for fishing and swimming by 1983.Today, 39 percent of rivers, 46 percent of lakes, and 51 percent of estuaries have not met that goal. When asked for a comment, an unindicted corporate topsider in D.C. snarled, You got nattering nabobs of negativism out there in Lu-Lu, Woo Woo land, too? All they want to write about back here is the debt, the deficit. Come the Rapture, it will all go away and we'll all be in surplus when HE returns. And I don't think he meant Alan Greenspan, either. Until then, however, left-wing reporters in D.C. don't know where to start when it comes to writing about the national debt now $8 trillion and climbing or the enormous demands of Social Security and healthcare which are projected to be in the range (gulp) of between $30 and $40 trillion.  So they tell us that we are spending $300 billion a year to import oil; they tell is that the skirmish in Iraq now costs $8 billion a week; they tell us that the Big Oil companies are not drilling for big new fields because there aren't any. Why doesn't the media just shut up and let the rest of us watch reruns of the Honeymooners and get fat and stupid? More than a century ago, Mark Twain summarized the issue succinctly: There are laws to protect the free of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press. Maybe Oscar Wilde put it even better when he said journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.   Imagine that and he'd never been to Sedona.

  
  

How Benchley Saved My Life Final farewell to the author/adventurer 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. At sixteen, he sold his first freelance piece, sailed through prep school and Harvard; then it was on to the Washington Post and next to Newsweek where we first worked together- he as TV editor, I as West Coast correspondent. After that he wrote speeches for President Johnson and began to think about a novel. No Ahab he, nonetheless he was becoming obsessed over a fish, a whale of a tale told by a fisherman who'd allegedly caught a 4,550-pound great white shark off Long Island. Could there be a fish that huge, he wondered? Bent on becoming a rent-paying author with a seamless style, he was on his way to being, in Ray Bradbury's telling phrase,  an amiable compost heap of scenes, rumors, memories, conjectures about -you guessed it- sharks. When some wealthy friends gave up a small abode on a beach in the Cayman Islands in the final days of the Johnson Administration, my then-wife and I invited Peter and his wife, Wendy to join us down there for an adventure for a few days.   And didn't we have one! The second night, Benchley and I found ourselves near midnight in a long, beat-up rowboat inside a reef that was being pounded by enormous breakers. In the boat with us were a local Cayman who was part guide, part medicine man, a chicken on a half-inch hook dangling off the stern and a pint of Cayman Glow at the ready.   All was calm except for the thrashing surf when our oarsman pointed to a long shadow circling our tiny boat. Noticing that the shadow was longer than the boat, Peter grabbed a Bowie knife and cut the line. This allowed the chicken to be gobbled up by what Peter decided afterward was a harmless 18-foot-long shark. Soon it was gone and so was the Cayman Glow. Back on a shack on the beach, more liquid fire in our hands, the question hung in the air: What would happen if one of those really big sharks like a Great White, for example, came around and wouldn't go away? The next afternoon the Benchley's decided to take a nap after an amazing lobster and wine lunch while my wife and I accepted an invitation from a perfect stranger to take a short sail on a catamaran. Soon, the wind was up, our craft was heading out to sea and the skipper was not only confessing his ignorance about sailing but saying that even if he knew how to sail, there were too many people aboard for us ever to come about and return to land. Some of the guests began to weep.  By twilight, half the people on board were in tears and the lights of the island had swiftly receded until one by one they'd blinked out.  About then Peter was up from his nap, walking the beach looking for us. At first, no one recalled seeing a catamaran off shore.  Then a young native boy walked up to him and pointed out to seaway out to sea. No boats were moored on that side of the island due to approaching weather but the boy said he had a small put-put and for a few bucks he'd rescue us. Peter dished out the money and off the boy went. To this day, I'm able to hear the sound of the tiny outboard approaching, to see the rope thrown to us, and see the crowd that greeted us on the beach, and the mocking smile on Benchley's handsome face. You should have napped, laddie, said he. Was JAWS, which terrified millions, based upon true past experiences? Time and again he told interviewers that everything I have written is based upon something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about. In JAWS I knew a great deal about sharks. What with the book and the film, Benchley made millions from our fear of sharks. So it is ironic that one of his greatest regrets besides dying is that his book presented the Great White Shark as a horrible monster. In defense of the shark and other creatures of the oceans, he became a dedicated conservationist. If we kill everything in the ocean, and if we pollute the ocean to a point where it can't sustain life, we're committing suicide.   --James Bishop Jr. is based in Sedona

 

A CALL TO ACTION Published in The Arizona Republic, November 9, 2005 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.   Despite overpowering evidence that our energy future isn't what it used to be, it is also us because like viewers of the film The Matrix we choose to believe in illusion.   Stewart Udall says that were blind to act because we are conditioned to believe that humankind is perpetually on the threshold of discoveries that will magically solve our dilemmas. The word crisis in Mandarin means both danger and opportunity. Once again amidst crisis opportunity looms. Many polls reveal that the public desires sustainable energy technologies such as wind, solar, biomass yet few walk their talk. It is a great irony, observes Amanda Ormond, an experienced energy policy expert in Tempe. People think there is nothing they can so they don't demand action to move to a more sustainable energy future. Meantime, utility companies are making our choices for us and returning to coal-fired plants. Where is the voice of the Public? Kendall Arey, a clean energy activist agrees: It we don't communicate that we want clean, efficient, affordable energy, the only voices heard are old-world lobbyists with their own agendas. States John Neville, President of Sustainable Arizona, the public needs to know that with current technology, the sunlight falling on just one-half of Maricopa County alone could produce enough energy to meet the needs of the entire country?  So why does Arizona use solar power for just a tiny fraction of its energy needs? A good question for our elected representatives as elections near. Along the way, citizens had best be leery of disingenuous ads. APS and SRP offer marketing campaigns promoting renewable energy. Truth be known, only a tiny fraction of their power sales, less than 1/2 a percent, comes from clean sources of energy. However,  the possibility for real change looms at the Arizona Corporation Commission, the body that sets rates for electric and water utilities. A vote is near. Now is the time to lobby the Commission to require utilities to build or purchase at least 2.5% of retail electric sales from renewable energy by 2010, 5% by 2015 and 15% by 2025 v, 1.1%  in 2007.   (602-542-2237) Furthermore, APS customers have every right to request energy efficiency services to reduce their electricity bills. Because of a rate settlement, APS will spend about $20 million dollars on energy efficiency upgrades for businesses and homes. (1-800-253-9405).  The new reality states Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust is that if one has a dollar to invest in any kind of energy that would yield the best return, it would be in energy efficiency. Another phone call could be to the Western Governors    Association Phone (303)623-9378) that has established a goal  to develop 30,000 MW of clean energy in the West by 2015 from resources such as energy efficiency, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and clean coal  and advanced natural gas technologies. What will Arizona's share be? The U.S. Government may be docile, but momentous changes at the state, local and regional level are occurring under the radar: California's Public Utility Commission will impose new standards for carbon dioxide emissions for investor-owned utilities which buy electricity from generating plants in Arizona, Utah and the West. Power in future must come from sources at least as clean as natural gas in other words, not coal.  What if California refuses to buy power from eighteen coal-fired plants on the Colorado Plateau? Clean energy advocates dream of windmills, efficient buildings and solar electric homes. A safer energy future could be near if the Public awakens. by James Bishop Jr., Sedona-based author and Newsweek's energy editor in the 1970s.

   

SAVING THE VERDE RIVER — BUT HOW? Published in The Arizona Republic, July 28, 2005   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. Davis's worry is that the Verde River, the source of 30 percent of Greater Phoenix's surface water supply, and upon which 3.5 million citizens depend, could go the way of the San Pedro for the same reasons – uncontrolled groundwater pumping. Even now, warning signs are popping up. Hydrologists report that wells and a large spring above Cottonwood are dry. Yet that's the least of it. What really interrupts Davis's sleep is the City of Prescott's plan to import water from a well field in Big Chino Basin near the headwaters of the Verde River. Prescott officials deny that pulling 14,000 acre feet annually from the aquifer threatens the Verde.  Davis disagrees. It strikes me as hazardous to export that much water when the recharge rate is 12,000 acre feet per year. We don't what the impact will be, but it will be real. Who would have thought ten years ago that one well field could have the effect of drying up a river fifteen miles away? Another matter worrying him is that Flagstaff and Williams are in the process of sinking 3,000 foot wells. Will they be drilling into the aquifer that feeds the Verde he wonders? The other elephant in the living room, says Davis is that future development in the Big Chino area could dwarf the impacts of the forthcoming Prescott project. There are hundreds of thousands of acres out there- private and state-owned yet the county has is zero ability to deal with growth directly over the basin. Zero ability? Truth be told, Davis lacks the power to protect the Verde in a county which grew by 55.5 percent from 1990 to 2000. Tools, I have no tools. By state law, counties are forbidden to consider water issues when matters of zoning change and land use come before them. We cant deny a project because we think there is no water. We cannot even mention the word. Despite this anomaly, little help has come from the state legislature. Politics has trumped science. Most politicians have turned a blind eye to the scientific facts, says Davis. As he sees it, of the sixty members of the House no more than sixteen are from rural areas. Of the 30 members of the Senate, eight are from rural areas. Naturally, the majority of the legislation is ruled by Pima and Maricopa County. But there's a larger problem. Although some rural  counties are facing explosive growth and challenging water issues, most other rural counties, Apache, Navajo, Gila, Cochise, Greenlee are not booming.  The legislators from those counties would do anything to grow, says Davis, so they fight any legislation that could hinder growth by giving counties authority over water. Davis does some hope on the horizon: various concepts to purchase development rights from ranchers in the Big Chino area. Funding might flow from a small sales tax, though that will be a tough sell in Prescott where the other two supervisors are located. It could go before the voters as an initiative, says he hopefully. Another change the legislature did come up to empower Yavapai County to offer project developers higher housing density if they in turn purchase 500 acres or so in the Big Chino  nailed down by a conservation easement. But is has yet to be implemented by the county.  Friends and supporters see Davis as unarmed lawman with thieves and vultures at this back. Nonetheless, Chip Davis remains resolute. As responsible custodians, you'd think wed have a statewide goal of building a healthy and sustainable Arizona instead of one of grab all you can as quick as you can because the ship will soon sink. A new player in the campaign to save the Verde River is Prescott-based Dan Campbell, The Nature Conservancy's Director of the Verde Program. In an interview he said that he hopes Davis has no plans to seek higher office because Chip is the only Republican who is able to span the divide between moderate Republicans, Democrats and Conservationists in the state. And as for the fate of the Verde which contains 26 sensitive species, he adds that If we continue to regard Verde River water solely in human or engineering terms, the situation is virtually hopeless. We shall see a repeat of the San Pedro. It is his hope that Senator McCain's bill to create a Verde Watershed Organization will pass. Sums up Bill Kusner a leader of Keep Sedona Beautiful, If we don't do something soon to seek a better balance between humans and nature on the Verde, there's no way of putting water back into the river. Years ago, Margaret Mead proclaimed that society should never doubt that the work of a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that has. As Chip Davis sees it, what he needs now are more of those kinds of citizens if the Verde is to be saved. The handwriting is on the wall.                                   By James Bishop Jr.

   

Monday, July 11, 2005 Published in The Arizona Republic THE FATHER OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT   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. To be sure the time had come for action. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so overrun with volatile industrial discharges that the river caught fire and burnt two railroad trestles. A study revealed that American women carried in their breast milk three to ten times more of amounts of DDT than federal regulations permitted for human consumption and the air in Los Angeles could be cut with a knife. ProgressAmerican-style-, he told me in an interview in 1969, adds up each year to 200 million tons of smoke  and fumes, 7 million junked cars, 20 million tons of paper, 48 billion cans and 28 billion bottles. A few years before he died on July 3, 2005, he told a reporter, all across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. What transformed that apathy into action was Nelsons brainchild, Earth Day, a nationwide protest shaped by the campus teach-ins against the Viet Nam War. On April 22, 1970 , more that 20 million citizens turned out to clean up rivers,  march on their state capitols and pick up refuse for recycling.  President Nixon, no environmentalist he yet always the astute politician jumped on the bandwagon. Besides  creating the Environmental Protection Agency, he soon signed all the major bills which are the foundation of our environmental regulatory structure today The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. In the presidents next State of the Union address he declared that this must be the decade when America pays it debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment. It is literally now or never. No one summed up the new movement better than Jesse Unruh, then the Democratic leader of California's Assembly. Ecology, he said in 1970, has become the political substitute for the word mother. But it also triggered the debate over growth V. no growth which continues to today. Nelson, believing that that debate was a false one was adept at arguing that a cleaner environment and strong economic growth were compatible. He liked to point out that the world ecology derives from the Greek word oikos, means house and the study of houses or environments. The word economy, which has the same root, means the management of houses or environments. No one knows what Nelson thought of the current decline in congressional bipartisanship that made all those first laws possible. However, he likely noted that the current Republican hostility to environmental protection was ironic given the fact that Republicans had every reason to claim that that their party's record until the 1980s at least was no less distinguished than that of the Democrats. After all it was President Theodore Roosevelt, a staunch Republican if there ever was one, who set aside the first wildlife refuges and national monuments, a legacy that Richard Nixon proudly carried on. The betting here is that he might have found a sliver of hope in the words of California Governor Schwarzenegger: Pollution reduction has long been a money saver for businesses. It lowers operating costs, raises profits and creates new and expanded markets for environmental technology.    Similar words roused the nation in the 1960s when they were uttered by Gaylord Nelson, the true father of the modern environmental movement. By James Bishop, Jr. the author of Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist, the Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey. He is based in Sedona, he was a Newsweek Correspondent in D.C. from 1966-77.

ELEGY FOR AN ARIZONA WOMAN   The Feds cut me good in 62 dropping the steel and stone guillotine at beloved canyon Glen. My breasts pierced, my arteries flowed green brown red no longer my soul sent careening into dark humiliation. Was this the best way to show mans love and respect for sacred waters, the best way to please an Arizona woman, the matriarch of your oasis civilization? Yet even more havoc lay ahead for me - Arizona woman.   Like mindless drunks, growth maniacs were not done==they sawed my limbs, the yellow ponderosas, three shifts day and night, crippling me with chain-logging, clear cuts and dynamite - all for TV cabinets? what a way to treat a woman. Hawks and condors say I should sue for rape and pillage, and circling above me they wonder what I shall do - I wonder too. Who is able to weep for anything, should weep for me - Arizona woman. Showing their peculiar brand of love again, they built power plants that filled the skies with yellow poison, clogging my lungs, defacing ancient places, I am a woman in hell.so too is my sister the Green now roiling with nuclear wastes near Moab Why why why - when, when when will I be set free   I am the cut body of a coyote, the cougar strung up on its hind legs off a trail, too close to gated communities they must have come. I am the native plants bulldozed for swimming pools and timeshares, I am a desert bighorn sheep infected by disease that made me go blind. I am the antelope run down in Prescott by an 18-wheeler. Where is your love for me - Arizona woman. Must I go dry before the warnings of the ancient ones who emerged from my waters come true the frog does not poison the world and the water in which it lives. End your lip service- love me but at least leave me alone.                                   Thank you..

  

SEDONA AUTHOR WINS ARIZONA PRESS CLUB AWARD At the Arizona Press Club’s annual awards dinner held this year at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, local author James Bishop Jr. won first prize for environmental reporting in the statewide newspaper and magazine category. His 2,000 word article, “Tree Houses” (Phoenix Magazine/March 2003) was the first to describe how loggers, Navajos and conservationists, who rarely see eye to eye, have begun working together on the Navajo Reservation on a program called “Hogans for Hope.” Thousands of small-diameter pines that once were burned are being salvaged and milled into logs near Cameron, Arizona for hogans to meet the Navajo Nation’s need for 50,000 new dwellings. Awards judge Frank Allen, a former Wall Street Journal features editor, called Bishop’s story “gentle, memorable, counter-intuitive” and added that “His account is an insightful example of how persistent cooperation among groups long presumed to be rivals can overcome stubborn economic and cultural obstacles, thus yielding a durable benefit for whole communities. Across the American West, such object lessons aren’t yet widely understood in large part because the West’s journalists so often neglect them.” Click here for "Tree Houses"

  

IS THE END NEAR? 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. Down through the centuries, similar predictions have become commonplace­even in Sedona. Whatever their mode of transmogrification Montanus’s descendants have found their way into our little desert town. Like coyotes, one hears the plaintive yelps of certain realltors in the night: Unless a bridge is built at Red Rock Crossing, havoc and death and destruction on our highways is inevitable unless Chip Davis experiences an epiphany and supports a bridge. And it isn’t just in Sedona where doomsayers predict the approaching darkness­unless they get their way. Despite a forecasting record even worse than our latest Defense Secretary’s, that dreary siren song is being song from Portland Maine to Paradise, California. Tune on the car radio around midnight while driving across the Mohave Desert and you can the clock ticking, the countdown to THE END. What you hear is that we’re soon to be doomed because the dollar is in the dumps and the Chinese are after the same oil that the U.S. imports from Canada. You will hear that providing health care to all Americans is socialism, and if that happens, no one will have health insurance and the hospitals will shut down. And that’s just for openers. Eskimos complain that retreating sea ice imperils their seal hunts and island dwellers in the South Seas hear they’ll be soon swamped by rising seas, swelled by melt water from disintegrating Arctic ice sheets and shrinking glaciers. And now the nervous nellies are whining that one third of all Americans live in counties that don’t meet air pollution standards and thousands of people are dieing prematurely and that Haves are gaining ground over the Have-nots. Soon the greatest volcano ever to explode its fury will spout soot from the geysers at Yellowstone, and cover our cities with soot so that the sky will never be seen again. For coastal dwellers in California and on the East Coast, news from the future is not good either. Soon, very soon, an earthquake will sever California in two while the Eastern Seaboard will be flooded by a monstrous tidal wave created by a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands. Then we have the ballooning deficit bleaters. The only way to stop the liberal conservatives in power from deepening the nation’s record high twin deficits is to raise taxes but that will kick off a depression. Given the fact that the U.S. government spends just .0003 percent of a dollar maintaining public lands, with budget cuts these lands will be left to rot. Beyond doubt gentle readers, news from the future is not encouraging. Soon, very soon, a Special Excentric Task Force has learned, the earth will be cleansed of sin and sinners and the fools in the saddle will no longer ride mankind to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1849. Of course, he was just a poet. Wait a minute! Obviously, none of the predictions in the past have come true, so maybe they won’t this time around. But wait another minute! What if the countdown actually has begun? Enter the late Edward Abbey who always thought we were aliens on earth given the way we treat it. Enjoy life he thundered while there is still time: “Ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the Griz. Climb mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe dip of that yet sweet and lucid air. Sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. “Keep your brain in your head, and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound men with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: YOU WILL OUTLIVE THE BASTARDS.” Were he alive today, he would have added the doomsayers, too. Now their bags are packed. They’re ready to go but to where?

  

Welcome to Sedona's Institute of EcoTourism ... it is the first privately funded "green building" in Arizona whose activities and programs are dedicated to promoting the experience of environmentally conscious tourism, sustainable community development and place-based environmental education ... More fron the Spring 2004 Issue of Sedona Magazine

  

Back from the Brink of Extinction ... nothing short of a miracle -- the return from near-extinction of the legendary Gymnogyps californianus -- the California condor, the largest flying bird in North America with a wingspan of close to 10 feet. More from the Summer 2004 Issue of Sedona Magazine

   

The Cowboy Artist Joe Beeler is that rare indivdual who is at ease in the disparate worlds of the cowboy, the Indian and the artist. More from the Fall 2002 Issue of Sedona Magazine

  

The World of John Waddell [John Waddell's] work can be found in collections, civic squares and sculpture gardens from coast to coast and as far away as Austria. More from the Fall 2003 Issue of Sedona Magazine

  

The Cowboy from Quawpaw - Joe Beeler Paints the West Early one morning last summer, I found Beeler -- Joe, as everyone from millionaires to plumbers calls him -- poking around outside his studio down a remote dirt road west of Sedona, Arizona. More from the 50th Anniversary Special Issue of True West

  

Sedona's Hidden Art World Once upon a time, Sedona was a sleepy village in red rock country -- one with more than its fair share of talented artists. Today, amid all the bustling growth, visitors may sometimes wonder about the health of the art community. More from the Winter 2004 Issue of Valley Guide Quarterly.

  

FROM THE DIARY OF A MARTIAN By Bishop, Special Excentric Intergalactic Correspondent         YANKEES GO HOME         -a sign found on the dark side of Mars. Day One This morning some more junk landed on my tofu ranch near the banks of the underground fossil sea where the jade trees grow. All kinds of cameras popped then one of my kids heard someone drilling into his lava ceiling. I don’t care who they are, they’ll never get a picture of me swimming in the crystal falls down here where I dwell with my ancestors. Is it the people from my old blue planet again? Why do they keep pestering us? Remember, I left there years ago after being sickened by air pollution, the ballistic missile tests, and vowed never to try to infiltrate Washington D.C. ever again. One of those missiles nearly hit my grandfather. Besides now we need a visa to get in and a lawyer to get out. Up here, thank The Great Guru, we abolished that profession. What do they want from us? We want nothing from them! Our technology is so far superior to what the Generals are doing at Area 51 that we have no interest in reading their minds anymore. Day Two Two more ships landed today according to the chatter on the intergalactic psychic transmission system. For days our platinum antennae has been picking up all sorts of contradictory information. Could it be another invasion? It is said that the black ships had strange markings. Evidently just one man got out, a short paunchy chap with pasty cheeks and a sneer on his face. H was a wearing a donkey T-shirt and was carrying a large bag. No one has actually met him. All the monitors picked up was his silhouette; all the telepathic squad detected was his resentment and anger. Wonder if any of the visitors look like us—our pointed ears, our fins and wings. And surely they don’t have our copper-colored eyes and blue hair. It is said that the man who landed had no hair. What makes no sense to me is why they keep coming here. Are they looking for work? Our best photos of the blue planet still show some blue water. The forests and the prairies are there though they seem to be disappearing fast; and the whales and dolphins we used to ride are fewer in number. Wonder where the salmon went? They were fun—and good eating, too. We don’t eat meat anymore dear Diary. I guess you know that. Long ago we discovered the secret of life among the animals. The animal does not question life. It lives. What is is! Its very reason for living is life. Animals enjoy and relish life. I don’t think the people on the blue planet have discovered that secret yet. We used to have lots of animals and whales here too until the attack of the robot people. To escape them we built the glass tubes that descend deep into the heart of our world. No one can find us down here. By the way, I forgot to tell you that I caught two golden spiders the other day; what a feast we had. Last night I too heard something drilling into my roof! Is it those damned Venusians again? Our armies defeated them long ago. If that is what it turns out to be, I’ll take the family to the Blue Mountains. No one will find us there. Whoever they are, maybe they’re just stopping by for some of our precious, clean, clear, cold water. Then they’ll move on to another planet. We wish to fight no more forever. After all the wars, we have laid down our laser swords and our emerald shields. Day Three I dreamt that the man who landed was coming closer. Is he after our secret that we can turn water into wine, that we know how to live forever, and we don’t have any double-talking, whiny politicians? In fact we have no politicians at all. Just then Citizen Bradbury heard a knock on his ceiling door! Thinking that it was one of repairmen coming to service his hi-speed telepathic, psychic, clairvoyant e-mail system, he climbed the ladder made of diamonds to open it. “Mr. Bradbury we know about you where I come from. Maybe you can help me.” You could have knocked Bradbury over with blade of grass that grows on the islands in the river of wine. Looking down at him was the pudgy man with the pasty face and the sneer on his face. “ Why?” Bradbury asked, still amazed that his secret lair had been found. “I want to establish a secret bank account for the money I’ve brought with me. The liberal media discovered my Swiss account. As soon as I do that, my leader wishes to move here. He’s heard that your National Guard keeps no records. He’s already announced a trillion dollar program to send a squadron of spaceships here.” Calmly, if a bit fearfully, Bradbury explained that banks don’t exist on Mars. “We don’t need banks because we don’t need what you call money. “ I don’t understand.” “Trust binds us together, not trust funds.” “Trust? What’s that?”

NEW THREAT CONFIRMED by Bishop, Special Excentric Correspondent (in hiding) I know nothing. -Socrates 469-399 B.C. Ignore the barrage of bizarre news headlines: Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft; Prostitutes Appeal to Pope. Bigger news is whirling in the wind, news that could cause your faithful correspondent to be torn from his warm futon in the middle of the night by men with badges and sent off for a permanent vacation without bail in Cleveland. So please read on since this is likely to be this wretched scrivener’s final babble—the world has become too eccentric for even this cockamamie, capricious publication. Whatever the penalty the truth must be told before the town’s other, much smaller paper, gets wind of it: Not only are Socrates’ death bed words being savored by many of our elected and corporate leaders, these potentates are determined to make sure that the rest of us know nothing, too. This riveting truth emerged at a special New Years Eve briefing catered by Troia’s boite in the crystalline conference room at the Pink Nectar Cafe on the outskirts of town. To a tatterdemalion group of local cognoscenti known as the Sedona 60, a visiting – and seriously mustachioed - British vizier eloquently outlined the Orwellian world in which we find ourselves. In between delicate sips from a flagon of very old Cornvillian cognac, he recalled a time when the world was a simpler place: It was a time when the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and wise and good people were drawing up grand plans to feed the hungry. No longer the vizier continued, “Today the rich are thin, the poor are fat and the good people, the right-thinking folk, are consumed with the crisis in obesity.” “Is that really a crisis? What about secrecy,” asked Chicago Mike, who was the first to jump up with a question. “Aren’t there problems more serious than obesity?” Indeed secrecy is indeed reaching epidemic proportions in the so-called civilized world, the visiting vizier acknowledged. But while governments have the power to regulate what people eat, even to develop new electronic devices to prevent them from taking second helpings, “secrecy will never be regulated by the government because they are its very proponents.” “Do these government guys think we know nothing,” asked a wandering minstrel from Montana. “Do they think we just fell off the turnip truck yesterday.”? “Good point,” replied the visiting vizier, swaying slightly in front of the limestone podium. “The watchword among many leaders on this side of the Atlantic is that knowing nothing is more than enough for them.” As the evening wore on, the vizier ticked off some examples of where no- nothing leaders are leading loyal citizens—most of whom seemed to be on apathy pills and mesmerized by “I Love Lucy” reruns and Wal-Mart sales of plastic rubber ducks from China. America’s sitting vice-president continues to insist that he has no financial interest in Halliburton where he served as CEO from 1995 to 2000. To most folks, no interest means nothing. Oops! A bit of research turns up the fact that his faculties are perhaps not as keenly honed as they once were. Truth to tell, he owns countless stock options and has received $367,000 in deferred compensation while in his current office.    Lest one thinks so, willful blindness is not confined to high-placed members of the Federal government. A certain Mr. Skilling who was associated with a certain bankrupt outfit named Enron as its chief executive was asked at a recent congressional hearing about the whereabouts of several hundred million smackers. “I am not an accountant,” he defiantly replied.    On the same day that the current government warned women to avoid eating fish, the current government proposed to ease regulations on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in the U.S.    In the Verde Valley where wells are tapping out along the Verde River, the rush is on to sneak the largest forest land trade in state history through a compliant U.S. Congress without any formal assessment of water resources. “There’s plenty of water,” assert the proponents. “People are beginning to miss Dick Nixon,” the vizier continued. “He signed the law called NEPA which demands that any federal action which affects the human environment must include public review. Thus far, the public has not been involved.” At that, the vizier received a round of applause. In closing he said that he would be leaving soon for Belize where a comfortable exile awaited him. “I am tired of worrying about WMDs.” Up jumped Sam Troia who bleated, “none of have been found.” “Not those,” snapped the vizier. “I mean Words of Monotonous Deception.”

  

The Great Houdini James Bishop, Jr. Stars will burn through the sheets of the clouds and a new voice will be heard- life is a river, time is a river, love is a river --- the voice could be our own We must love our brothers urged Chief Seattle, they feed our children they quench our thirst Two atoms hydrogen, one of oxygen-- any control of our addiction has to yet to be shown Dat Old Man River, oh Shenandoah, the moonlights fair tonight upon the Wabash remember the days when rivers came first? What would the world be the poet Hopkins pondered, once bereft of wild and wet? If poems and lyrics were water our reservoirs would be fairly spilling over, we'd be somewhere else tonight I'd bet. Now Mr Drought shadows us ---a monster spreading fear. In our reveries and nightmares we wonder what his plans are for this year. Civilizations, cities and tribes rise and fall to the Great Houdini's tune Are we the new Sinagua, the Hohokam seeing visions of sacred lands gone to dune? Know this for true, the great Houdini magic is always changing sometimes solid, sometimes liquid sometimes gases. Bring on the dousers soon or we won't need our drinking glasses. Don't listen to the bulldozing boomers--there's water everywhere and ever so much to drink. Fie on their words, that is only what they want us to think. What do we know about what we don't know? When will the waters cease their rolling from the mountain springs? What about the philosophizing buzzards. Do they know the secrets of the disappearing snow? And what about the lions, skunks, eagles and horses and other four legged living things? Despite denials and political apathy the handwriting is on the wall, Like Humpty Dumpty we could be headed for a great fall Whiskey is from drinking, water is for fighting the old timers say, When will we get it that old sayings are of no use today. The tree rings tell the story, the lions know it too the wise Apache say In flood or scarcity water creates diversity on earth. Unlike like the valley dwellers who came before us, are we prepared for water's dearth? The stars will burn through the sheets of the clouds and a new voice must be born that of our own. The frog never drinks up the pond in which it lives Better we listen to the Hopi and become ardent progressives. All the old stories begin and end with the waters Let's leave a legacy for our sons and our daughters.

  

In the November 2002 issue of Phoenix Magazine, James Bishop explores the mystery of the origins of the Grand Canyon's first inhabitants. (You will need the free Acrobat Reader to view these pages.)

High Country News, 09/02/02 Closing the Loop: From Trees to Hogans CAMERON, Ariz. -- In an old shed on the Navajo Nation 60 miles east of Flagstaff, two well-muscled Navajos pull and prod small diameter ponderosa pines out of a 1954 Chevy truck and onto a fast-moving conveyor belt. The conveyor takes the "yellow bellies" into the torpedo-shaped, thumping log-peeling machine's maw, popping them out minutes later as sleek, naked logs destined for use in traditional Navajo houses, or hogans. Read more ...

Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist: The Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey Novelist, essayist, naturalist, philosopher, and social critic, the late Edward Abbey may have been the most popular writer to take the American Southwest as his subject. He was also an impassioned critic of the increasing exploitation of the wilderness by governmental, industrial and ranching interests, as well as by the tourist industry. In a career that began in the early 1950s and ended only upon his death in 1989, he published twenty-one books – among them Desert Solitaire, an account of his seasons as a park ranger at Utah's Arches National Monument, and the best selling novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which introduced the term "ecodefense" to the struggle to protect the environment – and won the praise and admiration of readers and writers alike. In Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist James Bishop, Jr., provides a wonderful introduction to Abbey's life. Through Abbey's own writings and personal papers, as well as interviews with friends and acquaintances, Bishop gives us a penetrating, compelling, no-holds-barred view of the life and accomplishments of this controversial figure. Read the Los Angles Times Book Review of "Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist." Click here to purchase books by Edward Abbey