Boulder Becomes 'Smart Grid City'
The Grid Gets a Brain
If all goes as planned Boulder will become the world’s first “fully integrated Smart Grid City,” says regional utility Xcel Energy. Envisioned as the first true innovation in electricity distribution in close to a century, the Smart Grid movement is essentially developing ways to bring digital Internet-based technology to power lines, giving utilities and business and residential customers greater control and efficiency in the flow of electricity.
Ultimately, once the Smart Grid takes over a significant chunk of the existing power distribution infrastructure, utilities and governments will be able to use the power of the Web to better manipulate how electricity is generated and delivered.
In other energy news: Democrats ready populist energy legislation; Colorado eyes fine print on electricity bills; and O&G executives foresee oil-price downturn by the end of the year.
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New West Book Review
Rigged: Alexandra Fuller’s “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant”
The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
By Alexandra Fuller
The Penguin Press
202 pages, $23.95
In her extraordinary new book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Alexandra Fuller does a cruel thing. She makes readers fall in love with a Wyoming boy in the space of a few pages, carries us through his life, which leads inevitably to a dangerous job on an oil rig, and makes us stand as witnesses to his end, however much we wish we could turn our heads away. I still feel heartsick a few weeks after finishing it. Fuller writes with simple grace and a cowboy twang, taking a rather unconventional approach for nonfiction by composing the book of the private conversations and intimate scenes that are the turning points of Bryant's short life, and though she must have spent months with his family and friends, the author stays offstage, disappearing into a bracing, honest voice that is motherly in its tenderness toward her subject.
Fuller will discuss her book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) in Denver on Monday, May 12 (7:30 p.m.), at Borders in Portland on May 13 (7 p.m.), and in Evanston, WY at the Uinta Library on May 16 (5 p.m.)
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LET'S GET OUR WORDS STRAIGHT
Wilderness is Multiple Use
Have you ever heard somebody say they prefer "multiple use" over Wilderness? I have what seems like a thousand times, and every time I hear it, I say to myself, wrong!
So, it seems like a good time to say it out loud because the words, "multiple use" have been lost in the Wilderness.
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Western Book Roundup
Lynn Rossetto Kasper Visits Boulder & Desert Writing Award Announced
The Boulder Farmer's Market will open for its first Wednesday afternoon of the season today, kicking off with a book signing and talk by Lynn Rossetto Kasper, host of NPR's The Splendid Table. She'll be discussing her new book, How to Eat Supper. (Free, 5:30-6:30 p.m.)
The Bluff, Utah-based Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers announced that this year's winner of their annual award is Joe Wilkins. Wilkins plans to study and write about the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains from Texas to Montana.
Also in the Roundup: Margot Kahn tours behind Horses That Buck: The Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith, and WyoFile.com excerpts Alexandra Fuller's new book.
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CLASS ACTION SUITS TO BE FILED TUESDAY IN ARIZONA, COLORADO
Public Land Owners Taking RAT, Forest Service to Civil Court
Enough is enough, say the owners of our national forests. And they may have finally found a way to spike the Recreation Access Tax or RAT.
After years of working through cumbersome administrative channels and several rounds in criminal court, people interested in reasonable and free access to their public land have dragged the Forest Service (FS) into civil court. In addition to asking for injunctions against collecting "illegal" fees while the case is being litigated and if successful the fee program terminated, the plaintiffs in the class action complaints--to be filed tomorrow morning in Arizona and Colorado--want all fee collection signs removed and all fees collected through the years under the program returned to the people who shouldn't have had to pay them.
Suffice to say, it's panic time in the FS offices back in Washington, D.C.
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Against the Laws
Oil Price Off the Rails
The convergence of record high gas prices ($3.60 a gallon average across the U.S.), a presidential campaign, obscenely high earnings reports from Big Oil, and the prospect of $4 gas during the summer driving season has led to some rampant silliness, including the proposed “gas-tax holiday” being backed by candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Congress plans to get into the act, pledging to bring forth legislation to offer low-income Americans relief from high prices at the pump – legislation that President Bush will almost certainly veto.
The price surge is also leading to an alarming question: has the oil industry jumped the rails of basic economic laws?
According to economics, soaring prices would, in normal times, lead to increased output of oil, reduced demand and a subsequent reduction (or at least a flattening) in prices. But prices haven’t followed suit.
In other energy news: Colorado Wildlife Commission weighs in on oil and gas production; Xcel plans to shutter coal plants opposed by consumer-protection agency; and Colorado will study the economic effects of new oil and gas regulations on the industry.
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2008 COMMENTS WORTH REPEATING III
The Wilderness Drought and How the Green Group Feud Keeps it Alive
Over the past two years, I've been periodically posting selections of my favorite comments from readers of my columns and articles. I plan to continue doing this, but differently. Instead of listing comments chronologically, I've edited them into general subject areas. In this case, here are a few insightful comments that came in over the past few months on several articles on the wilderness drought and the green group feud that keeps it alive and if not endless. Enjoy.
Editor's Note: For a complete list of Comments Worth Repeating, click here.
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COMMENTARY
On Energy Development, Hunters and Anglers Push Back
Eight months ago, President Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to do everything necessary to "facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat."
The president gave those agencies--specifically the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (FS)--a year to come up with a plan to implement this order, which was, conceptually anyway, drafted to combat news that participation in hunting was waning in the United States.
About the same time, the BLM announced plans to lease the Roan Plateau in Colorado for natural gas development. Plans were also announced to lease nearly 45,000 acres of land in the Hoback River drainage of western Wyoming, and the West was--and still is--in the throes of a full-on energy boom. Sportsmen--the very people who stood to benefit from Executive Order 13443--were deeply involved in important campaigns to protect a number of special places throughout the West from irresponsible oil and gas drilling that would not only trash important fish and game habitat, but significantly reduce hunting and fishing opportunity.
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Western Book Roundup
Proulx News, Fuller on Wyoming Oil, and Cather Archive Goes Online
Annie Proulx fans can begin the countdown to the release of her next book: Buzz Girl reports that Proulx's "new collection of 9 'stunning' short stories about the people who now inhabit pioneer country" is due out in September 2008. The book, to be published by Scribner, is titled Fine Just The Way It Is.
Another Wyoming writer, Alexandra Fuller, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, about the recent, massive expansion of the oil and gas industry in Wyoming, and the harm it's caused the environment and Wyomingites' physical and mental health.
Also in the Roundup: A new online Willa Cather Archive, and a former Denver bookseller retires to Harlem
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Western Writers
An Interview with Tara Yellen
Tara Yellen's funny, sharp debut novel, After Hours at the Almost Home, published by Unbridled Books this month, follows the fortunes of the waiters, waitresses, and bartenders at a Denver bar during the hectic night of the Broncos' 1999 Super Bowl win, when a seasoned waitress doesn't show up for her shift. Yellen was born in Fort Collins, grew up in New York, and returned to Colorado to earn a master's degree in Creative Writing from CU, where I met her ten years ago. Yellen went on to earn an MFA from Virginia, and currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area. She says that as she's been revising her novel, over the years she's worked many jobs, including stints as a "nanny, teacher, tutor, freelance writer and editor, and, of course a bartender and waitress." I recently interviewed Yellen via email about why she chose to set her novel in Denver, how the book evolved, and how waiting tables can inspire fiction.
New West: Of the many places you've lived, why did you decide to set your first novel in Denver?
Tara Yellen: I didn’t decide. I was living in Denver, finishing up at the writing program at CU Boulder, when the story came to me. The location just felt right—for the events, for the characters. It was probably a good thing that the book ended up taking me so long to finish. The bulk of my revisions took place after I’d moved away from Colorado. I was sad to leave (and still think I might move back), but for writing, distance always helps.
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