WHERE IS THE HOUSE BILL?
Congress Needs to Walk the Talk on Recreation Fees
On June 18, finally, Congress started seriously looking into the runaway recreational fee charging policy of federal agencies, primarily the U.S. Forest Service (FS), but it's still just talk. We've had enough of that, so let's just spike this pay-for-play policy, which is at best an extreme stretch of the legal authority given agencies by Congress--"given," sort of, I should say, since our elected leaders never even debated it or voted on it.
Even though it's moving at glacier speed, we at least have the Baucus-Crapo Bill, S. 2438, introduced in the Senate to spike the Recreation Access Tax. This is clearly a bipartisan issue, ripe for election-year politics. Now, we need a sponsor for a similar bill in the House.
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Western Book Roundup
Krakauer Delays Book, CutBank Takes on the World, and Bigfoot Field Guide is Announced
Best-selling Boulder author Jon Krakauer has withdrawn the manuscript for Hero, his book about Pat Tillman, according to Publishers Weekly (Via Slushpile.Net). Rachel Deahl writes that Doubleday had scheduled the book for an October release with a first printing of half a million copies.
Denise Hill at the always informative NewPages blog pointed out Ahmede Hussain's interview with Brian Kevin, Managing Editor of the University of Montana's CutBank. The interview ran in The Daily Star, which Hill says is "Bangladesh's largest circulating English-language newspaper." And according to Hussain, CutBank is "America's foremost literary magazine."
Also in the Roundup: Bigfoot spotted at the bookstore.
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New West Book Review
Short Stuff: Daniel Grandbois’ “Unlucky Lucky Days”
Unlucky Lucky Days
By Daniel Grandbois
BOA Editions
122, $14
On his website, Colorado fiction writer Daniel Grandbois describes his first book, Unlucky Lucky Days, as a "collection of nonsense and absurdist tales" so I guess I should have known better than to go seeking the real-life inspiration for one story, "Mansion," about a turtle who is "an executioner in retirement" and becomes stuck in a mansion he was trying to execute (if that make sense, you've got a more agile mind than I do). Grandbois writes that a librarian decided to take the mansion as a paperweight, and "that's where you can find the executioner right down to this day—in the fish tank near the children's books at the Boulder Public Library."
Daniel Grandbois will read from his book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 8. Munly and the Lepercalians will also perform.
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Western Nature Writers
An Interview with David M. Armstrong
David M. Armstrong is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and the author of several books, including the recently published third edition of Rocky Mountain Mammals (University of Colorado Press, $19.95), a guide to the mammals of this region and those in Rocky Mountain National Park in particular. Packed with photos and facts, the book is worth its weight to lug on a backpacking trip. I recently interviewed Professor Armstrong via email about the best way to spot mammals in the wild, the projected fate of the pika, changes he's observed in Rocky Mountain National Park, the dearth of Bigfoot sightings there, and how we should "honor [our] cousin," the montane vole.
New West: Have you noticed any changes in Rocky Mountain National Park over the years?
David M. Armstrong: The fauna of any place is a dynamic phenomenon, a “work-in-progress,” and changes are sometimes subtle. Obvious changes in recent decades have been the substantial increase in the number of elk in the National Park and vicinity, ups and downs in numbers (hence visibility) of bighorn sheep and beaver, the increase in the number of black bears in recent years, the establishment of moose in the National Park (from introduced population in North Park).
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From The New West Blog
Gas Prices and Suburbia
As suburbanites pay $4 a gallon for gas to make their long commutes to work, they are realizing how much it adds up and migrating back into the cities to cut costs.
Peter S. Goodman of The New York Times has a story about how this trend is playing out in Denver.
"Before it was ‘we spend too much time driving.’ Now, it’s ‘we spend too much time and money driving,’” says one man reconsidering his aversion to city life.
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COMMENTS WORTH REPEATING
Guns and the Most Controversial Nonprofit of Them All
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. What is the Most Controversial Nonprofit Organization of Them All?
Can we agree that it is the National Rifle Association?
Fervently supported by millions of gun owners, but bitterly criticized by its detractors, including many hunters who feel the gun group elects anti-hunting politicians who vote consistently against the protecting wildlife habitat. Critics think the NRA stands for Not Really an Ally or National Republican Army.
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Western Book Roundup
Wroblewski Rolls with “Edgar Sawtelle”
It seems that just about everyone who got his or her hands on an advance copy of Colorado writer David Wroblewski's debut novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, predicted its success (myself included—let me pause here to pat myself on the back, because that's what everyone else is doing). According to the Wall Street Journal (via Publishers Lunch), the book "has gone into its seventh printing—a total of 90,000 copies—a week after its publication." Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of WSJ credits this development to Amazon.com, who "chose the book as one of the best books of June and aggressively hyped it."
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is definitely the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed book by a Colorado writer since Kent Haruf's Plainsong became a finalist for the National Book Award and hit the national bestseller list after its 1999 release. And Wroblewski's book has only been out for two weeks, so who knows what else is in store for it?
Also in the Roundup: A former Boulder Book Store employee returns to read from her new novel.
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New West Book Review
On the Road with Boulder’s Queen of Shoes and Sloth
Queen of the Road
By Doreen Orion
Broadway Books, 293 pages, $13.95
Don't be fooled by the author photo in the back of Boulder author Doreen Orion's new travel narrative, Queen of the Road. It depicts her wearing sneakers and exercise clothes, smiling next to her dog at a scenic overlook to which they've presumably hiked. Although she looks like a standard REI-shopping, backpacking, Yoga Journal-reading, outdoor-worshiping Boulderite, she reveals her true nature early on in Queen of the Road, which details the year she and her husband Tim spent cruising America in a tricked-out luxury bus.
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New Uranium Boom
Nuclear Opponents Off-Base
Chip Ward, author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West, contributes a long essay on the new uranium boom in the West on TomDispatch (an invaluable left-leaning group blog that usually focuses on Iraq and U.S. military policy). It’s called “Radioactive Déjà Vu in the American West.” And while I have great respect for Ward and his work, he is so wrong in so many ways on this issue that it’s hard to keep track.
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WE WON'T CHANGE UNTIL WE HAVE TO
$5 Gas: The Pain Before the Gain
We're all feeling Pump Pain, and who among us doesn't think that $5 gas is around the corner? I'm writing as fast as I can, in fact, so I can get this column posted before I have to fill up my pickup truck again, if I can afford it.
And thinking that perhaps $5 gas is just what we need.
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