My Page: David Frey
New West Film
At Sundance, Tradition Meets Modern World in Billy Luther’s ‘Grab’
Four years ago, filmmaker Billy Luther premiered at Sundance Film Festival with Miss Navajo, a documentary about contemporary Navajo life glimpsed through a Navajo beauty pageant.
Luther returns this year with Grab, a documentary that chronicles an ancient tradition with a contemporary twist. On saints’ name days, the Catholic Laguna people take to their roofs with laundry baskets full of items and toss them down to people below.
Luther, whose heritage includes Navajo, Hopi and Laguna roots, grew up celebrating Grab Days. He tells the story of this little-known tradition celebrated by a very private people.
[more]NEW WEST ANALYSIS
After Lynx Battles, Colorado Ski Industry Wary of Wolverine
In October 1998, the Two Elk ski lodge atop the Vail ski area erupted in flames so big witnesses said it looked like a volcano. In the highly-publicized eco-terrorist attack, the secretive Earth Liberation Front struck against Vail Associates for its plan to expand the ski area into what was considered prime habitat for the Canada lynx, an elusive wildcat that state officials were considering reintroducing to Colorado.
It was the most visible impact the planned lynx reintroduction had on Colorado ski areas, but it wasn’t the only one. Ski resorts, once seen as green business in a state that loves its outdoor recreation, contended with environmentalists’ lawsuits and government protections. Everything from ski area expansions to housing developments became viewed with an eye on how the moves would affect lynx habitat.
Now that a sustaining lynx population has been established in Colorado, state wildlife officials are turning their attention to restoring the wolverine. But ski areas are voicing their concerns about what a wolverine reintroduction program could mean to future ski operations, and even existing ones.
[more]PUBLIC LANDS
Salazar Restores Wilderness Policy to BLM
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued an order on Thursday directing the Bureau of Land Management, the nation’s largest public lands agency, to create a new “wild lands” jurisdiction intended to provide more protection for lands considered to have wilderness values.
The order restores a wilderness policy to the BLM, which has been without one since 2003 when its previous wilderness policy was struck from the agency’s handbook in an out-of-court settlement between former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the state of Utah and others.
“The bottom line is, the lands with wilderness characteristics now will have a significant place at the table so they are not seen as they have been under past policies, which was something not to be valued,” Salazar told reporters at a press conference at the outdoor gear retail giant REI store in Denver.
[more]NEW WEST FEATURE
Can Bikers and Hikers Share Wilderness Areas?
Hikers and mountain bikers may have a lot of things in common, but wilderness isn’t one of them. Where the wilderness boundary starts, mountain bikes have to stop, creating a rift between sometimes-allies as environmentalists seek new wilderness areas at the expense of beloved mountain bike trails.
But some mountain bikers are rallying around a new idea they call “Wilderness B,” or wilderness with bikes. They’re pressing for a new type of wilderness designation that would allow bikes to roll through protected landscapes alongside hikers and horses.
On an otherwise anonymous Facebook page that chronicles conflicts between mountain bikers and wilderness advocates, they argue bikes have less impact on the land than hikers, and they urge supporters to press elected officials to create “a sister designation” to wilderness, one with all of wilderness protections, and with bikes.
[more]NEW WEST FEATURE
Small Farms Turn to Direct Sales to Stay Afloat
Turn off the highway, wind past the old trestle bridge, and it’s easy to believe you’ve entered another world when you pull up to Orchard Valley Farms & Market. Acres of cherry trees and peach trees seem to stretch to the foot of Mount Lamborn in the distance. Grapes plump in the rows of vineyards. At the end of the fall season, a few vegetable crops remained, and Jennifer Dunn was on a quest to pick what remained.
“We love coming down here and getting a little country life back,” said Jennifer Dunn, a Phoenix, Ariz. City girl, towing her children Lucas, 5, and Reagan, 2, in a wagon to the U-pick garden at the Paonia, Colo. Farm.
They’re the kind of customers Orchard Valley, like other surrounding farms, have come to rely on. With massive farms dominating more and more of the share of agribusiness, smaller farmers are turning to on-site sales as a way to boost their revenues. They’re catering to a growing interest in local produce and do-it-yourself farming, while cutting out distributors.
[more]NEW WEST BOOK REVIEW
Images and Essays in Bill Meriwether’s “Museum Collection”
The Museum Collection
by Bill Meriwether
People’s Press, 52 pages, $14.95
Most people probably have never heard of photographer William Meriwether, although if they saw his photos, they might swear they’ve seen them before. Maybe in an Ansel Adams book. Maybe in an Edward Weston exhibit.
Even in his hometown in Glenwood Springs, Colo., Meriwether wasn’t well known. He never had a retrospective of his work in a gallery until he was near death. Meriwether lived long enough for the opening party, but he died just afterward of cancer.
His anonymity is a shame, because Meriwether produced an impressive body of work in his lifetime, often in rare platinum prints, which he loved. Late in life, he was reduced to point-and-shoot cameras, which he also loved. For friends, he had produced a simple book of photos and essays culled from 40 years of roaming the West with his eye behind a lens. That book has been reprinted by People’s Press, a small publishing house in Woody Creek, Colo., created to tell the stories of people like Meriwether.
[more]NEW WEST FEATURE
Born Abroad, Raised Here, Some Immigrant Students Pin Futures on Dream Act
It was the end of the school day, and Alex Alvarado was hunching over his Spanish test. Although he grew up speaking Spanish at home, he never learned formal grammar. Besides, he needs language classes for college, and college is definitely in his plans. Exactly how he’ll get there, though, and what he’ll do afterward, is in question.
Like many at Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale, Colo., Alvarado has spent nearly all his life in this country, but he wasn’t born here. Now a 17-year-old senior, Alvarado faces an uncertain future. He’s undocumented in the only country he knows and a stranger in the country of his birth. “I can’t see myself in Mexico at all,” he said. “I’m from there. I wouldn’t be ashamed of going there. But it’s not my home. I don’t know anybody there. I might have family there, but I don’t know them.”
Alvarado has become an activist for the Dream Act, a measure designed to give people like him a path to citizenship. Outgoing House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plan to bring the legislation to a vote this year in Congress’ lame duck session. President Barack Obama supports it. But it’s failed before and Republicans are sharpening their opposition.
[more]NEW WEST FEATURE
Christo’s Plan for Arkansas River Wrapped in Controversy
In a repurposed garage in Denver’s trendy Lower Downtown neighborhood, the artist Christo stepped up onto the makeshift stage. Across the street in the museum of contemporary art hung sketches from his latest proposed project, Over the River, an ambitious – and highly controversial – work that, if approved, would suspend industrial-strength fabric over Colorado’s Arkansas River.
The plan is loved by some and despised by others, but among this crowd of art enthusiasts, Christo, with his mane of untamed silver hair and a rumpled khaki vest and jeans, received a standing ovation before his first slide wheeled around on the carousel projector.
[more]NEW WEST AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Shooting From the Hip
Kevin Michael Connolly resists being called disabled. Born without legs, the Bozeman, Mont., photographer and author has traveled around the globe, is a competitive skier, has had his photos exhibited around the world, including the Smithsonian, and is at work on his second book.
He resists being called inspirational, too. Since he’s never had legs, he says, he’s never had to overcome losing them.
Still, his accomplishments are mind-blowing. Outside magazine, in its November edition, calls Connolly “the baddest 3-foot guy in the world.” For good reason. In his Rolling Exhibition, Connolly, 25, a former Montana State University photography and film student, traveled the world photographing the stares of people shocked to see him getting around on his skateboard. His memoirDouble Take chronicles his life and photography.
Now he’s at work on a new book and photo project taking him around the world, with a new means of transportation, a bouncy gadget he calls cheetah legs. We caught up with him in Glenwood Springs, Colo., where he was speaking to students at Colorado Mountain College.
[more]New West Analysis
Did Tea Party Blow it for GOP in Key Races?
In the last weeks before the election, Sen. Michael Bennet was crisscrossing his home state of Colorado, stumping in big cities and small towns, trying to extract every vote he could from any corner he could find it.
The race between he and his challenger Ken Buck, a Republican and Tea Party favorite, was neck-and-neck. Bennet, a Democrat, claimed internal polling showed him ahead, but other polls showed the two deadlocked, and the national mood seemed was poised to boot out Democrat incumbents like him.
Appearing in the back of a brewpub in Glenwood Springs, Bennet drove home a message he was making in stop after stop. He portrayed himself as the moderate candidate and Buck as extreme, and Buck’s talk of privatizing Social Security and ending student loans as “crazy.”
“If we do everything we’re supposed to do, we will win this seat,” he told supporters.
The strategy worked.
[more]
