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Frivolity Meets Politics

For my money, there are few sins so egregious as the taking of yourself too seriously. I mean, really, what’s the point? We’re all going to eventually kick the bucket with an equal amount of kicking and screaming. Might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here. So I knew I’d met a kindred soul when I ran into Brian Leland yesterday morning in downtown Bozeman. A local master electrician, he’s also the founder and organizer of “The Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus,” a tongue-in-cheek, don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously counterpart to a Tea Party demonstration being held in Bozeman the morning of July 4. [more]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The latest salvo against the nation’s agricultural-industrial complex is on the big screen.

Food, Inc., a documentary by filmmaker Robert Kenner, is a forceful indictment of concentrated cattle ghettos, squalid chicken factories and cornfield deserts. At the film’s core is this thesis: the way we eat has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 10,000, and not for the better.

Sure, our shopping cart loads are getting cheaper, but our health, the environment, the animals and the people who handle them pay the price, Kenner argues.

“We spend less of our paycheck on our food than anytime, but it comes at a heavy cost,” Kenner told a crowd at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival, after a screening of the film. [more]

Thyme to Travel with Rochael Teynor

Eager to escape the week’s workload and to celebrate our wedding anniversary, my husband, Mark, and I pull into the long driveway that delivers us to the doorstep of Steve Gamble’s Gallatin River Lodge. A rustic fishing and hunting lodge from the outside, complete with pond, mountain views, and deer foraging in the meadow (did I hear someone yell “cue the deer?”), the Gallatin River Lodge is anything but rustic on the inside. This little luxury inn sits on 350 acres just 15 minutes from downtown Bozeman. [more]

Guest Column

Fueled by $180 million in federal stimulus money, the National Security Agency will build a one-million square foot data center outside of Salt Lake City. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

Hoping to protect its top-secret operations by decentralizing its massive computer hubs, the National Security Agency will build a 1-million-square-foot data center at Utah’s Camp Williams.

The years-in-the-making project, which may cost billions over time, got a $181 million start last week when President Obama signed a war spending bill in which Congress agreed to pay for primary construction, power access and security infrastructure. The enormous building, which will have a footprint about three times the size of the Utah State Capitol building, will be constructed on a 200-acre site near the Utah National Guard facility’s runway.

Congressional records show that initial construction — which may begin this year — will include tens of millions in electrical work and utility construction, a $9.3 million vehicle inspection facility, and $6.8 million in perimeter security fencing. The budget also allots $6.5 million for the relocation of an existing access road, communications building and training area.

Officials familiar with the project say it may bring as many as 1,200 high-tech jobs to Camp Williams, which borders Salt Lake, Utah and Tooele counties. [more]

By Chris Blanchard, Guest Writer, 7-02-09 | comments (1) | email story | print story

Kudos

Clean water. For Missoula residents Said and Sara Hemed, it would be a dream come true if they could finish digging a well in Said’s native Zanzibar village so people there could have water to drink and use for washing -- without having to walk a mile to a water pump and haul it back in buckets.

Said (pronounced sye'-dee) and his wife, Sara, a Montana native, have other dreams too. They want to provide classes for adults and children on the six acres Said owns in Mchekeni, a village of about 300 people in Zanzibar, a small island off the coast of Tanzania.

Along the way, they’ve launched a group, Artisans for Africa, and are selling handmade arts and crafts -- batik purses, screen-printed fabrics, leather baby booties, jewelry -- to raise the money needed to finish digging a well on the property.

[more]

GOP BLUES

For the first time in a century, the mountain West has more Democratic senators, and more Democratic congress members, than Republicans.

That’s part of a shift across the region and the nation, say a pair of Stanford University professors, that has the Republican Party in crisis.

“There is no silver bullet for Republicans,” says Doug Rivers, professor of political science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “For the short-run, the news is pretty bad.” [more]

THE LEGACY OF KENTON CARNEGIE

Anything wolf makes big headlines--and, it seems, is never old news.

For fourteen years since conservationists and the federal government brought the wolf back to the northern Rockies (plus several years leading up to the reintroduction), anything and everything about the Big Dog has been, to say the least, controversial.

But something hasn't happened yet that could make it much more contentious. [more]

Guest Column

The passage of the Waxman-Markey Climate bill is a historic, bold step in the right direction in terms of embracing innovative and sustained business practice.

Hailed globally as a “sea of change in U. S. policy on climate,” this legislation will reshape energy policy by capping greenhouse gas emissions for the first time, boost production and investment in renewable electricity, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and tend to our cherished natural resources. Concurrently, the bill will create jobs here in the United States and help businesses and communities hardest hit by these new changes.

We commend our forward thinking leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives and say job well done. [more]

Are We Stimulating Sprawl?

A report out this week from the national Smart Growth America group takes a look at where transportation stimulus money is going on the state level and it found that in most cases, especially in the West, states are spending too much on new roads and not enough on maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure or on public transportation options.

The report is exhaustive, and you can read the whole thing here, but two main points from the group are these:

Not enough money is being spent on repair and maintenance: “Despite a multi-trillion dollar backlog of road and bridge repairs, states committed almost a third of ARRA STP money—$6.6 billion—to new capacity road and bridge projects rather than to repair and other preservation projects”

Not enough money is being spent on public transportation: “By allocating few funds (3.7%) to public and non-motorized transportation, states made less progress on modernization, rapid job creation, enhancing public transporation, long-term economic growth, reducing greenhouse gases, oil dependence and providing low cost transportation choices,” the report states.

Read on to see the report’s findings on how specific Western states rank in the group’s assessment.

Western Book Roundup

A few weeks ago I wrote about some creative ideas people are coming up with to support books in the midst of this changing media landscape. In keeping with that theme, the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association recently launched the Reading the West program, with the goal of helping bookstores promote books that are set in the West or those written by Western authors. The first featured books are New Mexico writer Rick Collignon's Madewell Brown and Austin-based Jaqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I spoke to MPIBA executive director Lisa Knudsen this week on the phone from her office in Fort Collins about the program.

Knudsen said that the MPIBA started the Reading the West program because "in these troubled economic times, we were looking for projects and programs that are free to our member booksellers and are a potential win win win—for the publisher, bookseller, and author."

"I shamelessly copied from my fellow regional bookseller associations," Knudsen said, noting that the Midwest and Great Lakes Bookseller associations sponsor similar programs. The Reading the West program makes advance copies of the featured books available to booksellers, as well as materials to use in their display and promotion. The authors are also available for readings at regional stores.

The MPIBA board hopes publishers will begin to send them information about relevant forthcoming books to be considered for the program, but for the first selections, the members discussed among themselves what good books of regional interest they knew were coming out.

"Rick Collignon is very popular in our region," Knudsen said, "and the committee was enthusiastic about his latest book. We also wanted to do what we could to promote independent publishers." Madewell Brown is published by Unbridled Books, an independent publisher based in Colorado. [more]

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