A Pat on the Back, or a Shove

July 13, 2018

My friend Bill Imbergamo runs a highly effective national association for what’s left of America’s forest products industry. Last week he called attention to a new glossy two-page paper from the U.S. Forest Service, claiming credit for a forest management project that helped control a fire on Wyoming’s Medicine Bow National Forest. The agency says […]

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Does Club 20 Still Matter?

July 6, 2018

Is the Western Slope paranoid? During the decade I served as President of Club 20, I was often confronted by Front Range leaders accusing us of unfounded distrust. “No one here is ignoring the Western Slope,” they assured us. We encountered the same charge in Washington, D.C., when a top federal official said, “you always […]

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How Soon We Forget

June 22, 2018

Both of my parents have taken time to write their childhood memories in the form of books they can pass along to future generations. As we get older, we tend to become more interested in family history, so genealogy is more popular than ever. Ancestry.com generates over $1 billion a year in revenue. “Roots” author […]

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We Have Met the Enemy – or Have We?

June 15, 2018

My friend Howard Propst is an inspiring speaker, who has made frequent presentations about American exceptionalism, pointing out how we fail to credit the astonishing achievements of a free society. We are introspective, always seeking to improve, but generally looking critically at our own shortcomings. Sometimes it’s all we see. Howard had great graphics to […]

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The Energy Debate Cloaked in Many Colors

June 8, 2018

One of the most instructive Old Testament stories recounts the wisdom of Joseph in Egypt, after his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams, predicting years of drought and famine. Around 1490 BC, Joseph was made Regent (chief administrator) and ordered grain stored for the coming seven-year drought. He thus turned a bountiful harvest that might otherwise have […]

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My Kingdom for a Razorback Sucker

June 1, 2018

On the classic game show, “Let’s Make a Deal,” the host Monte Hall walked down the aisle offering ridiculous amounts of cash for people to produce obscure items from their pockets – $500 for a skeleton key, for example. Cash is a powerful incentive, so people always showed up with pockets full of obscure items. […]

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A (Tasmanian) Devil of a Dilemma

May 23, 2018

In the golden age of cartoons, the Tasmanian Devil was a favorite Looney Toons character, a whirling tornado throwing temper tantrums, and eating everything in his path. Both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck had to cleverly escape his voracious appetite. It has been 54 years since Warner Brothers discontinued the cartoons, yet that character inspired […]

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Holy Hummingbird, Batman!

May 18, 2018

The lesser long-nosed bat is no longer in danger of extinction, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), so it will be taken off the endangered species list. New Mexico and Arizona leaders have advocated de-listing for years. They are getting their wish, partly because of red plastic hummingbird feeders. The bats’ attraction […]

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Who Needs Congress Anyway?

May 11, 2018

What if I were to suggest turning all of New York into a national monument? OK, maybe we would exclude the gigantic city, but the rest of that beautiful State could be our newest national monument. You might instinctively see a couple major problems with my idea. There are other cities and towns in the […]

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Captain Obvious Strikes Again

May 10, 2018

Since President Trump reduced the size of a couple national monuments in Utah, the chorus of critics has grown increasingly shrill, moving from press conferences expressing outrage, to lawsuits demanding reversal. Now the nation’s largest newspaper (the one back East) has uncovered what it considers one of the nation’s most embarrassing scandals – there are […]

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