I've been invited by author and blogger Ken Wright to participate in his latest online venture, the San Juan Almanac, with the tagline of "All things Southwestern Colorado."
But Red Rock Writer, you say. You don't live in southwestern Colorado anymore. This is true, dear reader (all three of you faithful folks). However, I did live in Durango for a while, and it was there that I discovered his writing, which is right up my alley. Our viewpoints on things like land and writing and the West run in a similar vein, and due to the wonders of the internet, he discovered my blog and I his back when I was a Durangotan (thanks, Robin, for that particular appellation!). And here we are today, and I am so excited to join in with another chorus of interested voices.
My philosophy about preserving Western lands and ideologies (only the good ones, natch!) from certain depredations (say, modern miner 49ers, oil seekers, big fat greedy developers--you know, the usual careless suspects) is that communication is part of the key. Getting the word out there is essential. And even if just one person gets fired up enough, in love with these areas enough, to make a small change, then that is good enough for me.
Okay, and it's just fun in general to be part of a community, no? So check it out, and check out Ken's blog too.
I should note that I just added both of Ken's links on here (look to your right somewhere), and I also cleaned up a lot of my old writing links. This blog has evolved, for me, into a much more Utah-, West-, personal thoughts-focused type of place. I created a professional blog for EditWorks, which is how I'm trying to mostly earn my bread & butter, and to which I moved many of the writing links I'd had here.
Here's to writing, community, and the endless world of our thoughts and actions. May they intertwine peacefully....
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Hey Julie....Hopefully I'm not breaking every copyright law out there, but I got this article from the Sunday LA Times...Its about the local hero Tim DeChristopher. It seems as if a lawyer is going to take up his cause AND he's getting donations to help pay his fees. Very cool. Enjoy.
Courtney Sargent / Deseret News
Tim DeChristopher, a college student, has become a sudden celebrity among environmentalists. He’s raised at least $45,000 in donations, enough for a first payment.
A bid to save pristine land
Environmentalist
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Courtney Sargent / Deseret News
Tim DeChristopher, a college student, has become a sudden celebrity among environmentalists. He’s raised at least $45,000 in donations, enough for a first payment.
To block oilmen, an activist snatches up acres at auction -- with no way to pay. He and the parcels are now in legal limbo.
By Nicholas Riccardi
January 18, 2009
Reporting from Salt Lake City -- Environmental activists were marching glumly outside the Bureau of Land Management offices here one day last month, as inside hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine federal land were auctioned off in an 11th-hour Bush administration effort to leave its mark on the West.
Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old college student, had slipped into the auction room and saw a woman he knew, a fellow environmentalist observing the event. She was weeping as Utah's wild lands were sold off parcel by parcel.
DeChristopher decided he had to act. So he began bidding.
By the time BLM officials caught on, DeChristopher had bid $1.79 million he did not have to acquire the rights to 12 parcels totaling 22,000 acres. Federal authorities threatened to prosecute DeChristopher for bidding without cash in hand.
As news of DeChristopher's actions spread, he promptly raised enough for a first payment. On Jan. 9, he announced he had at least $45,000, mostly donated in $5 or $10 increments by thousands of online benefactors.
A federal judge on Monday is due to rule on a lawsuit filed by environmental groups to nullify the lease sales. But DeChristopher and his supporters hope that, should that last-ditch legal effort fail, the money he's raised will delay a final decision on the fate of the parcels he bid on until the inauguration of Barack Obama, whose aides have criticized how the current administration fast-tracked the auction.
"I had really prepared myself for the worst. I was thinking three to five years in prison, that's what I'm looking at," DeChristopher said in an interview last week. "Now things are looking more positive. The fate of that land will either be decided by me or by the Obama administration."
A BLM spokeswoman said DeChristopher's offer of payment was too little, too late. Mary Wilson said he owed $81,000 on the day of the sale and significantly more by Jan. 6. "Since he made up his rules for the auction," she said, "he's making up his rules on how to pay for it."
The agency hasn't decided whether the parcels legally belong to DeChristopher. That will be determined by an investigation by the agency and the U.S. attorney's office here. Until that probe is concluded, DeChristopher's legal status and that of the parcels he bid for are in limbo.
Regardless of the outcome, the soft-spoken DeChristopher has become a sudden celebrity on the environmental circuit. He spent a weekend at the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Nevada County, Calif., courtesy of the event's organizers.
"The guy just showed incredible chutzpah," said Dan Hamburg, a former U.S. congressman from Northern California who is executive director of Voice of the Environment, which donated $5,000 to DeChristopher. "I hope he's inspired a lot of other people to take similar action."
But Kathleen Sgamma, an official with the Independent Petroleum Assn. of Mountain States, said DeChristopher should be prosecuted if BLM determined he acted illegally.
"He is costing the state of Utah a lot of money," Sgamma said.
DeChristopher's gambit caps the recent battle over the energy-rich red rock canyons of southern Utah. The Bush administration has long sought to open the area to more drilling.
On Nov. 4, administration officials announced that they would auction off hundreds of thousands of acres, some abutting popular national parks including Arches and Canyonlands, at a Dec. 19 auction. The BLM did not consult with the National Park Service, as it usually does.
Environmentalists accused the Bush administration of trying to rush through a sale before it left office. The BLM scaled down the sale, dropping a parcel that was under a golf course in the town of Moab and others directly adjacent to national parks. Still, when bidders gathered in Salt Lake City, 131 parcels were for sale.
DeChristopher had an economics exam at the University of Utah that morning. The final question was whether the prices paid at the auction would represent the true cost of energy exploration. The answer, he wrote, was no: They would not take into account the environmental and public health effects of fossil fuels. Then he went to the BLM office to join the picket line.
The scene "was like a funeral march," DeChristopher said.
He decided to enter the building, hoping to disrupt the proceedings. An official inside asked him whether he was there for the auction. Why, yes, DeChristopher responded. Are you a bidder? she asked.
Yes, DeChristopher said.
He was handed a small laminated card with No. 70 on it and ushered into the auction room. After making a few bids to drive up the energy companies' costs, he decided to bid for as many parcels as he could.
"I sat there watching one parcel after another going into the hands of oil developers, and I knew the land would be pretty much ruined," he said. "I got to the point where I couldn't sit there and watch anymore."
He got to 12 parcels before BLM officers ushered him into a rear room for questioning. BLM officials said that when DeChristopher had identified himself as a bidder, he signed a form vowing to pay all necessary fees that day. He said he had no intent to pay. They ejected him from the building, and the bidding resumed.
Afterward, DeChristopher was flooded with encouraging e-mails from as far as Norway. The head of the BLM under President Clinton, Pat Shea, offered to act as his attorney. Environmentalists took up his cause on Facebook.
A Moab-based group is administering the donations. The figure of $45,000 is what BLM officials told him he owed when they detained him.
DeChristopher, who shares a rented house with several roommates, is banking on a summer job with an environmental group to pay his bill.
"I didn't think there was any way they could get $45,000 out of me," he said with a chuckle.
nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com
Thanks for this, btw. You're not breaking copyright law if you cite it, and it's not being used for profit. As this blog is most certainly NOT profitable in the most base sense of the word, you're safe!
Wonder how many agents and publishers have approached DeChristopher yet about writing a book?
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