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Show CChc Page A6 vEimrs-3nbrprniU'- Thursday, February 15, 2001 iit High Country News Community Comments Writers on the Range by Sam Taylor was lootong tuf surr.fcttwrig in trie rritoUie (fa icd jurik drawer ot my oesx ttie oitier day ur d ran acri ss a whoe host ot things haerit seen r years -- even decades didn t find what was tot tuny ti,i ana can t even reniemtier what it was so it must not have been very important Among the stLtted drawer, ran aero1 s a hastily writ'en note from urt" a from California She has my dearly oeparted SiSter been gone from us a tong time hut was a'ways a great one for keeping family members up to da'e on trie doings of the rest of the family As a pai ting cm'.' er t sne wished me a Happy Valentine It s about trie best one ve over goten Thanks Lorena You made my week I o'so ran across a yellowed ping with a note penned on the bottom "I thought you d enjoy this' It was Signed "lla "That had to have been wnt'en ty trie la'e Ha Corbin, who w th her husband and other members of the family ran the local telephone company founded by her tamer in law J N Corbin wno also fouriaed this newspaf er in 1896 Ha was a great friend and mentor She was alw rys dropping me notes or calling to gve me tips and advice It was al ways frierto'y and helpful laced wan lias great sense cf humor Here s what trie clipping said There are many toys in runninQ a newspaper But getting out a publication is no picnic we porn jokes people say we are si'.ly. It we do n t we are loo serious If we stick close to the office, We ought to be around hustling material, it we go out we should be on the job in the office It we don t print contributions, we don't appreciate genius And it we do, the paper is filled with junto if we edd the other fellow s write-up- , we're too critical It we don t we re asleep If we cup items from other papers we are too lazy, If we don t we re stock with our own stuff1 Now likely as noi some guy will say we swiped this from We Did1 another paper1 ve tried on a number of occasions to face up to the need to clean out that overflowing drawer It is so bad can t even find a paper clip when need one haven't used a fountain pen tor 20 years, but there must have been a dozen in there, along wuh a mostly dried up bottle of royal blue fountain pen ink may get around to tne task some day but the thought overwhelms me would hate to leave it to others when Im gone, but that may happen If so, I hope they just dump the whole thing in the waste basket. There can t be anything in there of real value I If I I I L I OUR. I I I I I nk TOWN A LOOK. BACK.WAR.D'I H0U)THC RlO evcriNCT. RWER GIANT SQOAWFlSH BECAME Idle Thoughts from Mt. Waas by Ollic Harris Ages and stages On the other hand, endurance may be one of the last to go will never again be the first to the top of the mountain, but given enough time, I can still get there. I read an interesting comment about endurance in the context of mountain bike racing. There was a newcomer on the scene, a young dynamo from Europe, as I recall. An a champion of many races, was asked what he thought of the new guy He said that he thought he could beat him because he was, after all, only 20. The young may have marvelous strength and speed Endurance takes time to develop St rength begins to taper off somewhere in the 30s and 40s This concerns me just a little because I have this great desire to haul a lot of firewood this summer. I prefer to cut standing, dead aspen I like to cut them into eight-foo- t lengths, stand them on end, balance them on my shoulder and carry them one at time, to the trailer It seems more efficient to carry them in eight-foo- t lengths than it is to cut them into stove lengths and then carry and throw the pieces to the trailer The problem is that the last two loads I hauled really wore me out I was completely hammered by the time I had the trailer loaded. Im not sure what to make of the changes in balance that come to an old guy They are more subtle than some of the others I have noticed that when I hike in rugged, uneven terrain, I do not feel as secure as I used to Boulder hopping, or making my way through downed timber, do not come w ith the same, fluid grace as they once did. I've never made much of flexibility Most of my cise-related injuries have occurred while stretching. Stretching is overrated Regardless, most of the physical deterioration that comes with aging can be beaten back, at least for a few precious years, by consistent exercise. So, I guess that my next bike ride up the mountain road will be my make jokes about bee inning an old guv Theexilo-ratioof all this creeping mobility ami disability and deterioration is charting new territory for me Hut, after all, Im not really that old I mean, mv parents are still living and they are both older than am There isn't that much difference in my mother s ape and none I'm closer in ape to her than I am to mv youngest sihlmps A time or two I have introduced my mother as my sister, Ileen " It tic kies her In fact, I'm going to share with you one of the fundamental principles I have discovered about guessing peoples ages You always guess the young ones old and the old ones young I promise, you can t go wrong with this, and it may even spare you some embarrassment For example, I once knew an older fellow from Texas He was the stereotypical Texan through and through He was tall and gangly, wrinkled and tanned, and full of bull He once asked tne, Jes' him of dvou think I ayamr I figured he was about 70 so I knocked 10 years off, guessed 60, and offended him because he was 58 He shouldn't have asked I was grinding along on my bicycle a couple of eveago, heading up the mountain road for the umteen-jilliontnings time, pondering some of the physical changes that are part of the process of becoming an old guv I think of physical fitness as being comprised of speed, balance, strength, enduranre and flexibility For most people, the first of these to go is probably speed In my case, speed was not the first to go because I never had it to begin with Mv dad. in his simple wisdom explained to me that I would lie last if just didn't run so long in one place Hut, you have to distinguish quickness from speed I w as fairly quick It took only an instant for me to be at top speed It s just that top speed wasn't anything to brag about I 1 n 1 h exer- 1 (Die umteen-jillion-and-fir- dimes-htbeuenbe- Jr nt ) UPS) Entered as Second class Matter at the Post Office at Moab, Utah under the Act Second class postage paid at Moab, Utah 84532. Official City and County Newspaper. Published each Thursday at: 35 East Center Street, Moab, Grand County, Utah 84532 6309-2000- i Postmaster: Send changes of March 3, 1897. address: editormoabtimes.com of address to The Member PO. Box 129, Moab, Times-lndependen- t, or FAX 5 UT 84532 1 NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION and UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION Samuel J. and Adrien F.Taylor, Publishers SenaT. Flanders, Editor Tom Taylor Zane Taor. Ron Flanders Franklin Seal Usa Church Mary Wright Sadie Warner OorcShy And non Circulation Manager, T-- l Maps Press, Production Manager Systems Manager News Writer News Writer Advertising Representative Real Estate Weekly, Design Mail Room Supervisor Jose Churampt, Stan Zook... Kelly Ericson, Bobbie Domemck, Jed Taylor Backshop Ken Davey, Carrie Mossien News Writers Layne Miller Regional Correspondent Green River Correspondent Betty Bailey Ron Drake Castle Valley columnist Ron George Columnist Oliver Harris Columnist Distribution The West defies political stereotypes Id Quillen by As good Aim endure a presidenalso tolerate the analysis that nidus, we not orly tial election, but we emerges afterward This time around, the right thinking pundits couldnt accept the simple fact that the 2000 presidential election was one of the closest in history Instead, they look d for a mandate for the w inner, and found one in acreage As Maik Steyn explained in the Dec 4, 2000, edition of the conservative National Re i lew, 677 counties voted for (loie 2,434 for Bush, and the Gore counties cover 580,134 square miles, the Bush counties, 2,427,039 square miles He seems to think that the federal constitution starts with We, the townships and sections of the United States," rather than We, the people of the Lmted States Steyn went on to discover a geographic pattern Gore carried states in the Northeast, around the Great Lakes, and along the Pacific Coast. The interior where we live is part of a big Republican L running dow n the Rockies and sweeping through the South This also came to the attention of another conservative publication, the Wall Sireet Journal, which on Jan. 19 published an article by a staff reporter, John Harwood He wrote that our Republican zone is part of a nation split not by economics or politics so much as by culture. On one side is the America Mr Bush already identifies with; m8inly rural, religiously observant, devoted to traditional notions of marriage and morality. On the other is the group he is reaching out to: largely urban, secular, tolerant of feminism and gay rights." While this reads well, and fits nicely with common stereotypes about how traditional virtues thrive in the hinterlands, it has one big problem with the Mountain West. It isnt true. Start with the rural" part of the Bush political domain. According to the Census Bureau, 79 9 percent of all Americans live in one of the countrys 256 standard metropolitan statistical areas. But in many of our states, the urban percentage is even higher: 87 6 percent in Arizona, 85 7 percent in Nevada and 84 0 percent in Colorado At 77 1 percent, Utah conies close to the national average. And besides, if rural means Republican," w hy does America's most rural state, Vermont (only 27 7 perctnt urban) keep electing socia1ists and independents So were not especially rural How wholesome are we in other respects? The most recent available statistics for church membershtp are fom 1990, so theyre not all that recent But at that time, 52 7 percent of Americans belonged to a Christian church or attended one regularly The only Western states that exceeded the national average for church membership and attendance were New Mexico (58 3) and Utah (79 6) both founded by religious colonists As for the rest of us, its a wonder that we dont see more missionaries on our doorsteps, because were about as heathen as Americans get Only 50 4 percent of Idahoans and only 47 6 percent of Wyomingites belonged or attended regularly In Montana, it was 42 7 percent, in Arizona, 411 percent, ,n Colorado, 37 8 percent, in Nevada, 29 6 percent Nor is the Mountain West a zone of stable marriages. Tiie American average in 1997 was 3 3 divorces per 1,0(0 population Nine of our states is below that average, not even Utah, which had 4 4 divorces ja r 1,000 residents 33 percent higher than the national average. Our other states range from 4 6 in Montana to 10 4 in Nevada TJie West leads the nation in drug-arrerates, and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration recently announced that Colorado leads the nation in marijuana use Amendment Colorado voters did pass the anti-ga2 in 1992, but history says the Mountain West is tolerant of feminism," in that women first voted in Wyoming in 1869, and the next states to adopt female suffrage were Colorado, Utah and Idaho The Mountain West does vote Republican in national elections. There's no argument about that. But those East Coast pundits need to find another explanation for our voting patterns inside the vertical part of the Republican L." We are less rural, less religious, and less devoted to traditional notions of marnage and morality" than the rest of America. Its time for them to find another stereotype. Ed Quillen is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (www.hcn org). He lives columns each in Sahda, Colo., where he writes two op-eweek for the Denver Post and publishes Colorado Central Magazine. y |