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Show Page A10 (The September 12, 2002 tltiuf-3uhrpfnii- Idle Thoughts from Mt. Waas OURTOWW by Ollie Harris Fear and bravery ere recently camped on the shoulder of the mountain, three couples of us, high enough to escape the lowland heat. It was high enough to require a wrap as we sat around in the cool evenings telling stones, high enough that the nights were chilly. Our day s w ere spent poking about here and there, exploring new trails and old, watching diminutive mule deer elk. We were fawns and giant, told to be careful because a bear w as persistently visiting our campground The alarmist campground host was far more annoying than the bear We heard later that the bear was destroyed. Too bad. Sooner or later, as it seems natural that it must, the evening yarns turned toward those experiences that have stirred terror deep in our hearts. I dont mean those fleeting moments of startle that rip a coarse scream from the throat, such as the time I w as not paying attention and had to be reminded by a rattlesnake that I had better not put my foot exactly w here I intended. We heavy-antlere- d Such moments are instantly recognized as harmless even though in your intense excitement you thoroughly kill the snake when all along you knew that there were snakes about and you had planned to leave them unmolested and you regret killing it but the g&! thing had rattling. Children arent happy with nothing to that's what parents were created for." Purityls obscurity." Me cow is of the bovine ilkOne end is moo, I I ties are. Candy is dandyBut liquor is quicker." the other milk." Nash came from old Southern stock moved North. His family tree included General Francis Nash, the namesake of Nashville, Tenn., and North Carobrother Abner, a Revolutionary-er- a lina governor. At age 28, young Ogden seemed bound for failure. His one year at Harvard was followed by unsuccessful stints at teaching, bond selling and advertising. Then, in 1 930, he sold a poem to New Yorker magazine. (It commenced, sit in an office at 244 Madison AvenueAnd say to myself You have a responsible job, havenue?) From there on, Nash was in increasingly deep clover. He staffed with the magazine, authored 20 bestselling volumes of verse and lectured all across America. Fame attained, he became lyricist for Broadways One Touch of Venus (1943) which ran for 567 performances and included the haunting ballad Speak Low.Hollywood's version of Venus (1948) featured Ava Gardner, Dick Haymes and Eve Arden. Nashs works remain available from booksellers. The Selected Poetry of Ogden Nash, published hardbound by Black Dog and Leventhal, contains 650 rhymes, verses, lyrics and poems." Although a Democrat by heritage and inclination, Nash generally viewed practical politics with a skeptics eye. For example, he reflected, Discretion is the better part of virtue Commitments the voters dont know about wont hurt you." National Prohibition, which he opposed, engaged Nash in 1 928 presidential politics as an active supporter of "wet" Democratic nominee Al Smith. Years later, still irked at a New York City dailys efforts for the triumphant GOP oplookponent, he complained, Like an in Is the New the Louvre ing at the Mona Lisa York Herald Tribune looking at Mr. Herbert Houvre." Utah's longtime Senator Reed Smoot was another Republican who incurred Nashs ire When Smoot proposed a tariff ban on offensive" books, Nash riposted, in part, Gird up your loinsSmite hip and thighWeH all be Utah No McTavishls ever lavish. A child need not be very cleverTo learn that Later, dear' means Never. God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why most everyone, recalling Ogden Nash, does so with a hearty chuckle and a knowing srmie. 15-acr- e long-tim- t, semi-retire- 18-ho- le Recalling Ogden Nash by Kent Shearer A current U S postal commemorative hon- art-lov- ors humorist Ogden Nash (1902-70whose poetry focused on middle class foibles and fashions. The stamp portrays a bemused, bespectacled Nash, posed before a backdrop of his rhymes. Alas, the typeface is too tiny to identify precisely individual verses. Leading possibili), Hie (Eunrs-3JubqJcnbn- LIS er By and by." But, in the main, Nash commented upon the passing cultural, not political, scene. Thus today tt ISSN Entered as Second class Matter at the Post Office at Moab. Utah under the Act of March 3, 1897. 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 t of 1538-183- 8 6309-200- address: editor moabtimes.com ail Postmaster. Send changes address to. The Member ' d High Country News JL Writers on toe Range A modest forest proposal for by Jeff Golden President Bush just whistled through southern Oregon for a quick look at our catastrophic wildfires and a 435-259-77- NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION policy ad- gation." His boldness inspires me to come right out and say it publicly: I, too, support common sense. This is an old movie for us in the Northwest. Part of what made the late-80- s spotted owl struggle so hard was political leadership that chose platitudes over thinking. With that sorry experience under our belts, what if this time we did it differently? First, we can stipulate that all of us are for common sense and the rest of the good stuff: healthy forests, good jobs, clean watersheds and wildlife habitat, secure rural communities and reasonable protection from devastating wildfires. Then lets admit that these values can of politicians conflict and spurn the happy-tal- k like President Bush who pretend they dont. Without accepting hard realities, common sense is just an applause line for whistle-stop- s across the rural West. Here are 6ix clear principles that I take as and that I believe informed, realities people across the political spectrum can agree are realities. If we start here, we might have a framework to start crafting the best tradeoffs, ones that will serve most Westerners over the longest period of time. And, we can help our forests, too. fair-mind- ed fire-pro- There are immense accumulations of brush, woody debris and thickets of sun- - and nutrient-starve- d trees that will continue to fuel disastrous wildfires if theyre not reduced. Theres not much controversy left here. Those still swearing it's more natural to leave everything to decay into the forest floor can be counted on the fingers of a few hands. Lets just ignore them as extremists. Since fire resistance and forest resiliency are the real goals, leave large, older trees in place. (You won't find forest scientists arguing much about this one.) Some 19908 forest health projects on federal lands became cover for the logging of e groves that were healthy and sales that wouldnt have gone forward on their own merits. Thats why some forest activists today oppose all commercial sales from fuel reduction projects. Whether their fire-resista- nt -- and PRESS ASSOCIATION Samuel J. and Adrien F. Taylor, Publishers Sena T. Flanders, Editor high-profil- e dress at a county fairgrounds. He repeatedly told a cheering crowd that hes for common sense forest management to end endless liti- high-valu- PO Box 129, Moab. UT 84532 Tmes-independe- or FAX 435-259-75- story-teller- st I I Times-lndependen- No, I mean the kind of fear you entertain when you dont know exactly what is happening, or you know and it isnt good, such as the time I was sleeping alone high in the saddle next to Mt. Tbmasaki in the La Sals and was awakened in the night by what I can only describe as a large mammal sniffing at the tent and then padding away. Like that. My stories are never as good as the other guys. Either that or they are better Such an evening of tales reminds me that all of my adventures and all of my miracles have been t coal-du- wild-haire- to go and mess it all up by coiling as it did and raising its head in that terrifying posture and When I was growing up became an avid reader at an early age. After I graduated from comics, began devouring the magazines my father subscribed to. Of course there was National Geographic, which sometimes shocked me with its graphics Then there was Saturday Evening Post, the Reader's Digest and Farm Journal. Dad was a wannabe farmer, even though he made his living as a newspaper and we had delightful times farmorchard, now Taying together on our lor Subdivision. He always maintained farming was a great way of life if you had some way to make a living He subscribed to Time for many years, but canceled in disgust when that magazine supported Thomas Dewey over Robert Taft for president. Maybe that's why now subscribe to Newsweek. My favorite parts of Reader's Digest were the little short quips at the end of each major story especially the ones by Ogden Nash. One I will never forget was: Shake and Shake the Catsup Bottle. None will come and then a lottal" Friend Kent Shearer, a longtime Salt Lake City attorney, former Republican Party state e chairman, and personal friend, still and we subscribes to The look forward to hearing from him from time to d and living in Porttime. He is now Ore after he lost his where moved he , land, dear wife Alice a number of years ago. Alice, former chairman of the Permanent Community Impact Board, was a real friend of Moab and helped us with a lot of projects from the golf course to the Moab Arts and Recreation Building and the Spanish Trail Arena. Kent sent us a copy this week about Ogden Nash that he had written following a lot of research which he is famous for. It is too good to keep to ourselves, so I hope you enjoy: comparatively little ones. I am just happy to have had a few little adventures and to have experienced those little miracles. A young friend once explained to me that bravery might mean that youre not scared, but probably its when youre scared but you do it anyw ay. It is a perfect definition. If you are not scared, there is no need for bravery. True bravery is w hen you are scared but you do it anyway. I dont know if it was bravery or some other thing that compelled me to do it anyway" when I was a little boy. For example, there was the time my dad took me with him to the coal mine w here he was working in Hay Gulch. He took pie because he needed to meet a man outside the mine. I went far back into the mine with him. Afyer little w hile he gave me a dim flashlight and told me to go out and see if the guy was there yet. It wasnt enough that I was twelve or thirteen and scared of the dark. I le had to shine the light onto blackened face, roll his eyes and, in his fearful voice, tell me to be careful of the a tense, woman that lived in the mine. I did it anyway, studiously not letting the light stray into any of the yawning, black holes running off to the sides. I was nine when we lived far away in the lonely pinions and sagebrush. There were no neighbors. The dog began barking outside one night. My dad rolled his eyes in mock fear and, in that same chilling voice, told me, Go see who that is." I did it anyway but made the mistake of glancing over my shoulder before I opened the door. There, cast upon the wall by the light of the lantern, moved my dads shadow, a hunched monster, arms raised to grab me. It was the one time I was overwhelmed by fear and fled in tears beneath the table. Still, the next time he told me to take a jar and go a quarter of a mile up the road through tall sagebrush at night and get more gas for the lantern, I did it anyway. And I had only recently heard about werewolves, too. President Bush fears are reasonable is beside the point. The jiare fact is there wont be a stable solution until forest-healt- h projects are laid out more transin years past, with independent than parently of monitoring any logging. Plenty of tenacious people have vowed they wont be fooled again. Commercially viable logs can be a byproduct of some ecologically sound forest health projects. Few forest activists dispute this principle intrinsically Their resistance comes from remembering the Trojan Horse abuses of the past. This is the flip side of the previous point, but make all forest projects transparent, and you take care of this. The commercially viable category can grow and generate money for forest health projects, with support and development of technologies for processing and drawing value from small trees. Heres an area where a president committed to common sense could make a big difference. It wouldnt take much in the way of grants or investment tax incentives to turboe technology that's charge the promising from value what used to be already creating waste. And foregoing a single $200 million 2 fighter jet (or any of the other current toys that defense experts judge obsolete) could put 10,000 workers back into the woods to labor-i- n tensively glean more commercial value. An adequate fuel reduction program will cost more than ecologically responsible commercial sales will bring in. We have three choices: We can limit this effort to whatever meager acreage we can fund through sales of lower value wood; we can finance a program by selling off healthy, fire resistant and repeat the pattern that got us here; or we can show that were serious about healing and durably protecting our national forests tax dollars money in by investing general-fun- d them. How? I actually think we could squeak Or 20. (Or by with two or three fewer you could come up with your favorite boonon-sit- F-2- big-leag- old-grow- th s. doggle.) Are these the right starting principles, the ones ripest for broad acceptance? I dont know for sure. What I know is that working through them will better serve forests and ourselves than sermons on who is and who isnt for "common sense. Jeff Golden is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paoraa, Colo, (hcn.org). A former county com- missioner in Ashland, Ore., he hosts The Jefferson Exchange on public radio. UTAH Tom Taytor Circulation Manager, T- Maps Zane Taykx Press, Production Manager Ron FlarxJers Systems Manager Staff Writers Lisa Church. Janet Lowe Jeff Richards Contributing Writer Office Manager Sales design Sadie Warner. -l V Brick Bats and Bouquets .Mai Room Supervisor Dorothy Anderson Vatene Brown. Jed Taylor, Jose Santana.Backshop .Castle Valley columnist Ron Drake Ron George Over Hams Jose Churampi II ...Cofumntst Columnist .Disfftyjtion ' sf ) i Accolades and Admonishment with regard to issues in our community Bouquets to artists and organizers associated with the Moab Music Festi-N- ? al. w ho are finishing up the final week of their 10th season. Bravo! ' |