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Show THE ZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2005-JANUARY 2006 TAKE IT OR DFAA ae Sie THE CANYON COUNTRY iG PO BOX 327 MOAB, UTAH 84532 Jim Stiles, publisher By Jim Stiles 435.260.1273 www.canyoncountryzephyr.com eczephyr@frontiernet.net moabzephyr@yahoo.com contributing writers Ken Sleight Martin Murie Ned Mudd Barry Scholl Chinle Mille Scott Silver Philip Hyde Lance Christie Wendell Berry Erica Walz of his former aids have DIED under mysterious circumstances? Maybe they’re afraid to speak the truth!” The musical prompt that ends each segment of the show could be heard now, and Rush, over the closing yelled, “Just a thought..Just a thought.” When the program returned after the news and commercials, he never mentioned it again. But he’d planted a seed in the minds of his “ditto heads,” totally fabricated and hateful and false, but well-planted and nourished just the same. And yet his audience is dominated by conservative Americans who would overwhelmingly call themselves Christians. And not just Christians. “Good” Christians. The ones who look disparagingly at liberals and Democrats. Who think anyone left of Center is a traitor to Jesus himself. | actually have an evangelical relative who thinks it’s impossible for a Democrat to go to Heaven. He really says that. So the other day, I’d found Limbaugh again on the dial-he’s everywhere out here in the Rural West—and he was actually talking on the air with one of those God Forsaken |. MY BUDDY HERB RINGER.. It’s hard to believe that seven years have passed since my friend Herb Ringer died in December 1998. For those of you who are long-time readers and familiar with the Herb Ringer Story, bear with me. For those of you hearing of Herb for the first time, let me introduce you to a wonderful and gentle soul who was a dear friend of mine for almost 20 years. I met Herb when I was a ranger at Arches in the early 80s. He was traveling alone with his Burmese cat Namtu and had settled into site #19 to stay a week or two. I met him that night as I made the rounds collecting fees. Herb was concerned about the camping limit but I told him he could stay as long as he wanted. He was the kind of camper that I wished could stay all season. the artist John Depuy historic photographs Herb Ringer (1913-1998) We became great friends over the years. He visited me each spring and autumn as he made his yearly jaunt across the country to visit relatives back east. When he was 81, macular degeneration forced him to quit driving and he spent his last four years in Fallon, Nevada. I visited him there as often as I could and we remained close until his death. Heathens. Rush’s screeners rarely let a liberal make it on the air and when they do, it’s usually the kind of liberal that even a liberal takes cover from—the whiny emotional, fact-deprived Zephyr pilot & aerial reconaissance Paul Swanstrom Zephyr Transportation Fleet Specialists Gene Schafer Tom Wesson Lefty who does more damage than good when he or she gets to defend the liberal cause. This particular caller was complaining about the separation of Church and State or the growing lack of it in the Bush Administration. The sacrificial lib noted that the laws of the nation should not be based on religious teachings, and in particular, the Bible. Limbaugh protested. “How can you say something like that?” Limbaugh countered. “Look at the Ten webmaster Gary Henderson Commandments! That's just a good set of values about how to live a good life! How can that be wrong?” The caller didn’t realize it but he had Limbaugh. He had him completely. And he let the moment pass. Subscriptions. & transeriptions Linda Vaughan circulation JA Bryan Lance Lawrence Jose Churampi Mark Anderson Kathy Aldous THE ZEPHYR, copyright 2006 The Zephyr is published six times a year at Moab, Utah. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of its vendors, advertisers, or even at times, of its publisher. All photos and cartoons are by the publisher unless otherwise noted So do most liberals, who are so busy maintaining their own ideological separation of church and state turf that they can’t see the broader implication of such a comment. Herb & me in t It’s so simple. What’s the...is it the third commandment? “Thou shalt not kill.” We shared a love of history and when he began to show me his incredible collection of photographs and journals, thoughts If we're supposed to love our enemies, why do we fight so many wars? If we're supposed to turn the other cheek, why do we have the death penalty? and images of an American Past that few now recall, | knew he could play a vital part in this newspaper. I began sharing those words and pictures in the first issues of The Zephyr and they have been a regular feature ever since. Sometimes I like to give Herb more than just a page and so this issue contains nine pages of “vintage Herb.” I still strongly believe that there’s a book here; in fact, many of the pages offered in this issue were originally prepared as part of a book proposal. The publisher came close to proceeding with the project but backed out at the last moment. Iam convinced there must be a publisher out there who sees the value in It doesn’t get any clearer than that. It doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill, except when the national security of the United States is threatened.” And it doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill unless the other guys started it.” And it definitely doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill thousands of innocent civilians unless it protects the vital vested interests of the United States.” sharing this man’s images with a culture that has become so disconnected from its past. How can we possibly hope to make this a country worth living in again if we don’t recall what was lost? “The Open Road” with Herb Ringer begins on page 15. We took away their country, broke up their mode of living, aye aeRO Ln introduced disease and decay. And it was for this and against this, that they make war. COfOTNeMart colar ood elec (coy stunning to realize, however, (but that was mostly because I had a crush on Jayne Novicki). that 20 million listeners tune in swallow his rhetoric whole and how many, like me, require many grains of salt to wash down his rants. About a year ago, the Limbaugh Show was nearing the top of the hour, a minute or so from a hard break and Rush shared with his audience a fact that he found bewildering. He noted that most aids to former President Clinton who wrote books leader. Meanwhile, Rush observed, almost all of President George W. Bush’s assistants who had left the administration and who had chosen to write their own books 1869 times, which is why I usually steer clear of the Old Testament. To be honest, I’m not a very religious person and am not that well-versed in either of the Testaments. I grew up in the Methodist Church and went to Sunday School until I was 17 to this gas bag each day and I wonder how many of them their U.8. Army must have heard, “an eye for an eye,” invoked a thousand IT’S CHRISTMAS: WILL THE REAL JESUS PLEASE STAND UP? Every once in a while, when I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I’ll power up the AM radio and overdose for a few hours on non-stop vitriol from my buddy Rush Limbaugh. I long ago quit taking his venomous diatribes personally (or seriously) and now try to view his bellicose blatherings in the spirit of goofball entertainment. It is still about their time in the White House almost always defended OTA Ma LCE There are no caveats. No exceptions to the rule. Still, in the Old Testament, there are enough contradictory passages to confuse anyone. In the wake of September 11, I had offered scathing assessments of their ex-boss. How could this be, Rush wondered? Here is a known womanizer and liar and his former aids love him, complains Limbaugh. And here’s George W., a man of unquestionable high moral values and ethics and his staff loathes him. Limbaugh paused a moment as the clock moved toward the break. “Could this loyalty to Clinton come from the fact that many — * As an adult, I rarely go to church. In fact, I think the last time I attended services was a decade ago when I visited my buddy pastor Don Falke at his new parish in Pineland, Texas. He’d previously served a few years in Moab and never could get me to attend when he was just down the street. But I did pick up enough information as a kid to be thoroughly confused. On the one hand, Christianity at its core seemed to embrace the message of Love and Tolerance and, there’s no, other way to put it—Non-violence. Anyone who gets even a primer in the Gospels remembers that if slapped on one cheek, we’re supposed to turn and offer the other and that we’re supposed to love our enemies as we love our friends. So as a child, the contradictions were stark. If we’re supposed to love our enemies why do we fight so many wars? If we’re supposed to turn the other cheek, why do we have the death penalty? The hypocrisy was unavoidable and my questions on the subject usually drew blank stares or shrugs of the shoulder. No one could explain this strange duality to me. Decades passed and I can’t say that I spent much of my time agonizing over those contradictions. But in the last |