UTAH
Legislators representing the Beehive State are quick to lambaste the federal government, but heres the upside to having lots of federal lands: Jobs and money. According to a new report from the Interior Department, Utah is No. 1 in the nation in terms of the benefits it reaps from parks and other public lands managed by the federal agency. In 2010, these recreation areas supported more than 20,000 rural jobs and contributed $1.7 billion to the states economy.
COLORADO
On hot summer days at the Aspen Airport, private planes from all over the world crowd the tarmac. For some reason, the pilot of an eight-seater Citation X decided that the afternoon of July 1 was the perfect time to gun the engines and do a high-powered gauge test. Unfortunately, the pilot failed to notice that the planes engines faced a long-term parking lot. In less than a minute, as many as 30 cars were badly pelted, with seven suffering blown-out windows. Luckily, no one was injured by the rocks that the jets engines flung into the parking lot. Airport director Jim Elwood was quick to assure the Aspen Daily News: This is a highly unusual event to have happen.
ARIZONA
State Sen. Lori Klein, a first-term Republican from Anthem, Ariz., found herself in hot water recently when she pointed a loaded gun at anArizona Republic reporter. I looked down and saw the red dot (from the guns laser feature) on my chest, journalist Richard Ruelas said. Klein explained that it was really his fault for sitting there, and she refused to discuss it further because theres a media feeding frenzy that is driven by a few individuals who never miss the opportunity to advance an anti-2nd-Amendment agenda. Ruelas said he wasnt afraid that Klein would accidentally shoot him with her raspberry-colored .380 Ruger at least not until after the interview, when he learned that the gun was loaded and had no safety device.
THE WEST
Get a grip! A swooping hawk recently started a small fire and cut off power in Silver City, N.M., when it dropped a cottontail rabbit onto the top of a power pole. The rabbit landed on a transformer, shorting it and showering sparks onto the dry weeds beneath it, reports the Daily Press. And in Missoula, Mont., a bald eagle with a dead fawn gripped (sort of) in its talons dropped it onto power lines, causing a half-hour power outage. As an employee for Northwestern Energy put it to the Associated Press, the blackout was caused by a deer with wings.
WASHINGTON
You have to hand it to the 12,000-to-15,000 people who traipse every summer to some national forest usually in the West where they live for a week as reunited friends who call themselves the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Theyve had 40 years of practice, so theyve learned how to avoid leaving a giant mess, the keys being organization and cooperation. This July, their destination was the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in southern Washington, and as members greeted each other with the words Welcome home and We love you, they built mobile kitchens that offered free food, constructed a separate A Camp for alcohol drinkers, and dug slit-trench latrines. Every dog the Forest Service had planned for an estimated one dog for every three people was required to be leashed, and no money changed hands except when a Magic Hat was passed around to buy food and other provisions, reports the Seattle Times. After the gathering of wannabe and old-time hippies concluded with a peace circle, site restoration began in earnest and included reseeding with an approved Forest Service seed mix. If tradition holds, the evidence of occupation will soon disappear. When the Rainbow Gathering ended three years ago in the Ochoco National Forest in central Oregon, a Forest Service ranger told The Oregonian: Im impressed. I never thought this place would recover so quickly.
NEW MEXICO
Academics often write books when theyre not teaching, but not F. Chris Garcia, 71, a political scientist and the former president of the University of New Mexico. His part-time job involved recruiting prostitutes online. This June, Garcia was arrested and charged with promoting prostitution, conspiracy and tampering with evidence, reports The New York Times. Garcia was reportedly working for David Flory, 68, a physics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey who owns a second home in New Mexico. Flory has been charged with 40 felony counts for setting up Southwest Companions, a website that connected some 200 prostitutes with as many as 1,400 customers.
Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (betsym@hcn.org). Photos and tips of Western weirdness are always appreciated and often shared.
