Friday, October 5, 2018

~~BEAR ESSENTIALS: Oct. 5, 2018~



Life in the West

·       Get Informed about Propositions you’ll be Voting on – Before your Ballot Comes!
·       Selling San Juan County Part II: The Gentrification of the New West: a la Moab, Durango, Jackson Hole
~Lynn Jackson, former Grand County Councilman: “It’s all rather confusing to me. San Juan doesn’t want to become another Moab, yet they are following the exact blueprint that got Moab on its path to progressive nirvana. Welcoming and supporting outdoor environmental education programs and investments, providing support for building mountain bike trails, hiring an economic development coordinator with deep ties to the megalithic outdoor recreation industry, and creating a tourism slogan that’s over the top, in this case ridiculously over the top. “Make it Monumental” is just hard to figure, sending the message you’re all good with monuments down there, in light of what’s gone in the last 18 months? San Juan, looks like you’re well on your way, following the recipe exactly.“

~In discussing Springdale, Utah and Nat’l Parks: “Yale professor James Scott argues that ancient cities were walled not just to keep invaders out, but to keep the slaves whose labor the elites depended upon in.  The modern city has improved upon the ancient model by replacing physical walls with nifty technologies like exclusionary zoning, subsistence wages and commuting.  This framework guarantees the provision of all the poorly compensated labor necessary to sustain a bourgeois utopia with virtually none of the pesky visual evidence of actual poverty or hassles of chattel slavery.  Win-win.”  

~Stacy Young: “Both Blanding and Monticello have had about the same population since 1980, and the relationship between incomes and the cost of living in both towns is rational and predictable.  In fact, the average household in each of these towns earns significantly more than their counterparts in the more trendy towns (Moab)  of the region, and this remains the case despite the sagging fortunes of extractive industries in the county over the past 30 years.  Of course, this relative wealth advantage is further boosted, by a lot, when it is adjusted for the disparity in the cost of living between, say, Monticello and Moab. The disinvestment and depopulation crisis that defines much of rural America does not really describe conditions in San Juan County.”
 
n  Tired of contention and strife: Follow San Juan Connections, and  share your own connection story
At Neldon Cochran's funeral and viewing, October 7, 2017, I visited with Jodi Laws Cochran. As an Air Force pilot, her husband Jerry has been assigned all over world, yet everywhere they went they met people with Blanding connections. She suggested I collect stories with that theme. I thought it was a great idea, and with everyone's help, it is becoming a reality. This blog is dedicated to Jodi and Jerry Cochran, the impetus for making it happen. Enjoy.  Please share additional “connections.”

~~ It was arranged for the USC students to be featured on the PBS News Hour. Their task was to fairly portray, to a national audience, the ongoing complex political and cultural clashes and controversies in San Juan County-- and do it in five minutes and forty-eight seconds.”   Such is the shallowness of television coverage dealing with controversy!  Stiles’ article provides links to the PBS slanted coverage. With due respect to the college team:  what they originally submitted was 11 minutes long, but  PBS kept hacking away!


The size and complicated logistics of Navajo Reservation polices and politics deserved to be included in the PBS video, as well as how and why they consider themselves a sovereign nation and how that impacts county government in four states                                                                                       

“Conservation and Indian groups say the Antiquities Act doesn't allow Trump or any other president to revoke or shrink an existing monument.”
~~~~~~~
n Read Past Editions of Bear Essentials at: http://beyondthebears.blogspot.com/
Documenting Bears Ears Controversy and Public Land Issues since July 2016
                                                                                                  

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