Category Archives: Current Events

Rocky Flats Museum Update

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Murph Widdowfield is the Board President of the Museum and recently sent an update. He first gave a brief history of the development of the atom bomb and how it changed the outcome of World War II. He then thanked “…the people who worked in the nuclear industry and the others who protected us during the period of the Cold War for their efforts, safety, and labor…”

He added a paragraph that I will quote in its entirety about progress on a visitor center at Rocky Flats. “I also want to tell you about the progress of a Visitors Center at Rocky Flats which will be built by US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on the Refuge.  A site selection contractor and USFWS have determined that the building will be on the North side of the refuge, with the entrance on Highway 128, a little West of McCaslin Blvd.  The building will not be large with most of the displays based on the refuge with a very small area for the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum.  Also, the new Green Way Trail from Rocky Mountain Arsenal through the Two Ponds Wildlife Refuge in Arvada, up to Boulder and then on up to Rocky Mountain National Park will cross over the northern side of the wildlife refuge although it will bypass the new Visitors Center.”

You can email the museum at info@rockyflatsmuseum.org.

Physician-Assisted Suicide Bill Dies in Colorado

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Supporters of the “End of Life Options Act” in the Colorado legislature caved in to politics and moved the bill off the legislative calendar. The act was “…closely modeled after the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon, which has worked well for 17 years, without a documented case of abuse or coercion.” The proposed law would have allowed “…mentally capable, terminally ill adults the option to request a doctor’s prescription for medication they could take if their suffering becomes unbearable, to painlessly and peacefully die in their sleep.”

The failure of the Colorado legislature to act is a classic case of political special interests successfully trumping public opinion. A poll had indicated 68 percent of Coloradans wanted a right-to-die law, but it was not to be. Legislators who were inclined to support the bill were fearful that their support would be used against them in their quest to be re-elected. Thus we have the perfect example of what is wrong with our political system. Our elected officials were willing to put their political careers ahead of the will of the people.

Terminal illness does not discriminate. All of us will die, and some of us will die comfortably and peacefully. Others will die after experiencing extreme suffering. The actions by the Colorado legislators will require those who wish to make our own end of life decision to take a trip to Oregon.

Water from the Sky, Water from the Ground

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I grew up in New York State. If a stream ran through my property there, I could pump water out of it.

Not so in Colorado or many other states. Every drop of water out west belongs to someone: As it falls from the sky, as it runs across the land, as it sinks into aquifers. There’s a saying in Colorado that “whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting.” In Colorado, people still shoot each other over water. The Great American Desert never disappeared and may be coming back with rising temperatures and increased drought.

I had to learn that it’s illegal to have a rain barrel in Colorado – illegal to collect the rain that fell on my roof. Not that county sheriffs spent a lot of time searching for scofflaws – but it was unexpected for many transplant like myself.

But that’s about to change.

Danielson of Wheat Ridge and state Rep. Daneya Esgar of Pueblo sponsored a bill in the Colorado Legislature, House Bill 16-1005 (pdf), that would allow homeowners to collect rain from a residential rooftop. The bill passed the state House with overwhelming bipartisan support on Feb. 29, and passed the state Senate 27-6 on April 1. It’s now waiting for Gov. John Hickenloope to sign it into law.

Homeowners will be limited to 110 gallons of storage capacity, but this represents a change in the state. It represents some compromises – a bad word in some people’s mind these days. But Colorado is not alone:

Record droughts and a host of other water-supply worries have prompted numerous other states [15!] to enact laws that impact the use of rain barrels

Climate change, drought, and population growth is impacting the land we love. This will force us to confront water issues whether we like it or not. I live in southwest New Mexico now, with no irrigated “yard” at all and only container-raised herbs and one or two tomatoes each year. But I still own Colorado water rights, still marvel at how cheap it is to lease water for alfalfa and how expensive it is to buy water for a home.

We have some hard choice to make in the future, some choices about priorities – lawns vs food vs hay vs tradition vs cities vs… I don’t know what. There will be losers and winners, but it’s a topic we must address.

Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025

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suicide-of-superpowerBefore I get into the review, I have an announcement for frequent readers. I’ve decided to spend less time on reading and reviewing books and more time working on my new book about the Rocky Flats Plant and the Cold War. We intend to maintain a regular once a week schedule for expressions and commentaries, which might be associated with something that I’m drafting for the book. We will continue to do book reviews when we feel the urge, but it undoubtedly won’t be once a week. That notice made me want to spend more time working on the Rocky Flats book and less time on this review. This might be a short review for such a long and data-rich book.

The book by Patrick J. Buchanan is not a fun book to read. It chronicles numerous aspects of American life and government that are in decline or collapse. It is well over 400 pages of despair. I was curious whether Buchanan would provide any hope at the end of the book, and I must say the hope offered by the final paragraph is tepid, at best. “And the crises that afflict us—culture wars, race division, record deficits, unpayable debt, waves of immigration, legal and illegal, of people never before assimilated, gridlock in the capital, and possible defeat in war—may prove too much for our democracy to cope with. They surely will, if we do not act now.” It’s tough to find a positive message in that, especially with our dysfunctional government and (commentary alert) lack of leaders willing to submit themselves to our increasingly brutal election process.

I must admit that I’ve never been a “Buchanan fan,” although I also admit that reading this book made me admire his ability to identify and explain important historical facts despite that they aren’t fun reading. I’ll give the example of “Fruits of Free Trade” that begins on page 15. Buchannan mentions it could be more appropriately titled, “An Index of the Decline and Fall of Industrial America.”

  • From 2000 to December 2010, industrial production fell for the first time since the Depression and America lost 3 million private sector jobs
  • One in three manufacturing jobs disappeared
  • We ran trillions of dollars in trade deficits
  • China now holds the mortgage on America
  • Etc.

The most disturbing comment is that “…the cumulative current account deficit of the United States from 2000 through the third quarter of 2010 exceeded $6 trillion. To finance it, we had to borrow $1.5 billion abroad every day for ten years.” (Emphasis added) Continue reading →

Government Support of Rugged Individualism

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VillaUncleSamBerrymanCartoonMy recent review of The Oregon Trail couldn’t cover everything – it’s a long and interesting book. But I found this fascinating:

With reference to the Pacific Wagon Road Act of 1857, author Rinker Buck notes that “among other improvements to the trail… [it] became one of the largest government-financed projects of the nineteenth century… This model of government support for a major development project became popular and was accepted as the new norm. Each new phase of frontier growth… was also supported by either outright government subsidies, land giveaways, or federally supported irrigation and bridge-building projects. That was the tradition established by the Oregon Trail and it has always amused me that the myth of ‘rugged individualism’ still plays such a large role in western folklore and American values. In fact, our vaulted rugged individualism was financed by huge government largess.”

I’m no historian, but that resonates for me.

Certainly in my own home area of southwest New Mexico, the federal government conquered Native American and Mexican lands to allow Anglo Americans to move in – perhaps not the history we most wish to brag about. But denying the role of government is simply silly.

We New Mexicans try to come to terms with some of our history – the American town of Columbus recently “celebrated” Pancho Villa’s raid 100 years ago with its Mexican neighbor-town of Palomas. Maybe “celebrated” is wrong because people died – “commemorated”, perhaps – or just found a good reason for a street fair. In 1916, the United States invaded another country to protect its citizens! But today we all remember a freedom fighter for Mexico and our ties across the boarder. BTW – Do you know that American school buses pick up American-born children in Columbus and transport them to Deming every school-day?

When traveling to Palmoas for cheaper drugs or eye-care or dentistry, I always have lunch in Mexico at the Pink Store. If you ever get down here, I recommend it.

Celebrate the rugged pioneers, taciturn cowboys, and self-reliant ranchers – they were all of those things – but remember that without government support, the American West would be a very different place. That’s still true today.

Westward Migration – History and Recreation of Traveling the Oregon Trail

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oregon trailThe Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck offers three travel tales braided together. There is the westward migration of Americans starting around 1840; the tale of Buck’s own crossing of the old trail with a mule team and wagon; and memories of his father’s horse and mule, wagon and carriage adventures – and unresolved father issues.

Buck decided to make “an authentic crossing of the Oregon Trail.” In preparation he read many travel diaries and historical accounts. The trail “has been meticulously charted and marked, with long, undeveloped spaces now preserved as a National Historic Trail” but also crossing private land. I was surprised to learn that, “except for two bad stretched of suburban sprawl,” the trail is generally accessible, especially since much of the way is now farm and ranch roads or even paved highways.

Early in the book Buck presents a lengthy story of the brother who accompanied him. The brothers woes of unemployment after the Republican Recession of 2008 and temporary crippling in a building accident segues into the 1840s and 1850s, when “families were disrupted and lives destroyed by the financial panics and bank failures that recurred every decade” further aggravated by “religious squabbling and labor strife” and the political issue of slavery. Migration west became “a safety valve that prevented a calamitous society from imploding.”

Pioneer knowledge has been lost
Buck recounts his efforts to obtain a wagon and mule team – somewhat hard to do since no one does this sort of trip anymore. He’s lucky to have his childhood familiarity with livestock and Amish and Mennonite friends who use horses for farming.

But horses aren’t suited to a long hard trip. Draft horses of the 1800s were “agrarian mastodons” while mules were smarter, tougher, and “the common phrase ‘stubborn as a mule,’ [is] a classic example of a man ascribing stupidity to the beast instead of to himself.”

Buck provides a lot of information about mules. “No less a figure than George Washington was America’s original maharajah of mules… [students don’t know] that the father of their country worked the same day job as Donald Trump. Washington was a land developer.”

I enjoyed this part of Washington’s life, which I hadn’t read about before. Europeans viewed Washington as a hero for defeating the despised British, so in 1785 the king of Spain sent him donkeys as breeding stock for working mules. I’ve met little burro donkeys with backs a bit higher than my waist and big riding donkeys – so different – so I found the descriptions delightful.

Buck also shares his efforts to recreate a suitable wagon, and even diagrams of the triple-tree design for hitching a three-mule team to a wagon. I didn’t know that the term “Conestoga” refers to an eastern cargo wagon that played almost in role in the western migration, or that the first factory assembly line produced wagons, not Ford cars. There’s even a side trip through how building the famous eastern canal system helped evolve a practical wagon.

After a hundred pages, the journey west begins
There’s a lot of information from trail diaries on the trip west. Runaway teams, disease, and hunting accidents caused frequent injury and death. Bridges are a special hazard for mules, which “can get a third of the way across… look sideways… panic… and overturn the wagon or crash into cars in an attempt to escape.” Covered bridges prevented this by blocking the animals view – and I thought they were just pretty! Buck includes a story of his father getting a terrified team across a bridge with his kids help.

RVs are a special hazard for Buck. They would often drive slowly very close to the mules to take pictures or drive ahead to stop, nearly blocking the road, to take more pictures as Buck drove by. He calls RVer men who wanted to make jokes about the wagon as “himbos,” as a play on “bimbos.”

An amazing woman pioneer
The westward migration was a huge change from fur traders and “backwoodsmen like Daniel Boone [who] could disappear into the great forests for months alone. Carrying just a small haversack, a musket, and a long knife.” But in 1836 there was “enormous prejudice against” white women going west with their husbands. This led into a wonderful tale of Narcissa Prentis, the firs white woman to cross the Rockies. She married a fellow missionary – apparently for the convenience of both – and sent installments of her diary back east with various fur traders they encountered who were headed that way. (People seemed to take the burden of delivering letters very seriously.)

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