Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

Karen and I love the canyon country of southern Utah. Last November, we spent three weeks hiking in the five national parks that span the state from west to east.  We drove from Tucson north to Phoenix and up, up to Sedona and Flagstaff, rising 6,000 feet out of the polluted desert developments and into the ponderosa forests underneath the sacred San Francisco peaks. Interstate 89 takes you from Flagstaff, still straight north, through the ravaged and strange Navajo Nation, every Indian family, it seems, in a pickup truck. Off to the west is the Colorado, mother river of the desert canyons, faucet to the big desert cities and the irrigated mono-crop farms that give us our greens in winter. If you have time, you can turn off 89—a few miles south of Page,  a town built in the late 1950s to house the workers building the infamous Glen Canyon Dam (see Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang for the awful details)—onto 89A, and head down toward the river. Stop beyond the Navajo Bridge just a few miles south of Lee’s Ferry and learn about the area’s history at the Interpretative Center. Then head west, climbing out of the canyon, from where you can go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon via Highway 67, or stay on 89A to Fredonia, then take Highway 389 along the Arizona Strip to the renegade Mormon “twin towns” of Colorado City, Arizona and Hillsdale, Utah. Here you will see gigantic houses, with rooms enough for the multiple wives and numerous children of the family patriarch. Polygamy is common here, and this is where the notorious Mormon apostate Warren Jeffs ruled over his disciples. The official average income here is very low, but this belies the reality of many legally unrecognized wives receiving public assistance. Arizona 389 becomes Utah 59 and this eventually takes you to Hurricane, Utah (pronounced Hurricun), a short distance from Zion, the first of the national parks we visited on our trip. Read More

The more I read about the state of our colleges and universities, the more thankful I am that I quit my job at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (UPJ) in 2001, after thirty-two years of teaching. I wrote the following essay a dozen years ago, and since then, matters have gotten progressively worse, not just where I worked but at nearly every school in the country. At least I did not have to face the nasty right-wing students who spy on their professors and do the bidding of the professional witch hunters who spew hatred on radio talk shows, and television programs like those hosted by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. Nor did I have to witness the craven capitulation of college administrators to the thought police that we have seen recently. One of the most outrageous cases was the firing of Professor Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado. I was living in Colorado a couple of years ago when he was dismissed. The talk radio shows attacked Churchill every day for at least a year. The alleged reason for the professor’s discharge was academic dishonesty. He was found guilty, for example, of claiming that there was documentation for some things he said in his books when there was not, most notably his charge of intentional genocide perpetrated by the colonists and the U.S. government on American Indians. The administration’s handpicked committees searched through his published works, including the footnotes, to uncover what to me seemed like, at best, academic misdemeanors, such as could be found in nearly every academician’s works. The real reason for going after Churchill was in retaliation for remarks he made after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in which he referred to some of the financial workers in the Twin Towers as “little Eichmanns.” Remarkably, these comments went virtually unnoticed for several years, until a few little-known academics and well-known witch hunters went on a rampage of public assaults on Churchill’s 9/11 essay and on his academic integrity. Once this orchestrated war got underway, all hell broke loose. The governor of Colorado even phoned the university’s chancellor and demanded that Churchill be fired. After this, a chain of events took place that made a mockery of due process. Right now, Churchill’s civil suit is winding down in a Denver courtroom. There is a good chance he will win, and I hope he does. [NOTE: JUST AFTER I POSTED THIS, THE JURY RULED IN CHURCHILL'S FAVOR!  HOWEVER, THEY AWARDED HIM NO PUNITIVE DAMAGES.  AS I UNDERSTAND IT, BACKPAY AND REINSTATEMENT ARE UP TO THE JUDGE.  THE UNIVERSITY WILL HAVE TO REIMBURSE CHURCHILL'S ATTORNEYS FEES, WHICH ARE SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.]  But imagine the chilling impact of this case on the willingness of professors, especially those without tenure, to speak truth to power. Read More