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Christiane G. Karas specializes in ecologically conscious
properties. including active solar and passive solar construction,
in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Baja California, Mexico
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| Heard Around the West |
| Jonathan Thompson | 2/26/10 |
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| Back to the News Summaries |
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ARIZONA
The Divine Administration’s headquarters sits on 165 acres in the Santa Cruz River valley south of Tucson. There, according to the Arizona Republic, Gabriel of Urantia oversees a religious order of about 100 followers, who believe that Adam and Eve were aliens placed on Earth — or Urantia — 38,000 years ago to help earthlings evolve. True believers, or star seeds, came to Urantia from other universes where polygamy is acceptable, they say (though Colorado City, Ariz., is hardly another universe.) Most worrisome, they believe the apocalypse is just around the corner.
 It is true there have been signs: First, the state has been pummeled by one storm after another. In the south, locust-swarm-like rains swelled arroyos and streams high above flood levels, carrying away debris, cars and wrecking a trailer park. In the north, on the Hopi and Navajo Nations, snowdrifts of up to eight feet high were reported, stranding hundreds in remote homes. Military choppers hauled huge shipments of food, water and even wood to the stranded. But weather is the least of Arizona’s problems. Thousands of homes have been foreclosed upon, and big desert developments remain mostly empty — the hangover from the state’s growth binge is becoming chronic. That has left Arizona’s budget in worse shape than any in the nation outside California.
The state park budget has been slashed by nearly 75 percent, and legislators have resorted to selling off state buildings and cutting services to children and the elderly. It’s gotten so bad that the posh Loews Ventana Canyon Resort near Tucson has dropped the “resort” from its name, a semantic nod to these austere times. (It has not, to our knowledge, dropped its rates.) Meanwhile, the folks of Urantia are apparently doing their part to ease the real estate crisis: The order has bought at least 20 properties in Arizona, valued at over $10 million.
COLORADO
Should the Urantians face persecution for their religious beliefs, they could always consider buying real estate in another part of the West, namely Colorado Springs. There, the U.S. Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worshipping area for “Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers,” according to the Associated Press. The academy has long been criticized for erasing the line dividing church and state in a heavily evangelical Christian-leaning manner. It was recently revealed that the military had been using rifle scopes that were engraved with biblical references by the manufacturer. No word yet on whether any future firearms will be engraved with secret Wiccan code.
ARIZONA
Maybe the rifle-scope references were to the passage in the Old Testament in which God commands his chosen ones: “Thou shalt pack heat in shoulder holsters.” You know, the passage that Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, sponsor of an Arizona bill to allow concealed weapons without a permit, referred to when he told the New York Times, “All we’re doing is handcuffing good people, restricting their constitutional, God-given right to carry (guns) and perhaps their ability to defend their families.”
UTAH
We’re not sure if Utah can help Arizona with its biblical interpretation skills, but it’s got a great idea for those empty mega-homes. The Beehive State is faring better than Arizona financially, but it’s still feeling enough pain to have some vacant McMansions. Rather than leaving them all to the rats, however, at least one landowner is adapting to the times. In 2005, a Salt Lake City contractor combined two lots to build a 16,000-square-foot monstrosity. Things went bad before it was finished, and the hulk remained empty. A new owner is chopping it up and making it into three separate condominiums. “For every problem there is a solution,” new owner Ken Milo told the Salt Lake Tribune.
COLORADO
A solution is what the nonprofit Housing Resources company must have thought it had when it seized the opportunity to buy 30 lots at discount rates in the western Colorado subdivision known as Wine Valley Estates. The once-hot property, destined to be an upscale development with a smattering of 2,000-square-foot homes near the vineyards, had fallen on hard times, with only two homes built so far. Now, the nonprofit plans to put affordable housing on the rest of the subdivision. It’s caused a bit of a ruckus: One of two current homeowners in the subdivision, Kevin Wold, told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: “If they come in here and build here, we’re finished.”
COLORADO/DOWN UNDER
You don’t like your dog chasing wildlife, but you think a shock collar is cruel? A trip to Australia could teach a bad dog a smart lesson. After a Jack Russell terrier, owned by a Colorado couple, tangled with a giant Australian lizard, the lizard was fine, but the dog was a bloody mess. But all was OK because unlike 50 million American humans, the dog had health insurance.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He edits the magazine in Paonia, Colorado. |
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