A MONUMENTAL DIVIDE

By Bill Keshlear San Juan County's elections administrator should be scrupulously neutral. LET ME REPEAT. San Juan County's elections administrator should be scrupulously neutral. In distributing this letter to the editor at early voting locations, John David Nielson, county clerk, was not scrupulously neutral . It was written by Blanding Mayor Joe B. Lyman, one of the sponsors of a ballot question up for a countywide vote on November 5, as a rebuttal to misinformation about the election from chair of the county commission, Kenneth Maryboy. The letter appeared in the San Juan Record. The Utah ACLU performed a public service in raising objections about possible illegal electioneering: “The presence of such material at a polling location raises serious questions about electioneering, defined as a deliberate attempt inside or nearby a polling location to influence voters to vote for a particular candidate or issue.”  The Salt Lake Tribune's writer Zak P...

At the U.N. conference: Eric Descheenie, former Arizona state House representative, Cynthia Wilson, traditional foods program director for Utah Dine Bikeyah, Angelo Baca, cultural resources coordinator for Utah Dine Bikeyah, and Kate Kopischke, moderator and social and environmental safeguard specialist for Green Climate Fund (Kopischke is married to former Salt Lake City mayor Ralph Becker, whose former chief of staff, David Everitt, was hired as interim San Juan County administrator by commissioners Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy, both former board members of Utah Dine Bikeyah). By Bill Keshlear The public relations tactics of the pro-monument activist group Utah Diné Bikéyah and its allies seem limitless. They’ve organized massive rallies, arts and cultural events, academic seminars, and upscale fund-raisers - mostly staged hundreds of miles from Bears Ears National Monument, the Navajo reservation, and the people whose culture they believe is under attack. T...

What happens when people of different cultural backgrounds and political beliefs but a passion for public lands sit down face-to-face and interview each other? This summer, Utah Public Radio has been recording interviews from across the state – including Monticello, Moab, St. George, Cache Valley and Vernal – to find out. They're worth a listen. These conversations were recorded in partnership with  StoryCorps  as a part of its One Small Step project . ____________ Clayton Long and Liz Ballenger Clayton Long lives in Blanding; Liz Ballenger lives in Moab. They met halfway in Monticello, finding common ground for their love of nature and juggling the different cultures introduced to them throughout their lives. Listen to their story. _________ Cindy Perkins and Jeremy Lynch  Cindy Perkins and her family have lived for five generations near Blanding, a community upset by the designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in 2016. Jerem...