A MONUMENTAL DIVIDE

"Long before your Luddite friend was waxing poetic about how blissful it is to not have a smartphone, Luddites were protesting the textile machinery that was slowly replacing them. It was toward the end of 1811, in the vicinity of Nottingham, England, when handicraftsmen formed organized bands and began to riot for the destruction of the new machinery. Their name is of uncertain origin, but it may be connected to a (probably mythical) person named Ned Ludd. According to an unsubstantiated account in George Pellew's Life of Lord Sidmouth (1847), Ned Ludd was a Leicestershire villager of the late 1700s who, in a fit of rage, rushed into a stocking weaver's house and destroyed his equipment; subsequently, his name was proverbially connected with machinery destruction. With the onset of the information age, Luddite gained a broader sense describing anyone who shuns new technology."    – Merriam-Webster Dictionary ____________ April 3, 2024 Two blinking red lig

Roughly two and a half years after President Biden resurrected and even expanded President Obama's original Bears Ears National Monument, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service unveiled on Friday (March 8) their joint Draft Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact Stateme nt, Volume 1 , a blueprint that would guide the agencies' land-use decisions for the next 20 or so years. Volume 2 lists citations, a glossary and appendices.         Bears Ears buttes on Cedar Mesa dominate the horizon of southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona. They are visible from much of the northern part of the Navajo Nation, a spiritual beacon for Indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. Creation of Bears Ears National Monument was intended to protect archaeological, paleontological and geological objects. (BLM photos)   ( This was updated April 22, 2024, to include additional information and clarifications of earlier versions. ) The draft plan is an important benchmark ; Presi