“There was never any incest”
“Evil is elemental … It’s in the air, it’s in the sunshine, it’s in the water.” – So goes a line from New York Times film critic AO Scott in a “video pick” for Chinatown.*
Ah, cineastes. If they ever came out of their screening rooms, they would know that evil is elemental, it’s in the air, it’s in the sunshine, it’s in the water in real life. You don’t need to rent it.
While Scott’s paean was aimed more at Roman Polanski and less at water, it was well-timed. Evil has never been thicker in the world of Western water. …
Gibbons to refer Las Vegas water snafu to legislature
BREAKING NEWS: The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons will refer to a special session of legislature a law repeatedly broken by the State Engineer in issuing water permits to Las Vegas. The hope of gaming and construction interests lobbying the governor is that the legislature could somehow amend state law in a way that retroactively makes legal the violation of due process rights of thousands of protestors to a multi-billion dollar pipeline proposed by Las Vegas. The pipe, planned to run almost 300 miles to the foot of the Great Basin National Park, would mine rural groundwater to sustain the suburbs and casinos of southern Nevada. For background on the governor’s stalling, click here, on the proposed legislation here, and on the pipe, here.
UPDATE: Nevadan readers who wish to e-mail, write or phone their legislators to comment on the proposed “fix” …
Corks pop in Santa Barbara
“After 18 years as head of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Edward Schneider is leaving for a job at the University of Minnesota, where he will become a fully tenured professor and take over as director of the arboretum,” reports the Santa Barbara Independent. Schneider leaves California’s most important native garden without half of its volunteers and all of its status. For background on his directorship, and that of his board led by former Arizona governor turned pastry chef Fife Symington III, click here and here.
A personal theory as to why Schneider and his board were so disastrous for the garden can be summed up in the difference between two terms: “arboretum” and “botanic garden.” Arboretums are collections, originally of trees, and often occupy the estates of some dead robber baron. They represent the plunder and show ethos of a bygone era in which exoticism was …
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
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