Mormons, Paiutes and Kiva
Never try to run a blog from a dial-up connection. I'll wait till we get home to upload a photo. Dum tee tum tee tum....
Patruska and I are visiting our park ranger kids at Pipe Spring National Monument, way out on the rabbitbrush covered high plateau of the Arizona Strip.
The Arizona Strip is literally a strip of land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border. Hundreds of miles of mesa and snakeweed and vermillion cliff faces glowing in the sunset, billions of stars at night with Orion getting dizzy up there from his wheeling and wheeling. The Paiute tribe rules the back country and the Mormons rule everything else. We're on the frontier of the nineteenth century Mormon Empire- in fact, Pipe Spring is the remains of a Mormon cattle ranch, built like a fort against Navajo raids.
No cell phone towers, no cable TV, no high-speed internet. In fact, the Arizona Strip is so isolated that until they built the bridge over the Colorado river, the county sheriff had to go around through three states to get here, and all kind of owlhoots holed up on the Strip playing pinochle, drinking redeye whiskey, and planning their next stagecoach robbery. Except no stagecoaches ever came this way. Maybe they could raid the cheese wagon from the Pipe Spring ranch, loaded down with butter and cheese bound for the little town of St. George, seventy-five miles away. The Mormons who kept on practicing polygamy after their church and the government outlawed it - they moved down here too. Colorado City, fifteen miles up the road, is still their headquarters. Their womenfolk still wear old-fashioned long dresses - but with jeans and sneaks and elaborate Gibson Girl hairstyles embellished with a long braid ending in a ponytail. Even the little kids...
Hey, I snagged a new country for the Kiva Investment Group yesterday - Cameroon. Magdalene Mankah was up for a few hours yesterday. She wanted $300 for sticks and nails to mend her pig fence. Needs a year and a half to repay it. A terrible business investment. But I have a feeling she'll pay it back if she can, and I want her pigs to be safe from lions...
Hey again, here's a question for the KIGsters. How can we maintain communication in the group when the Pondering Pig is off wandering around in the forest looking for truffles? This happens. I have a tendency to go off rambling at a moment's notice. So what if an investment opportunity comes up while I am gallavanting? Is the comment section of the blog enough? Or should we get something else going? Like a separate group blog or a Yahoo Group? The great thing about the KIG is that we are all starting to know each other a bit. There's a friendly feeling. And I'd hate to see it dissipate just cause I don't have a high-speed connection for a couple of weeks.
Whaddaya think?
Patruska and I are visiting our park ranger kids at Pipe Spring National Monument, way out on the rabbitbrush covered high plateau of the Arizona Strip.
The Arizona Strip is literally a strip of land between the Grand Canyon and the Utah border. Hundreds of miles of mesa and snakeweed and vermillion cliff faces glowing in the sunset, billions of stars at night with Orion getting dizzy up there from his wheeling and wheeling. The Paiute tribe rules the back country and the Mormons rule everything else. We're on the frontier of the nineteenth century Mormon Empire- in fact, Pipe Spring is the remains of a Mormon cattle ranch, built like a fort against Navajo raids.
No cell phone towers, no cable TV, no high-speed internet. In fact, the Arizona Strip is so isolated that until they built the bridge over the Colorado river, the county sheriff had to go around through three states to get here, and all kind of owlhoots holed up on the Strip playing pinochle, drinking redeye whiskey, and planning their next stagecoach robbery. Except no stagecoaches ever came this way. Maybe they could raid the cheese wagon from the Pipe Spring ranch, loaded down with butter and cheese bound for the little town of St. George, seventy-five miles away. The Mormons who kept on practicing polygamy after their church and the government outlawed it - they moved down here too. Colorado City, fifteen miles up the road, is still their headquarters. Their womenfolk still wear old-fashioned long dresses - but with jeans and sneaks and elaborate Gibson Girl hairstyles embellished with a long braid ending in a ponytail. Even the little kids...
Hey, I snagged a new country for the Kiva Investment Group yesterday - Cameroon. Magdalene Mankah was up for a few hours yesterday. She wanted $300 for sticks and nails to mend her pig fence. Needs a year and a half to repay it. A terrible business investment. But I have a feeling she'll pay it back if she can, and I want her pigs to be safe from lions...
Hey again, here's a question for the KIGsters. How can we maintain communication in the group when the Pondering Pig is off wandering around in the forest looking for truffles? This happens. I have a tendency to go off rambling at a moment's notice. So what if an investment opportunity comes up while I am gallavanting? Is the comment section of the blog enough? Or should we get something else going? Like a separate group blog or a Yahoo Group? The great thing about the KIG is that we are all starting to know each other a bit. There's a friendly feeling. And I'd hate to see it dissipate just cause I don't have a high-speed connection for a couple of weeks.
Whaddaya think?
Labels: Across America, Arizona, Kiva Investment Group
posted by Christopher Newton at 7:56 AM
9 Comments:
It would seem that the comment department is pretty efficient, as long as the Pig checks in every once in a while and advises us as to his whereabouts. I remember some pervious posts where the comments rtan into the big numbers, one on pornography getting almost 100.
Us KIG people seem to comment efficiently and, if necessary, change gears at the drop of a hat. Many out there, like me, with an attention defecit?
Maybe I was wrong about commments. Seems I'm the only one here, yesterday and today.
Yeah. Funny, huh? Kinda spooky in here.
You know how many attention deficit people it takes to screw in a lightbulb?
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Hey, you wanna go for a bike ride?
I'm a big fan of Yahoo groups. The messages come to your inbox so you don't have to keep checking back. They are easy to set up.
Maybe the yahoo groups thing is a good idea. I got me a Yahoo account just collecting dust. What say everyone? Anyone?
tell me more- I'm not familiar with Yahoo groups at all.
I like yahoo groups.
I just set one up
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AgentsOfChangeLA
It seems I'm organzing the Kiva/Agents of change fundraiser in LA.
I have no idea what I'm doing so feel free to join the group and help with ideas and such.
So that's a yes on yahoo groups
A Yahoo Group is a way to e-mail everybody at once. Everyone who is a member gets every e-mail sent to the group. You also get web features, such as a photo section, polls, a calendar, a file section....it's a very handy way to stay in touch with a bunch of people at once.
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