This Blog's Agenda

I started Torrey House Press (THP) with the goal of leaving more grass on the mountains and water in the streams when I am dead and gone (I hope I'm not in a big hurry!).  Their are plenty of able environmental conservation organizations already in existence working on that same goal.  It seems to me that what they need to get more done is a broader following, and the way to get a broader and more sympathetic following is to tell stories.  There are plenty of good writers out there whose work is flavored and informed by the western landscape they live in.  Our goal at THP is to get the best of that writing to the light of day.  For my writing part I'm going to pontificate on this blog about:

• Water and Western water rights, water economics and water resource management
• Grazing and promotion of the right for a rancher to sell and retire his grazing rights into conservation
• Mining and drilling that does more economical harm than good
• The resource that is the dark night skies of the Colorado Plateau
• The environmental economics of a natural and preserved landscape
• The theme of Old West and New West and particularly what the Old West legislators who predominate in Utah, such as Mike Noel, are doing to make Utahns' lives worse
• Special interest domination of the issues in the West, such as the Cattlemen's Association's lasso around the legislators
• Housing and development and its effect on the Plateau
• Sustainable building and living practices (my son's specialty)
• The activities and notable work of the local environmental agencies
• The rhetoric of the environmentalists and legislators

I also want to share some of what is going on at Torrey House Press including thoughts on:

• The people we are working with and what they are thinking about
• Small press publishing business and trends
• What I've been reading lately
• Transcendence-  one of my pet interests is consciousness and its quantum physics enigma.   I hope to chat a bit about how that enigma fits with the perception of nature espoused by Emerson and Thoreau, and with concepts like Emmanuel Kant's and Robert Persig's a priori knowledge.

I love this stuff.  I hope a few readers pitch in and share their thoughts and comments.