Wallowa County cowboys race to build rockjacks in one-of-a-kind competition

A rockjack is a wooden cage of split tamarack posts laden with 300 pounds of rocks. It anchors a fence where the rocky ground is too bulletproof to sink a post. Rockjacks are built 30 feet apart and joined by four stands of barbed wire. Wooden "stays," or slats, every eight or 10 feet keep the wire separated. "The idea of a rockjack is, if an elk hits a fence, they'll tip up and fall back down," explains veteran rockjack builder Casey Tipett, who ranches near Enterprise. In celebration of this curious cow country artifact, the Ranch Rodeo at the county fairgrounds in Enterprise offers the World Championship Rockjack Building today. The noon event qualifies as the world championship because it's the only one of its kind on the planet and only the second one ever held here, organizers say. End-of-summer ranch life in Wallowa County sometimes seems dominated by rockjacks. Cattle are on summer range, and ranchers finally have time to fix fences in the empty landscape -- essentially basalt canyons "with a little layer of dust on them and a little grass growing out of the dust," Nash says. A single packhorse can carry enough split tamarack rails for two rockjacks and eight stays, he says. Rocks are less of a problem: "You don't have to search hard for them, they are there."...more

Song Of The Day #387

It's Swingin' Monday on Ranch Radio, where we bring you a tune to get your heart started for the week.

Today's selection is Choo Choo Ch' Boogie by Asleep At The Wheel.

It's on their Swingin' Best of CD.

Drug traffickers, Mexican police battle within yards of U.S. border

A "major gunbattle" between drug traffickers and Mexican federal police broke out Saturday evening in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just 30 yards from the U.S. border at El Paso, Texas, causing U.S. authorities to cordon off a section of the city, according to a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman. Three police officers were injured and one armed suspect was killed, federal police spokesman Ramon Salinas said. First reports of gunshots came in from border agents around 7 p.m. (9 p.m. ET), U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Ramiro Cordero told CNN. "The gunbattle is still going on right now," Cordero said 30 minutes after the incident began, just south of the University of Texas at El Paso. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries on the U.S. side of the border, Cordero said. U.S. authorities blocked off a section of Paisano Street, which runs parallel to the Rio Grande. The incident comes less than two months after shots fired from a gunbattle originating in Juarez crossed into El Paso and hit City Hall, damaging the building...more

Bullet from Mexico shootout may have struck Texas university building

A bullet that flew through a building at the University of Texas at El Paso may have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during a shootout between drug traffickers and Mexican federal police, authorities said. University President Diana Natalicio said Sunday a bullet struck Bell Hall sometime Saturday evening. No injuries were reported at the building. Natalicio said campus police determined a bullet went through the glass panel of the building's door and lodged in an office door frame. "This appears to be the only stray bullet to have struck the campus," Natalicio said. "There is no evidence to suggest that UTEP was specifically targeted." Natalicio said the university will consult with law enforcement and government officials about possible further security precautions...more

Neighbors Living Near Border React to Gunfire

El Pasoans living on the border are looking nervously at their neighbors in Juarez tonight. They're wondering when the next gun battle will send them ducking for cover. Jesus Delgado has lived in his home on Portifio Diaz street for 38 years and he says he is the most scared he's ever been for himself and his family. "I have grandchildren coming every weekend. It's becoming a concern now. I'll try to keep them out of my backyard and keep them inside," says Delgado who enjoys family barbecues in his front yard every Sunday. Arlene Contreras has a message for those committing crimes in Juarez. "You've taken a one time family environment to now where people are afraid to come out of their homes and you're wrong to do that to that neighborhood, to your country and to mine."...more

El Pasoans Remain On Edge After Juarez Gunfight

Residents in some areas of West El Paso remained on edge Sunday after witnessing a massive gunfight just yards away, across the border near the UTEP campus. "I've never experienced anything like this. It's kind of shocking, but its reality and it's a sad thing going on over there,” said Ray Campos, a West El Paso resident. El Paso police and Border Patrol officials have said no rounds have been discovered on the U.S. side. No injuries were reported in El Paso. UTEP political science professor and border expert Tony Payan said the incident likely will not be the last. "West of Ciudad Juarez overlooking downtown and UTEP are some of the most dangerous areas in Ciudad Juarez," Payan said. The incident comes just months after bullets riddled El Paso’s City Hall Complex. Those stray bullets came from a gunfight just blocks from where Saturday’s incident took place. No injuries were reported on the U.S. side. "I think the next step, and presumably a very bad one, if someone were hit on this side, and there would be nothing you could do," Payan said...more

2 Juárez maquiladora workers shot to death

Two Juárez maquiladora workers were shot to death Saturday afternoon in front of their assembly plant, Mexican authorities said. The employees, both men, worked for Eaton Inc. in the Omega Industrial Park, west of Elias Plutarco Calles street. Authorities identified one of them as Aaron Aguilar Salazar, 35. The second victim was not been identified. Police said the two men were about to enter their workplace when unidentified armed suspects suddenly opened fire on them...more

$530K found in tire at El Paso border crossing

More than a half-million dollars was found this week stuffed into the spare tire of a truck headed into Mexico from El Paso, federal agents said Thursday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Wednesday were inspecting cars crossing the border into Ciudad Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, when they found $530,170 hidden in the spare tire of a Chevy 2500 truck, CBP spokesman Roger Maier said. The driver, Francisco Castaneda Castillo, was arrested on a charge of currency smuggling for failing to report that he had more than $10,000 in cash. Maier said the case is being investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Castaneda, 40, a Mexican national from Juarez, is being held in the El Paso County jail...more

U.S.-Mexico Border Security Conference Facts and Figures

They could have been videos from the Middle East or Central Asia. But the images flashed to the crowd at Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes' annual border security conference at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) showed graphic scenes from the so-called narco war in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. After giving a content advisory, the presenter, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Alonzo Peña, started the show. In rapid succession, viewers variously saw a pre-decapitation interrogation of one presumed cartel member by rivals, a convoy of 50 vehicles with CDG (Gulf Cartel) insignias calmly passing through a highway toll booth, a squad of gunmen armed with a grenade-launcher and a rocket-launcher carrying out an attack in the town of Camargo, and the body of assassinated 2010 gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre laying on the ground next to his likewise unfortunate companions. "It's barbaric and it's extreme," summed up Peña, who serves as ICE's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations...more

Battle for the Border

Few issues can be counted on to exacerbate raw feelings as reliably as illegal immigration, and, for reasons no one has to be told, never more so than now. That fact has everything to do with the power of the National Geographic Channel's "Border Wars" series, soon to begin its second season, and the source of the high tension that accompanies every action and word in these documentary close-ups of U.S. law-enforcement agents battling drug and arms traffic and, unforgettably, the smugglers with their steady flow of human cargo. The series kicks off with a special preview on Aug. 29th (9-10 p.m. ET) called "Death on the Rio Grande," then moves to its regular slot (Wednesdays, 9-10 pm) beginning Sept. 1, with an episode titled "Checkpoint Texas."...more

Headless, mutilated bodies hung from Mexico bridge

Four decapitated and mutilated corpses were strung from a bridge in a popular getaway outside the Mexican capital on Sunday, the latest atrocity as the country battles an escalating drug war. The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, hung upside down by their feet from a bridge near a wealthy area of Cuernavaca, a leafy city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes. The victims' genitals, index fingers and heads had been cut off, according to a statement from the attorney general's office in Morelos state, which includes Cuernavaca...more

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Kids don't get to pick their parents

by Julie Carter

Name your event - football, basketball, baseball, track, rodeo, livestock shows and the occasional beauty pageant or bake-off - and if it involves kids, you will find their parents embarrassing them.

I'm not talking without knowledge. I am a parent and I had parents. We have all been embarrassed about or by each other at one time or another.

Fortunately, it wasn't ever because of our behavior at a competition event.

My folks were not shouters, screamers or blame assigners. To this day, I'm grateful for their dignified rooting for the home team at ball games and other public possibilities for a display parental pride.

There were then, and still are now, plenty of others willing to take up the slack in the "make a fool of yourself" department.

As school administrations buckle down for another year of pushing academic excellence along with their individual attempts at molding our children into productive citizens, I fortify myself for the "bleacher coaches" that haunt every sporting event.

Even from the sidelines where I move up and down the periphery of the event to photograph it, I cringe at the level of crude audacity some parents find necessary to use to promote a team.

There doesn't seem to be a magic formula to make adults act like adults, let alone expect them to rein themselves in enough to not mortify their child while he or she is competing. You know who you are.

Call me an advocate for your children because they are stuck with you, I am not. For those that insist on assigning themselves the task of re-educating coaches and referees, I will suggest that a healthy dose of chill pills be your prescription of choice along with frequent deep breaths of restraint.

The sigh of relief you hear will be from your child (and the guy sitting next to you).

The sparkling smile you are flashed from the floor or field will be signatory of the gratitude from a very relieved child.

As a side note, if the guy next to smiles like that, he probably hopes you aren't going to eat that hot dog you set down so you could jump and holler. He'd actually, really like to eat it.

We are the examples for tomorrow's leaders. Think about that when you shuffle to the top of the bleachers this weekend to take in some sun, canned nachos and a hometown, home team ball game, high school rodeo or volley ball game.

It matters not if your athlete wears a cowboy hat and swings a rope, or is suited up in layers of red, blue, black or orange synthetics snugged over plastic armor with a football under his arm; they will do the best that they can possibly do at any given moment.

Ask no more of them, because your incessant rants at the referees, judges, and coaches etc., will not make the difference.

No one will be harder on your athlete than they will be on themselves, so please, don't pour your toxic terseness on the scene and expect it to manifest victory just because you called it so.

Your relationship with your child is a team sport. Save yourself from yourself and let your teenager find the joy of the competition without the fear of watching his parent being escorted from the game by security personnel eating out the pit of his stomach.

If this admonition made you angry, then it was for you.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net, or at the next high school football game, or as a last resort, at www.julie-carter.com.

When I was young, I was free

by Welda Mckinley Grider

Sit next to me grandchild, while no one is listening, and let me tell you about America and when I was young and we were free.

We could speak freely in those days, before we said speech should be censored in the name of Allah.

We could speak against the government in town meetings before we allowed the leaders their agendas that no longer allowed public input in the land of soon-not-to-be-free.

We had the Constitution that protected us from the government, but that was before we asked the government to protect us from each other, to protect us from ourselves and then we gave animals the right to be protected from us.

With all that protection, we found we were protected from everything but the government. Then we were no longer free.

We threw out "all men are created equal" and instead the Senators made laws that did not pertain to them in this land of soon to be not free.

Those roads that you ask me about? The ones we call the King's High-way?

Those were highways and you could go anywhere you pleased in the days before we had "corridors" to keep track of, first the wildlife, and then the people.

Now we must ask the government to travel in the name of Homeland Security.

We used to have National Parks where you could come and see the wildlife ... ah yes, in the time of the free.

Now they are "wilderness areas" and "wildlife habitat" and only the government can enjoy what we used to call God's Creation, and now we call Mother Earth.

Yes, we all had automobiles to travel the highways. When I was young, and when I was free, you could buy automobiles.

Now Al Gore and the environmentalists in the government are the only ones who are allowed to travel in automobiles.

You can easily control the people if they are not allowed to travel, so we learned when we were no longer free.

When I was young and free, I lived in a house on the hill.

In those days you could work for your living. You owned that house, but now only those who work for the government can live in houses outside the corridors.

The government in the name of the "public" now owns all the land and all the houses.

It was our fault; in the name of "zoning" and "smart growth," we said we have the right limit your ownership in the land of the free.

The "rights of the public" became more important than the "right of the individual" and the land of the free became not-so-free.

When we allowed the government to rewrite history, and we deemed the holocaust untrue, then we could believe those who disappeared were just relocated.

Tomorrow, child, I go on that "Old Folks Trip" that all of us do.

The IRS will come in the name of Health Care and take me to a "better place."

We used to have guns, child, back in the day. Be-fore we believed a country with no guns was a safer place to be.

I still have mine that escaped notice. Tomorrow when they come to take me on my last ride, they will have a surprise.

We let the country become not-so-free for the good of you and me but this old woman will go will go on to Glory where God resides and the hell with Allah and land that is no longer free.

Welda McKinley Grider is native to and ranches in Lincoln County.

A monumental threat

by Senator Mike Crapo

For many years, every president has had authority to ride roughshod over the public when creating national monuments. Under current law, a “top-down” executive order can be issued to create a national monument, with no opportunity for public input or congressional or state oversight. This has resulted in increased distrust from those most connected to the area under designation, and it has lingering effects in communities throughout the country.

The truth is that the provision in current law which allows the administration to issue executive orders to create such monuments was never intended to be used in the fashion it has been, and it’s about time that Congress did something to bring that authority back in line with its historical intent.

Many of us enjoy scenic areas and wouldn’t argue about the historic nature and preservation value of many national monuments. But the history of creating monuments is littered with examples where the bureaucratic process occurred without proper review and comment, and resulted in the taking of private property. The executive orders issued to create monuments have drawn widespread local opposition and ultimately raise questions regarding freedom. This is why I joined with Sen. Risch to introduce legislation to reign in the process and provide appropriate opportunities for public input and congressional oversight.

The National Monument Designation Transparency and Accountability Act, S. 472, ensures Congress has equal input in approving monuments. If Congress doesn’t ratify the executive order, the land reverts back to original status within two years. A companion measure has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The president’s authority to create monuments was born in the 1906 Antiquities Act, intended to protect very small parcels of land for historical purposes. Since then, various presidents have used this authority to designate 71 monuments, covering approximately 136 million acres. Those lands were placed under federal control with little or no advanced warning because warning is not required under present law. That would change under the legislation that has been introduced. It would also take us back to what the original law intended: That any monument designation be for only the smallest area essential to ensure the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.

This issue has come to the forefront because of a leaked internal memo from the U.S. Department of Interior, recommending several sites for potential monuments. It also raised the possibility of acquiring 140,000 acres of private lands in the Pioneer Mountains of Idaho between Craters of the Moon and Forest Service lands. The vague description in the memo is suspicious, as it wasn’t very long ago the Clinton Administration undertook a massive expansion of the Craters of the Moon Monument.

In 2000, President Clinton used an executive order to expand Craters 13-fold (from 53,000 acres to include an additional 661,000) — a move that still causes considerable unease in local communities. This is not uncommon in areas affected by executive orders that struck suddenly and left the community changed without allowing it any input into those changes. Executive orders have had adverse effects throughout the country when communities were not allowed to weigh in on changes being imposed by the federal government.

The “top-down” directives from Washington, D.C., regarding land management provoke discord and mistrust. I have always held that the collaborative model and engaging all sides early on are the best approaches to solving land management issues.

In Idaho, the Owyhee Initiative demonstrated what happens when people work together. It’s important to protect and preserve national treasures, but these decisions should be transparent with equal input from both the public and Congress.

Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho Falls, has represented Idaho in the U.S. Senate since 1999.
http://www.magicvalley.com/news/opinion/article_62534cb3-ed33-528a-aa2a-08e89b5f7ac4.html

Song Of The Day #386

Ranch Radio's Gospel song this Sunday morning is Martha Carson's 1952 recording of There Is A Higher Power.

Reminder: Cowboy Dinner & Dance - Tonight

I'll see you there!

Police Arrested In Northern Mexico Mayor's Killing

Six city police officers were arrested Friday in the killing of a mayor in northern Mexico, as the country's escalating drug violence targets more public officials. The suspects included the officer who guarded the house where Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos was seized on Sunday. The officer had said he was kidnapped with the mayor and later freed unharmed. Adrian de la Garza, head of the police investigations agency in Nuevo Leon state, told a news conference that the police officers received 6,000 pesos ($700) per month to cooperate with criminals "in different ways and different affairs," with some allegedly acting as lookouts. "They were employees" of a criminal gang, De la Garza said at a news conference where he displayed security-camera footage from Cavazo's house, showing armed kidnappers arriving at the home on Sunday night in five SUVs. Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said the officers confessed to being involved in the Cavazos' killing, though some declared their innocence while being presented to the press. "We are still looking for others who were involved as well," Garza y Garza said...more

Group sues over lynx protection in NM

Environmentalists are suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the Canadian lynx. The agency issued a finding in December that the lynx in New Mexico warrants federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, but the agency didn't act immediately because it must finish work on other higher-priority listings. The environmental group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit this week, saying the animal will likely not receive protection for a decade or more because it has been put at the end of a line of 245 species awaiting listing. Lynx have been reintroduced in southern Colorado over the past 10 years, and some have wandered into New Mexico. Although the federal government lists the elusive animals as threatened in Colorado and 13 other states, they have no federal protection in New Mexico. AP

Unguarded border bridges could be route into US

On each side of a towering West Texas stretch of the $2.4 billion border fence designed to block people from illegally entering the country, there are two metal footbridges, clear paths into the United States from Mexico. The footpaths that could easily guide illegal immigrants and smugglers across the Rio Grande without getting wet seem to be there because of what amounts to federal linguistics. While just about anyone would call them bridges, the U.S.-Mexico group that owns them calls them something else. "Technically speaking it's not a bridge, it's a grade control structure," said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, which maintains the integrity of the 1,200-mile river border between the U.S. and Mexico. The structures under the spans help prevent the river -- and therefore the international border -- from shifting. Whatever they're called, there are fresh sneaker tracks on the structures -- indicating they're being used as passages into the country. In a border tour with the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office in March, Associated Press journalists happened upon the bridge moments after a man with a bicycle used the bridge to cross the river from Mexico. The border crosser, who told authorities he was only trying to fish from the north side of the river, was promptly arrested. "If he can do it, so can drug cartels with loads of narcotics of any kind," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "Even a terrorist could pass here with weapons of mass destruction and be in the United States and up on the interstate and gone in a short time." It's unclear how often the bridge is used, but it's common to see people on the Mexican side lingering around the crossing or others playing in the river in the area...more

Land Swap Triggers Colorado Dust-Up

Billionaire energy magnate William Koch's 4,500-acre cattle ranch in western Colorado is split in two by a large strip of federal land—and he wants to change that. The government land includes a road that takes hunters and hikers into a popular national forest, but some visitors stray and trespass onto Mr. Koch's property, according to his ranch manager. So Mr. Koch wants to take title to the federal land—and close the road—by swapping the parcel for land he owns elsewhere in the West. But the way the swap would be executed has drawn criticism in the region. Because the proposal involves multiple federal agencies and land in two states, the deal can't be dispensed with through normal administrative process, which include local public hearings and a thorough environmental review. Instead, it must be handled by Congress, through legislation mandating the swap. That legislation has been introduced by Rep. John Salazar, a Democrat who represents the region (and who is the brother of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar) and who has received campaign contributions from Mr. Koch. Federal officials at a Bureau of Land Management field office raised several concerns about the proposed swap in a draft memo that was leaked to environmentalists. The proposed deal would give Mr. Koch about 1,800 acres of BLM land, including the road that bisects his ranch and some additional mountainous parcels. In exchange, Mr. Koch would deed over to the public about 1,000 acres of land including a small parcel of historic value that sits inside Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. The deal also includes five luxury-home sites in Colorado that he bought for $2.7 million and that have long been coveted by the National Park Service for their scenic value and because they provide habitat for the sage grouse...more

BLM always hates it when they lose land and another agency, even one inside the Dept. of Interior, gains land. I don't know about this particular exchange, but the BLM would oppose it even if it made good sense and was in the public interest. Thus the leak to the enviros.