Is there a "Stupid Motorist Act" in Arizona? You bet, says Elliot Freireich of the West Valley View in Litchfield Park. After summer monsoons


hit, dry washes suddenly fill with water and cascade onto roads, he


reports. Yet some drivers with more bravado than brains try to splash through. "Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they don't and make the 6 o'clock news instead. There are firefighters and helicopters with ropes and ladders to pull out the victims." That's when the law kicks in, he says, since it calls for the rescued to reimburse the rescuers.





When Ara Tripp, 38, awoke in Seattle, Wash., Sept. 8, she must have felt the urge to spit at the world. So she climbed up some 50 feet onto a high-voltage electrical tower. There, she swigged vodka from a bottle and spit it out while lighting it on fire. Below, rush-hour traffic whizzed by until some motorists glanced up, reports the Associated Press. What might have helped snag their attention was Tripp's chest: She was topless. As drivers slowed to a crawl to gawk, and traffic backed up for miles, Seattle City Light had to make a decision. She was in danger of electrocuting herself, says an official from the utility, since her perch was close to wires hauling 120,000 volts of electricity. So Seattle City Light cut off electricity to 5,000 homes and businesses. After an hour of fire-spitting, Tripp spurned a ladder offered from below and easily climbed down the power pole, commuters said. Her next stop was the county jail, where she was booked for criminal trespass and indecent exposure.





FLASH: The truth is up there, according to the latest conspiracy theory. Those giant white Xs in the sky aren't contrails, short for a jet's condensed vapor trails; they're chemtrails, and they make people sick. Lately, a growing number of people on Web sites accuse the government of conducting secret experiments in the air. Their evidence is the longevity of some frozen vapor trails - which stay in the sky until they are crossed and recrossed, like tic-tac-toe patterns - and the onset of flu-like symptoms when the trails persist. Meg Anderson, who lives near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, told the Spokesman-Review that she's sure the skies aren't safe. In June, she says, she watched clouds disgorge something that looked "like the black stuff in a diesel truck stopped at an intersection." Government and military officials say contrails truly are vapor and not to worry.


"The plant that ate California' - aka yellow starthistle - is marching east. In western Colorado, Montrose County offers a $50 reward for spotting the weed because "it is one of the most feared noxious weeds in the nation," Associated Press reports. Horses that eat its stiff-spined yellow flower can get "chewing disease," an ailment that has already killed three horses in neighboring Delta County. The plant spreads like the proverbial wildfire; in California, 10 million acres are said to be infested. Where do you look for an invading colony of 1- to 2-foot-tall yellow starthistle? Soil conservationist Thomas Jones of the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that's easy: Starthistle grows along roads and just about anywhere.





From a cramped office in Bend, Ore., Scott Silver wages a campaign against the federal government's continuing experiment with charging fees for some uses of public land. Whether it's a few dollars for parking, which affronts many Californians, or fees for hiking and biking, which startles some people who have left their wallets at home, Silver says this land is our land and it should stay as free as possible. Recently, his Wild Wilderness group helped orchestrate a "Fee Demo Day of Protest" around the West (HCN, 10/13/97), and as thanks to some volunteers, he gave away T-shirts. Now, those shirts have landed Silver in a heap of trouble. They feature a bear holding a sign about the "Wonderful World of Wreckreation," and the bear sports a Mickey Mouse cap. By trademark, only cartoon Mickey can wear those big round ears: "Immediately destroy all unauthorized Product in your possession, custody or control ..." demanded Disney senior counsel J. Andrew Coombs. Silver fired back a reply which features the word "Disneyfication" and a treatise on the history of political satire. The Disney letter and Silver's reply are available on his Web site, www.wildwilderness.org.





Housing prices in Aspen, Colo., seem almost surreal. Would you spend $2 million for a house and then destroy it? Yes, says real estate agent Brent Waldron, "Fortunately or unfortunately, a $2 million tear-down isn't all that uncommon any more," he told the Aspen Times. Yet there's a problem for billionaires: Not enough sellers. Broker Phil Miller says that scarce supply drives prices up so "the only thing we seem to be doing is adding zeros." If you seek ground to build on, that's a problem: Lots are scarce and the average price is $1 million.





Folks with slightly more modest taste in homes might look to booming Colorado Springs. There, you can buy a "prestigious' house that the developers, Classic Homes, have dubbed The Thoreau. Lest you think this name honors the 19th century nature writer Henry David Thoreau, a description of the 20th century version is instructive. While Thoreau's cabin measured 10 feet by 15 feet, the Classic Homes model features six bedrooms, three stories, 5,471 square feet and a three-car garage. The adjoining woodshop alone tops the dimensions of Thoreau's hideaway, reports the Independent, an alternative weekly. The developers seem sure that buyers these days don't want to challenge themselves to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life," as Thoreau put it when he renounced materialism for Walden Pond. What upscale buyers want now, the builders in Colorado Springs believe, is a "share in the true resort lifestyle."





Nine months after printing its first paper on paper, the Orem Daily Journal in Utah has ceased to exist - except virtually, AP reports. It may be the nation's first daily newspaper available only on the Internet.


* Betsy Marston








Heard around the West invites readers to get involved in the column. Send any tidbits that merit sharing - small-town newspaper clips, personal anecdotes, relevant bumper sticker slogans. The definition remains loose. Heard, HCN, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or betsym@hcn.org.