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Little Town Blues: Voices from the Changing West by Raye C. Ringholz

1993; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1993.0002

1948-7142

Thomas Madden,

American Environmental and Regional History

Reviews 153 who cares about our environment—past, present, and future. So even though the book may seem an odd choice for a WAL review, it turns out to be most appropriate reading material for WAL subscribers. The subtitle of Charles Wilkinson’s book, “Mapping A New West,” under­ scores its basic tenet. Wilkinson argues that we need to rethink, reevaluate, and then rewrite those policies and laws which have dictated the use of our natural resources. Separate chapters analyze our treatment of mineral rights, of na­ tional forests, of water resources, even of Native Americans. Then the author turns his vision toward the future and suggests ways in which we might better map our terrain. A believer in ecosystems rather than textbook boundaries, he articulates what he describes as an “ethic of place.” It is obvious, of course, that Aldo Leopold strongly influenced this particu­ lar law professor. But TheEagle Bird moves well beyond what Leopold outlined in the 1940s. With facts, figures, a graceful prose style and clear persuasive logic, Wilkinson shows this important ethic hard at work in the 1990s. “Thinking like an ecosystem,” he writes of Yellowstone’s possibilities, “requires us to think in terms of interconnectedness, cooperation, diversity, and community, all of the things that provide the philosophical basis for an ethic of place.” As he so strongly insists, we must “require ourselves to be accountable”—to our grand­ children, to our great-grandchildren, and beyond. The Eagle Bird, with its philosophical eye turned toward the future, is an idealistic book, but those ideals are sustained through a series of pragmatic arguments. Despite his profound environmental point of view, Wilkinson never ignores economic reality. So loggers and ranchers, as well as hikers and climb­ ers, may be buoyed by what he says. Combining law, example, anecdote, and philosophy, he is well able to map out a practical future where we together meet the challenges of a critical present and the heritage of an unfortunate past. U^-AfrN RONALD University ofNevada, Reno kittle Town Blues: Voices from the Changing West. Text by Raye C. Ringholz. Photographs by K. C. Muscolino. (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1992. 176 pages, $14.95.) Are Westerners, as many commentators have suggested, afflicted with a split personality, one half wanting open space, vistas, and pure air and water, and the other half wanting every iota of wealth that smash-and-grab economics can provide? Little Town Blues makes an excellent case study for meditation on that question. The book, in one sense a documentary report on three western small towns which have undergone varying degrees of rapid development, is also a quo vadis: where is the modern West going? Part of the answer to this perplexing question lies in where the West has 154 Western American Literature been, and a strong virtue of Little Town Blues is that it demonstrates that small western towns have always been in motion. In many small towns, this movement may not now be perceptible to the eye, and may have traversed a predictable boom /bust course from founding as cattle, timber, mining, or railroad centers to sleepy decadence interrupted only by the arrival of an occasional shopping mall. But in the case of an increasing number of small towns, as Ringholz and Muscolino document, a new cycle of development has emerged, one based more on tourism, leisure, and ostentatious displays of wealth than on hard work and the simple life. Their portrayal of Moab (Utah), Sedona (Arizona), and Jackson (Wyoming) establishes that a major concern for the West now lies in development which, paradoxically, may not destroy the environment in the gross ways so popular with earlier entrepreneurs, but which will, nonetheless, transform small semi-rural towns into overpriced, sterile fortresses in which only the rich can afford to live. This is a kind of development which Ringholz calls “resortification,” and which one of her interviewees calls “desanctification,” even though some observers of the West might find it difficult to discover a recent time period without some form of desecration. In any case, Ringholz tries to find a middle ground between unbridled development and no development. Her response is “customized develop­ m ent”—growth which...