Pet rock escapes; takes dip in Sedona Spa

Talk to any Sedona Jeep tour driver and you’ll learn that kids don’t own the market for saying the darndest things.

Drivers put a lot of effort into spinning interesting and compelling yarns about the geography and history of places they take city folk and international visitors; especially those who drive for companies that have to go a little farther into the outback to get to the good trails.

Sedona has spectacular scenery and wildlife you won’t see elsewhere. Sometimes that prompts guests to ask questions only a mother would love. Your tour guide is apt to have a little fun with them.

Guest: How high up the mountain do you have to go before the deer turn into elk?
Driver: Um, deer don’t ‘turn into’ elk.

Guest: Why are the rocks redder at lower elevations than higher up on the mountain?
Driver: That’s as high as the painters’ ladders reach.

Montezuma’s Castle is a 1,000-year-old Sinagua Indian dwelling that’s basically a 20 room high-rise apartment built into the hillside. It’s definitely off the beaten path of modern civilization.



Guest: Why didn’t they build it closer to the highway?
Driver: …

My personal favorite is the one where a guest asked why some large boulders were wrapped in wire cages. The straight answer is that the wire prevents them from slipping from erosion.

Driver: Remember when pet rocks were all the rage in the 1970s? Well, some people just couldn’t take care of them and dumped them off in the desert. We had to cage them to keep ‘em under control.

Seems one got away and took a dip in a hot tub.

No joke. Read more!

You go, Caleb!

In response to this article ...

It’s a sad thing that our profession was once important enough to be written into the law of the land; and now it is relegated to the law of supply and demand.

I feel your enthusiasm and your pain, Caleb. I was often targeted by a special interest group in Sedona, Ariz. for shining light on its clandestine political operations. The difference was that Arizona state laws make it much easier to obtain public documents that what I’ve encountered in Utah.

If your assumption that the Cedar Hills council conferred – in person, through emails, phone calls or any other means – such actions would go to the front of the Attorney General’s to-do list in Arizona.

You’d be able to walk into the city clerk’s office and demand, within a reasonable time, access to emails, phone logs, daily planners and sticky notes. And they’d better have them because Arizona’s AG is serious about the public’s right to access the records it owns.

That has not been my experience in Utah County – where I’ve been run around in circles, been delayed, and been denied access to council member’s contact information.

Journalists here – who have the same access as residents – often can’t even obtain an agenda until 24 hours before a meeting. The law allows that, however, it doesn’t do much to facilitate earnest public review so that people – including journalists – can be prepared for an action meeting.

On top of that, some unscrupulous journalists and their publishers have made decisions that have devalued our profession to the point that the public no longer trusts us.

In my recent experience, the time it would take you to properly investigate this particular situation is not cost-effective for what you’d be paid.

You did a good job, Caleb. Hold them to the fire. If it doesn’t work out for you at least you were true to yourself and to our profession. Read more!

Cyndy Hardy wins state multimedia honors

The Arizona Press Club announced its 2008 awards on May 16, 2009.

Here's what the judge had to say about my 2nd place award for Best Use of the Web:

“This series of reports are very local and relevant to the daily lives of Sedona residents. The use of video and photography help create a sense place and reveal the inner workings of local government.”

Articles included:
"Fondamenta of Sedona,"
"Chapel of the Holy Cross: A Legacy Set in Stone,"
"Bob Bradshaw: A Modern Cowboy Story,"

"Accused members may strike back at accusers," about potential open meeting law violations, and
"Man’s best friend doles out smiles to traffic-jammers."

Sedona.biz publisher Carl Jackson attended the awards ceremony and had this to say:

"When we equipped Cyndy with a computer, video camera, and video editing software, she exceeded my wildest expectations with her skill and enthusiasm to soak up new media.

"Ms. Hardy not only investigates and writes articles, she also shoots her own video and edits it. We think Ms. Hardy is a “new media” reporter and an example of what all journalists will become. Hopefully this award puts to rest the ongoing debate between print and Internet journalism. It's now clear that neither the printed page nor the web page produces quality journalism.

"Only great journalists like Cyndy Hardy can do that by peeling away the layers of a story until the truth is revealed, and crafting words and phrases to make that story come to life in the reader's imagination."

Hey, Carl! Can I have that certificate? :) Read more!

Christmas in May

Every now and then I do a Google search of my own name to see if anyone's talking about me or plagiarizing my work -- hey, it happens.

Buried on the fourth page of search results was an entry for the Arizona Press Club.

Seems I've won an award for something I did for Sedona.biz in 2008.

I feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve!

I won't know what the award is for until May 12, when the APC announces the awards at its annual banquet in Phoenix. Read more!

Prediction

Not quite Sedona news, but I thought my article about public transit might be of interest to those of you lurking about this site since my move to Utah.

I graduated from a high school near Lindon, Utah – back when cows and hay dominated the landscape and the population was about 10 times less than it is today.

Seems Utah County (we’ve always called it Happy Valley) turned to auto dealers and call centers as its main economic driver, unlike Sedona’s tourist base.

But, the problems of growth, workforce and housing seem similar.

Sedona and her neighbors have been debating public transit for years, as one of many possible solutions to attracting workers and alleviating the high cost of living.

Could light rail and commuter trains be in the future?

Phoenix already has it. How long will it be before someone suggests linking that system into Northern Arizona?

I predict it will happen, although who knows when.

Sedona’s politicos will surely resists it, since light rail is theoretically accessible to all – including the undesirables.
Read more!

Do you 'Tube?'

In my spare time I often browse journalism peer sites to learn more about the new media phenomenon and try to get ideas for my own direction in the business.

This video was produced by a professor of anthropology and his students. It examines the impacts YouTube has had on social media -- which is a profound insight, to me, on how we as a profession can learn from new technologies to better understand and serve the public.

I hope you'll take the time (about 55 minutes) to watch it.

Read more!

Two more cents worth

If the public and publishers choose to support free content in the name of community journalism, everyone deserves what they get.

For example, the Sedona Red Rock News recently canceled a city column because they found out the city was simultaneously submitting the column to my local publisher.

The RRN dressed up its rational in a disagreement with the mayor over editing policies, but the back story was that the paper wanted exclusive rights to the free content.

A city staffer told me the city was going to relent and only send their content to the RRN. I suggested it might not send a good message for the city to play favorites with the media when the objective is supposed to be maximizing public outreach.

I mean, who are we supposed to be serving here?

In another example, The Sedona Verde Valley Times posted an article yesterday that crucified a man for being gay, perhaps to intimidate him from appearing in a court case in which he is the victim of a threat by the guy who wrote the article I mentioned in my last comment.

The editor who wrote the piece is an avid supporter of the defendant, and the groups he is involved with. He and I have different ideas of journalistic ethics.

By the way, the special interest group I spoke of was supposed to make a presentation today at a mayors’ committee meeting that might have influenced the type of lighting ADOT will install in Sedona. They canceled it, according to city staff, based on the faulty information in that article; written by their ally.

Apparently, they didn’t read my follow-up piece before canceling.

The SVVT read it. And still won’t admit they were wrong.

Ya get what you pay for, folks.
Read more!

Free Press v. Free News

Today, anyone with bandwidth can be a publisher; and anyone with a word processor can pen an “article” and get it published. In this example, the writer intentionally misinformed the public to further a special interest agenda.

My article with the other side of the story is filed and awaiting publication.

One problem our industry faces is that people don’t seem to recognize the hours, thought and effort we put in to our work so that they don’t have to attend all those stimulating government meetings, read all those riveting technical documents, and put the hard questions to the talking heads.

Yes, it’s the public’s right to know. But, professional journalists deserve reasonable and timely compensation for bringing it to them.

So who’s going to pay for it?

For a long time now, advertisers have subsidized news. People complain that advertisers have too much control over content, but seem to overlook that advertisers and publishers often respond to what is popularly read.

Are nonprofit business models the answer? I don’t know. Initial support and sustainable funding seem to be the main obstacles.

Spot.us has an interesting nonprofit model. I pitch a story idea and the public decides whether it gets reported. Or, the public posts a tip, and a journalist turns it into a pitch. No one can fund more than 20 percent of a given project, which is supposed to ensure objectivity, although I have some doubts.

Most important, I think, is that our industry must re-establish trust with our audience. And our audience must find value in our work and be willing to buy it, however that looks.

Professional journalists across the country are talking about this. I say it’s time the general public weighs in and tells us what they will support and how.
Read more!

Reporter’s notebook: Meth

As a youth, I was always fascinated by the mind and how it works. I thought about careers in criminal law or criminal psychology, but life took me in a different direction. Still, I never lost the curiosity about the mysteries of human behavior.

Another interest – music – kept me in close proximity to the drug culture even though I didn’t get involved myself. I have a knack for getting people to talk, which fed my curiosity.

While researching for this article, I recalled a few incidents where I’d seen people using meth.

In 1998, I worked with a young girl named Amy who was sucked in to meth addiction before she was 21 years old. To make a long story short, she had reached out for help, but lacked the self-will to take it. Her parents, who lived in Wisconsin, asked me to get her to the airport so they could get Amy into rehab.

The night before her early-morning flight, Amy stayed at my house to save time the next morning. She ‘borrowed’ my car at about 4 p.m. and didn’t come back. Coincidentally, a tornado hit Salt Lake that day. My concern for my friend was compounded by worry about my only transportation.
I had an idea where Amy might be and set out to bring her back. I found Amy at about midnight. The house was a converted apartment building in a seedy part of Salt Lake City. Sure enough, my car was parked nearby. I literally stepped over drugged-out bodies on the porch and knocked on the door. Amy let me in with a whispered warning that I shouldn’t have come there – it was a dangerous situation.

Amy took me into the kitchen where two women and a young man were alternately smoking meth and shooting heroin. When the man passed me the pipe, I bluntly said, “Thanks but I’m trying to cut back.” I didn’t want them to think I was such an outsider, which might escalate the situation.

I was amazed by the conversation. Amy’s ‘friends’ were trying to turn her out – get her into prostitution. She was young, pretty and vulnerable. The two women who coached her looked old, haggard and spent. One woman stuck a needle in her own vein as she told Amy how good life as a prostitute could be. As the drug entered her blood, her words trailed off and the woman’s head bobbled and fell to her chest, the needle still dangling from her arm. Fifteen minutes later, she awoke with a jerk and continued talking as if she never stopped.

“Is this what you want?” I silently pleaded with Amy. We finally left after 4 a.m. and I successfully got her to board the plane. I never heard from her again and can only hope she got the help she needed.

I moved to Sedona shortly afterward. Several years later I went home to visit family and old friends. I ran into a guy I used to shoot pool with who invited me to a house party. It turned out to be a small group – about five people – gathered in an old auto shop.

My acquaintance introduced me to the strangers as an old friend. “She used to be a cop,” he announced. I was never a cop, but I did work in law enforcement for nearly 10 years. One guy who seemed to be the leader of this group looked at me narrowly. He was shirtless and his chest was caved in, I presumed, from years of drug abuse. “Psychiatric discharge,” I lied, which seemed enough to keep me out of trouble.

I sipped on beer while those people smoked meth from tiny glass pipes for two hours. Both pipes eventually broke, having been dropped on the cement floor several times. I watched wide-eyed as the man with the sunken chest took the filament out of a light bulb and deftly poked a little carb hole in the delicate glass. That night I learned what lengths addicts will go to get a fix.

In 2004, I interviewed two Sedona children who had lost both parents to meth-related deaths in less than a year. The girl, then about 12, showed no emotion as she described finding her dead mother. “Dad, mom’s dead,” she said flatly, recounting how she broke the news to her father who was passed out on the couch.

In 2006, I interviewed several female inmates at the Yavapai County Jail in Prescott. Of about 40 women in the cell block, about 90 percent were meth users, whether that was directly the reason for their incarceration or not. Most said they used meth because they couldn’t afford pain medication for various injuries or ailments.

“Oh, it takes toothaches away like that,” Nick said, snapping his fingers when I asked if this was true. “It’s a straight-up pain killer.” He joked about the serious side-effect that some people loose teeth to meth abuse. “Hey, if you lose your teeth there’s no more pain.”

One inmate, Britney Bessler, is now serving a prison sentence for her part in a shooting death during a drug deal gone wrong. As she flipped through crime scene photos in her court papers, Bessler cried. “He was my best friend,” she said of the victim.

These memories were crystal clear (pun intended) as I talked to several meth users for this article. I imagined them in that dark space where the fix is the only thing that matters – above their jobs, their lovers and their children. I still don’t know why they start using. I don’t understand it. But, I feel compassion because each one is shrouded in a dark sadness and almost tangibly reaching out for help.

I sense a disconnection between these lost souls and the machine that purports to save them.

The women at Prescott’s jail said the system is designed to keep them down, once they are in it. Fines are set so high that people must choose between paying them or buying food, medicine and paying rent, they said. Court-ordered counseling is a farce, they said, a sham that keeps people employed but does little more than go through the motions with little real benefit for the users.

Real treatment is too expensive, they said. As Nick put it, many can’t afford $12,000 for private treatment and, in his perception, the alternative is to get arrested and be put into less effective court-ordered treatment.

A MATForce report stated there are ample funded sources for treatment in the Verde Valley but addicts don’t often seek treatment. They are usually forced into it by family or the legal system.

As I reported the story, I sadly realized how both sides are so close, yet miles apart. Sedona City Councilman Rob Adams acknowledged that people like Nick – those who don’t qualify for state help, but don’t have the money to get treatment on their own – may be falling through the cracks.

I don’t have the answer. I can only hope that by telling the story from the other side, the public can discern truth and misconceptions on both sides and work toward a real solution.
Read more!

Reader Feedback

Here's some email feedback on my recent public transit article :

Thank you, Cyndy, for writing such informative articles about our City government. You cover things beautifully, providing helpful background information. I get info in SedonaBiz that we can not find in the Red Rock News. Keep up the great work!

Carol Wirkus
Sedona resident


Cyndy:

I wanted you to know that your article was one of the most factually accurate I have ever seen. In my experience reporters often get even simple stories wrong. Your story covered 4 plus years of history and got everything right. This is refreshing and appreciated.

Thanks!

Jeff
Jeff Meilbeck
NAIPTA General Manager Read more!