LA Weekly

I'm sort of sick of writing about, talking about and even thinking about election results. I think it's high time we celebrated something, like, say, the 10th anniversary of the Desert Protection Act, which set aside 7.7 million acres for protection, raised the status of Joshua Tree and Death Valley from monuments to parks and struck a careful compromise between recreation, habitat preservation and commercial use of the sensitive desert land. Sen. Dianne Feinstein authored it, inspiring other preservation-minded bills and land buys in the years that followed.

I didn't celebrate it on the day it happened because I was out in the streets of Scottsdale, Ariz. on Halloween dressed as a psychedelic bunny rabbit scavenging for those few rich Democrats who might be persuaded to get out to vote. Which I'm not talking about anymore for a while.

Jennifer Bowles of the Riverside Press-Enterprise has written well about the Desert Protection Act here (registration required, but if you want to, you can use judith_lewis_la@yahoo.com/password: everybody). And a couple of cool events are happening this weekend. On Friday at 7:30 p.m., Donna Charpied will give an update on the fight against the Eagle Mountain garbage dump, the Andromeda Society will get out their hi-powered telescopes (it's a new moon -- maybe you'll see the Andromeda Spiral Galaxy) and Ritmo Loco and others will play until midnight; the next day at 3 p.m. there'll be an anniversary commemoration at the visitor center in Twentynine Palms, and a 6 p.m. Anniversary Gala dinner at the Twentynine Palms Community Services Center with Huell Howser on hand for fun. Check out the Web site.

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