Parent’s remarks trigger school lock down

PAGE — Elementary school officials ordered a “soft lock down” at local campuses after an angry parent made comments referring to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The alleged comments were connected to the parent’s insistence that his son not be allowed to listen to President Barack Obama’s speech. Since Sept. 11 was coming back up, staff at Lake View Elementary saw it as a potential threat.

According to the Lake Powell Chronicle, about 300 children stayed home from school because parents were notified by an automated message about a possible threat. Parents perceived it was a bomb threat, the paper reported, and began inundating the local police department and FBI with phone calls.

The paper quotes Page police Capt. Ray Varner saying:

“We couldn’t really pin down what was said and who said it. It was something about 9-11 and since 9-11 was coming around, we thought we’d have a soft lockdown.”

Check out the Chronicle’s full story here. To surf more headlines from around the state, visit our interactive news map here.

Fishermen find missing Chandler planning commissioner

CHEVELON CANYON LAKE — The remains of Mark Irby, the Chandler planning commissioner who abandoned his ATV near Forest Lakes in January, were found here last Saturday by four Phoenix residents who were fishing from the shoreline.

The medical examiner used dental records to positively identify the remains on Monday as Irby, who was part of a citizen commission that helped oversee development projects in Chandler.

The lake sits between Heber and Christopher Creek, about 22 miles north of State Route 260. Forest Lakes is an unincorporated enclave of cabins that sits in the same area.

The medical has not yet determined the cause of death. Check out the White Mountain Independent for the full story here.

Reservation Bashas’ spared

Thanks to the economic slowdown, Bashas’ Supermarkets, headquartered in Chandler, recently announced it would be closing five of its stores statewide. Left untouched, though, are the set of five stores located on Arizona’s American Indian reservations, which are part of the Bashas’ “Dine Market” subset.

That a corporate chain grocery happens to serve historically isolated and neglected communities happens to be one of the state’s more interesting economic stories. It is also, in my view, another reason to believe in local ownership of iconic state institutions instead of the absentee model which has served Arizona quite poorly in recent years (Chase Bank, Pulte, Gannett, et. al.).

An argument might be made that injecting a Western grocery, with all of its crappy processed food, is another means of destruction of a traditional way of life (and diet) on the reservation. But the counter-argument holds that consumer choice should play a role there just as it does everywhere else. Whichever stance you take, the relationship between Bashas’ and the tribe – especially the Navajo – has been largely a content one for the last thirty years.

The Dine Markets got started in 1980 after the tribal council of the Navajo Nation wrote CEO Eddie Basha Jr., asking him to consider opening a store in Chinle. Basha, who would later mount a campaign for governor in 1992, was a descendant of a Lebanese shopkeeper who had migrated to an Arizona mining camp in 1910. Basha was immediately intrigued with the possibility, checked on distribution requirements, and then called the tribal council that same day.

“Hi, my name is Eddie Basha,” he said, according to the trade magazine Arizona Food Industry Journal. “I’m from Bashas’ Markets and I’d like to be your grocer.”

Today there are Dine Markets in Chinle, Window Rock, Tuba City, Kayenta, Pinion, Crownpoint, N.M., and Dilkon. More than 95 percent of the employees are said to speak Navajo.

Customer tastes and preferences vary slightly from other Arizona grocery stores, reports the trade journal. The markets sell a disproportionate amount of mutton, as well as Folgers coffee and Spam. Large bags of Blue Bird flour – long a staple in Navajo households – also do well. Even though the Dine cluster is far away from the company’s nucleus in the Valley, the stores are apparently doing well enough to avoid being shuttered.

Bashas’ spokeswoman Kristy Nied declined to discuss finances or even indicate whether the stores were a net moneymaker. The company is privately held, so there are no SEC filings to inspect. For now, though, the Dine Markets are staying.

Flagstaff’s ominous Sheep Hill

It is impossible to miss while driving east through Flagstaff, as it appears dead center in the driver’s field of vision. It is also visually prominent to eastbound motorists on US 89.

Sheep Hill is a classic cinder cone of the Coconino Plateau, a part of the San Francisco volcanic field which sits atop an active field of magma. Decorative cinders are now mined out of the hill’s body (revealing a colorful striation) and giving it a distinctly terraced shape.

Platt Cline’s peerless history of Flagstaff, Mountain Town, makes passing reference to Sheep Hill as one of the area’s very first ski resorts. Coconino County cleared a course there in the early part of the century and installed a tow rope, but shut it down in 1915 after a novice skiier had a fatal accident.

More notoriously, the eastern summit was where a search party found the remains of 12-year-old Jennifer Wilson* underneath a juniper tree in 1988. She had been kidnapped while riding her bicycle on Peaceful Valley Road 19 days prior. A local criminal named Ricky Bible was arrested and charged with her murder. Bible now sits on Arizona’s death row.

Sheep Hill has also been the location where he tied a local woman** to a tree and raped her seven year prior, according to the Arizona Daily Sun.

= = =

*CORRECTION (8.10.09): Jennifer Wilson was 9 at the time of the murder, not 12.

**CLARIFICATION (8.10.09): The local girl who Ricky Bible was convicted of raping was Bible’s cousin.

Moonset at sunrise in Cameron

Cameron is home to a few jewelry stalls, a tourist-trap trading post, a gas station, a handful of homes and a 1911 suspension bridge over the Little Colorado River.

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