Email Author Michael Kiefer

1998 Stories by Michael Kiefer

• Balancing Act

  published December 10, 1998

  Rob Smith, head of the Sierra Club in these parts, is a mild-mannered, middle-aged man. He doesn't look like a bomb thrower. So he was taken aback... More >>

• Deconstructing the Phoenix Mountain Preserve

  published November 26, 1998

  All these years we thought we knew them. The Phoenix Mountain Preserves used to consist of 16,500 acres of South Mountain and 7,000 more... More >>

• How Grand Was My Canyon

  published November 5, 1998

  How does a mile-deep hole in the desert become a cultural icon, a mystic symbol and the world's biggest tourist attraction? That's what Arizona... More >>

• The Work of Art Hamilton

  published October 1, 1998

  On Art Hamilton's first day in the Arizona House of Representatives, as he tells the story, the speaker of the House, Stan Akers, looked straight... More >>

• St. Travis at the Bat

  published September 3, 1998

  Saint Travis, hear our prayer. Patron of all-American boys, role models and virginal heartthrobs, protector of sweet-swinging lefty hitters, first... More >>

• Talking Trash

  published August 27, 1998

  Welcome to Bizarro World," said assistant state attorney general Mitchell Klein near the beginning of his address to the Arizona Association of... More >>

• Clubbing Wrigley

  published August 13, 1998

  George A. Hormel II went on a shopping spree in 1992. With a $13 million inheritance in his pocket, Hormel, whom everyone calls "Geordie,"... More >>

• Trainspotting

  published July 16, 1998

  Info:Correction Date: 08/27/1998 Info: Trainspotting Nearly three years after Amtrak's Sunset Limited was sabotaged near Buckeye,... More >>

• Detourist Trap

  published June 25, 1998

  John Wilson can't go straight home in the morning. The city of Phoenix won't let him. He lives just blocks from where 32nd Street and Shea... More >>

• Going to the Well Too Often

  published June 4, 1998

  Jen Scott knows that whatever she says when she stands up to speak at a zoning commission meeting will be discounted. She's lived near Prescott... More >>

• Deborah Ham's Unfinished Business

  published May 21, 1998

  Deborah Ham, the eccentric country lawyer who led an uphill legal battle to keep a copper mine out of Pinto Creek, a tiny forest stream just west... More >>

• Cleaning the Creek

  published May 7, 1998

  Tailings are the mess left by mining, what's left after ore is broken into rock or crushed into powder and the metal has been extracted. It has no... More >>

• Timely Tim

  published April 9, 1998

  The bell that House Speaker Jeff Groscost rings to summon legislators back to the House floor sounds alarmingly like a door-chime rendition of the... More >>

• Snow Clouds Over the San Francisco Peaks

  published March 19, 1998

  Last week, the chair-lift conversation at Arizona Snowbowl in Flagstaff repeatedly turned to whether the ski area would be allowed to cut new... More >>

• Sun City Disease

  published March 5, 1998

  "Mr. President, Mr. President, you have ignored me again." The elderly bearded gentleman dances in the aisle like a small boy who has to... More >>

• Good Year for Bad Days

  published January 15, 1998

  It's an archetypical Western story. Four earnest young cowpunks pile onto a bus and set out on the hardest road they can find, looking for... More >>