Before the conference:
1. You'll see posts from speakers and attendees before the event where they'll discuss what they'll be talking about, what sessions they will attend and whom they hope to see.

2. We'll link to the main conference site for reminders about the program.

3. We'll post some helpful articles with advice on how to make the most of your conference attendance.

4. We'll offer a place for attendees to share their plans and possible pre-meet other attendees so you'll know a colleague or two when you get there.

During the conference:
1. We'll post highlights from the day's sessions and events and invite attendees to share their highlights through post comments.

2. We'll post photos and video interviews to the blog, and take your comments and suggestions for more.

3. We'll keep you updated on changes and can't-miss events.

Most importantly, we invite you to use this space to comment, share, give advice and hook-up with your fellow ILTAns.

Send us your questions and comments now!

This is the general outline of what I have planned. If you have any ideas or suggestions or would like to help, please give me a call. See The Totah Theatre's website for contact information. www.thetotah.com

Do-Rag

What to do in the Four Corners

Free magazine geared toward teens through thiry-somethings

Advertising from:

Car Dealers                              Electronics Stores

Sporting Goods Stores             Clothing Stores

Mall Shops                               Skate/Ski Shops

Paint Ball Shop                         Cell Phone Companies

Radio Stations                          TV/Satellite

Banks

No Advertising from:

Bars                                         Liquor/Booze

Cash Loan Companies             Casinos/Gambling

Articles on:

Ski Slopes                                Skate Parks

Concerts                                  Shows

People Doing Things                 Sporting Events

Hobbies                                   Local Businesses

Music                                       Local Artists

Reviews on Products                Letters to the Editor

Tracks and Trails                      Vacations

Event Re-Caps                         Trip Logs

Photography                            

Will be successful by involving readers in content, contests, entries and stories.

Use independent contributors and volunteers.

Use it to promote local venues and activities such as The Totah Theatre, Kirtland PAC and organizations like San Juan Symphony, Theater Ensemble Arts and events put on by Farmington Downtown Association. (Just to name a few.)

Questions:

What format to use                   Start up costs

How to distribute                      Who will do what

What to charge for ads             Frequency of  print

How to keep it going                Who will be the editor

What needs to be done first

For information, for input, or to volunteer call:

Greg Churchill (505)327-4145

So many members of religious cults are too frightened to speak: while they are in the cult, and after they come out. The cardinal rule all abusers enforce on their victims is "Don't talk". For if we talk, we assert ourselves against the abuse, and reveal it for what it is.

The main authors/moderators appear to remain Christian and religious, but perhaps they are a few steps closer to freedom.

At present you can read their response to (BCF leader) Vic Hall's response to the Four Corners programme about the church and members.

*The next two are Naked kids aren't sex objects and Is blood blue? - but you should see it in the sidebar somewhere.

Just so you know, this is supposed to be a science blog...

The Brisbane Christian Fellowship (and their Toowoomba counterpart) is in the Courier Mail ("Church sect holds its faithful in grip of fear", 28/06/08, M. Wenham) and on ABC's Four Corners. The Christian Fellowship is one of those proliferating fundamentalist groups that pride themselves on devotion (read: mindlessness) and purity (read: xenophobia).

Flick through the 4Corners' flash site and you can access a tract made by the church to help pubescent teenage girls through "changes" - complete with a section titled "What was Eve's Deception" and helpful advice like:

Do you want to grow up to be a godly woman who is willing to be given and serve (remember we were created to be a helper) or rather spend your whole life like a sponge, desiring everyone else, (especially a future husband) to fulfil your self-centred needs?

Blessed! What may come if girls actually desire fulfilment?

The Fellowship also appears to be one of those great churches that thinks bad things are God's way of punishing sinners. After a man suffered a heart attack, induced by the stress of the treatment he received leaving the church, the church actually has the gall to send him a letter, and then read it in church the next Sunday, explaining how this was God's way of punishing the guy.

Hopefully exposure of groups like this will dispel the myth that Church makes nice people. Though I really doubt anything will come out of this. Australia is just as capable of protecting asshats under the guise of religious freedom as other countries.

Recent additions are:

Faun Fables - Guitarist from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Setting Sun and Quitzow.

Mankind is Obsolete

Helblinki Sextet

and on and on.

Thanks for all of your support.

The Totah Loves You!

An effort should have been made to acknowledge that these dogs were trained to fight, not fed for days and week to make them aggressive, chained up and tormented, beaten and fed blood to promote their taste for it. Ordinary pit bulls do not fight to the death with every dog they see. A point should have been made that these dogs are friendly and not dangerous if treated like any other dog.

I own one of these dogs that people like to fight. I know first hand their strength, agility, lock jaw, speed and like for wrestling and chewing stuff up. But I also know that they are loyal, friendly and very intellignet dogs.

People fight these dogs becasue of their remarkable build. They physically are the ultimate fighting machine. My dog eats a steak bone like its a biscuit, they jaws are strong - they can hold onto a rope in mid air their jaws are that strong, but their mentality does not make the aggressive naturally. The instinct to foght and be aggressive has to be embedded in the dog, which is why these poeple treat them so badly and don't feed them.

my Pit bull - Torrie

Any dog can bite and attack someone, and other dogs do it more than what pit bulls do. I just think that some respect should have been shown for this breed of dog and it pointed out that they are not all aggressive fighting machines. They are trained to be that aggressive fighting machine.

The smell of cedar makes me think of a woman, true and kind and with a voice that can render bacon grease, and I wonder what would happen to us both out here, drunk and positively immoral.

The cedar, lightning blasted and twisted into astounding works of art -- full of movement, negative space, and biomorphic form -- reside easily on the scrapes of rock and desert sand. They are hardy, and generally very old. When they cling into the bed rock (as they must do), their heavy, dry roots fracture and crack, and eventually amputate the lith they make their home. They offer shelter from the sun, but nothing else. If a person finds themselves lost, they may make a minor living gathering the pinion nuts from under them, but that is all. They make an excellent firewood. The first bite of a saw into the gray dessicated limb sends the high and heavy rich smell of creosote into the air and you feel you have murdered the most living thing in the world.

Down in the valley, home to enormous herds of suicidal deer along Highway 141 in the winter, electric and fanciful green reaches up to the sky. The tender green shimmers and sparkles as the leaves turn in the wind and glint the sun. It's a showy, fake beauty, but a beauty none the less. These are the cottonwoods. Handsome and out of place in the fields of sage high above the fallow fields of mortals. They advertise themselves with thick seedfalls and white bark. They mean to tell you they are sucking out of a deep well. They grow in creeks and along banks where their shallow roots don't have to reach far to suck the land dry. With their artificial looking skin and artificial looking foliage (at least in the high desert) they scream that they sit on something precious. They are living atop water. You may have to dig into the root ball a foot or two, but water will be there. They are an amazing tree in situ. If they ever found their way to a real deciduous forest, they would be mocked and ugly. When the maples or oaks turn fire red, the cottonwood would turn an anemic yellow. When the oak was still a child, the cottonwood would fall over, showing cracks and wrinkles.

But here in the high desert, they look like heaven come down.

They remind me of a few people I know. Beautiful, sophisticated, learned, and travelled. At least until they meet anyone truly beautiful, sophisticated, learned or traveled.

"Do you think," she asked me from thousands of miles away, sending hickory smoke down my spine, "that women always want an edge somehow? Like, they only like you if they have a place where they can beat you at something?"

I thought back to long times past. The talk of one country visited (and not that impressive a country) that was seen through the windows of a car. The talk of books I would normally roll my eyes at. The talk of semi-urban life. Had they known me better than they did that one night, they would never have thought any of it was an edge. I have lived in bigger cities, been to all but two continents riding on buses and, sometimes, burying bodies, and I have skimmed the surface of word art and delved as far into it as one can go and maintain sanity. But they did not know me. They knew I could two-step, they could see my country stock in my shoulders and arms, and she could hear my origins in my slow and archaic talk. She would never have guessed any of it without me telling her.

The cottonwoods can only reproduce when there is a flood. The seeds will not open without the total immersion of themselves and the terrain surrounding. The resource they sit on , precious the world over, but hellaciously sparse here, has to suddenly rise and be obscene and ridiculous before they will ever produce anything but glittering yellow and green and substandard fire wood that will not burn without months of preparation. But from far off on the Slick Rock hill, looking down on Dissappointment Valley, they are pretty. Pretty has a value, sometimes.

It helps if I'm drunk and feeling positively immoral.

Artist: Craig Chaquico
Album: Four Corners

Tracklist :

• The Drifter
• Forbidden Love
• Turquoise Moon
• Red Rocks
• Arizona Daybreak
• Somebody to Love
• A Mother's Heart
• Haight Asbury
• Samba del Rio
• Borders
• Four Corners

I would also like to relate some of the statements made by the program to the Victorian context (I don't know enough about the specifics in other states to comment more broadly).

This program interviewed Sharon Guest and Stuart Neale, caring for their severely disabled daughter, Jessie, who said that the only choices offered to them was to continue caring without support or relinquish their child to Child Protection (in NSW, DOCs). DOCs has actually responded to these statements and other ambigous claims, which was actually a relief to read since the allegations are really out of sink with what I know to be the case here in Victoria. Its a shame that these points couldn't be cleared up before the program went to air.

The organisation I work for offers families of children with disabilities Respite Care or "Shared Family Care". For example, a child might live with a foster carer during the week, and at home on the weekends. These kinds of options are negotiated with the family according to their needs and the ability we have to meet them. These are what we call Voluntary Placements and can be ended any time by the family.

The Disability Program supports children and young people up to the age of 18 and beyond in this type of Home Based Care.

I also would like to mention that the majority of children supported by the Disability Program have Intellectual Disabilities, such as developmental delays or autism, rather than the common perception of disability as automatically associated with wheel-chairs. Like all programs though, the Disability Program is chronically short of carers which makes finding ideal placements sometimes very difficult.

Happily, it seems that some amendments in this year's Federal Budget are pleasing carer groups and families, which is great news for families.

Can Barack Obama unite America - and deliver on Martin Luther King's dream? Chris Masters reports.

My personal highlights were:

Black resident of Harlem housing prospects saying that people never talk about racism because racism is in their hearts. A minute before that she was saying that while Obama is seen by many as "not black enough", he was black enough for her. Later in the show she complained about gentrification of Harlem as a white conspiracy to drive blacks out "like cattle". Obviously white folks paying black folks loads of money for their houses is racist. Certainly seems like racism is in some people's hearts...

Black female complaining that racism is still alive and well, minutes before she was awarded at the "Black Achievers Awards". The irony of the situation was evidently not understood.

Black Harvard academic dismissing Jeremiah Wright's rants as the sort of silly over the top black rhetoric that is absolutely harmless. It doesn't take a Harvard Phd to figure, that if any white was to apply Wright's "harmless rhetoric" to blacks they would be shouted down as racist if not jailed. The above academic also calmed that Obama's 20 years association with Wright is irrelevant. Would it be irrelevant to him if say McCain had a 20 years association with a KKK member?

Young black girl told about her Southern friend that had a wallet with Confederation flag on it. Even though the person only had the wallet as a fashion item, she was dismayed and implied he approved or pro-slavery South by caring it. By the same token, when Obama's aide hangs Che Guevara poster on public display in her office, does it imply that his staff support summary executions?

The whole show left me dismayed and angry. It made it quite clear that right now American race problems are not as much the fault of the "racist" whites but the black identity industry that continues to nurture and perpetrate the black victimhood it relies upon for its own survival.

I was also angry at the attitudes of white liberals who in order to redeem their white guilt patronise and segregate blacks with their "special" pity programs. I mentioned the "Black Achievers Award" before. It was given out by the white man. He looked like he was the only white man in there. I understand that being nice to blacks may make people feel god, but if you give out a special award only for blacks you are treating them as inherently different, special maybe, but different. This what racism is about - treating people different because of their race. Don't you get it? And why don't blacks object to such openly condescending treatment? Why do they accept the white man's "special" award for blacks only? For all the talk of black pride, don't they understand that accepting such "special" awards is an admission that they are not good enough to get awards open to non-blacks?

The only sane voice on the show belonged to the conservative African-American scholar Shelby Steele (strangely no other punter on the show was labelled as a liberal or left-wing scholar), who dared to criticise Obama's lack of substance, called Jeremiah Wright's bigotry for what it was, and mentioned that if Obama was to lose the elections it would not be because he is black, but because of his numerous failings. Steele also believes that America is long ready for a black president and Powell would've beaten the weak Bill Clinton if he decided to run.

Triple frontera entre Letonia (derecha), Lituania (izquierda) y Bielorrusia (centro). © Jan Krogh

En todo el mundo hay varios centenares de triples fronteras. Pero no hay ninguna cuádruple frontera internacional, o quadrifinium. Lo que más se le acerca son dos tripoints al sur de África, en el río Zambeze. Por un lado convergen las fronteras de Namibia, Botsuana y Zambia, y al este de dicho punto, las de Botsuana, Zambia y Zimbabue. La distancia entre ambos puntos es de dos kilómetros en línea recta. Y en realidad, como suele pasar en el continente africano, no está demasiado claro dónde empieza y acaba cada país, por las distintas interpretaciones de cada uno sobre los tratados territoriales.

Sin embargo, sí que existen cuádruples fronteras subnacionales. La más conocida es Four Corners, las cuatro esquinas, en Estados Unidos. Four Corners es el nombre de una amplia zona alrededor del punto donde se cruzan las fronteras de Arizona, Nuevo México, Colorado y Utah. En el punto exacto donde se encuentran hay ubicado un monumento donde todo el que pasa se dedica a intentar poner cada una de sus extremidades en un estado distinto. El monumento está dentro de una reserva india (la Nación Navajo), y se cobra la entrada. Varios miles de personas lo visitan cada año. Four Corners se formó cuando Arizona se convirtió en un Estado, en 1912. Muy poco antes Nuevo México había alcanzado ese mismo estatus. Ese mismo año se colocó un primer marcador de granito, sustituido en 1992 por un disco de bronce. El punto exacto del cruce debería ser 37º N 109º 2' 48" O, pero una medición errónea situó el cruce de fronteras a unos cientos de metros de su ubicación teórica. Posteriormente el Tribunal Supremo dio por válida la medición, recolocando la frontera donde está actualmente. Al monumento se accede desde Nuevo México, pero el aparcamiento está en Utah, las mesas de picnic en Arizona, y algunas de las tiendas en Colorado.

Four Corners Monument. La foto está tomada desde Arizona. Los coches del fondo están en Colorado, y la ranchera de la izquierda está en Utah. Nuevo México queda a la derecha de la imagen.

Canadá también tiene sus particulares cuatro esquinas. A 60º de latitud norte y 102º de latitud oeste se cruzan los límites de Saskatchewan, Manitoba, los Territorios del Noroeste y Nunavut. A diferencia de su gemelo americano, el Four Corners canandiense está donde Cristo perdió el mechero, lejos, muy lejos, de cualquier rastro de civilización. El pueblo habitado más cercano es Points North Landing, a más de doscientos kilómetros de distancia. También allí está el aeródromo desde el que se puede tomar un hidroavión hacia Four Corners, aunque desde el lago donde deja el avión todavía queda una caminata a través de páramos infestados de mosquitos hasta el lugar. No es un destino turístico de primer orden, ciertamente. La carretera asfaltada más cercana, de hecho, queda seiscientos kilómetros al sur.

Obelisco de Aluminio en Four Corners, Canadá.

Las cuatro esquinas canadienses son relativamente recientes. Nunavut se convirtió en un territorio independiente en 1999. Sin embargo, en el quadripoint hay un obelisco de aluminio de un metro de alto que lleva allí desde 1962. Sin embargo, lo que señalaba, y señala todavía, es el trifinium entre Manitoba, Saskatchewan y los Territorios del Noroeste. Nadie se ha molestado en cambiarlo en los últimos nueve años. Y, la verdad, tampoco es que haga demasiada falta.

Actualizaçao tardía: Perrea, perrea este artículo.

Para saber más:

En la Wiki: Four Corners; Four Corners Monument; Four Corners, Canada.

En The Corner Corner, relato del viaje a las cuatro esquinas canadienses.

The Great Sand Dunes NP...who knew this was here?!

Mesa Verde NP...this view never gets old.

To get to Mesa Verde, you have to drive this insane loop from the entrance that, at times, is the scariest road on earth. Sheer drop offs, tight turns, high elevation...can you say panic attack? Which isn't good when you're the one driving. At one overlook area, I thought I would face my fears and just get to the highest, scariest place I could. Do you think I made it?

And finally, Four Corners...where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, & Utah all meet up. Man, this place is out of the way of anything, even by middle-of-the-desert standards. But the cool factor is too good to pass up.

Not Pictured:
Golfer vomiting all in the car.
Sassy vomiting all in the car (different day, more volume).
Making ramen noodles in the hotel coffee maker.
Sassy vomiting all in the hotel room. Maybe coffee maker noodles aren't such a good idea?

Now do you see my twisted reason for wishing you were here? I'm tired of being on vomit patrol. I'm all out of plastic bags and paper towels, so I hope they're finished with all that.

Tomorrow...steam train in Durango and driving to Moab!

www.thetotah.com

Watch and enjoy.

For information, contact Teia Camacho at booking@thetotah.com.

Or call (505)327-4145

The box office will be open from 8:00am to 11:00am through Friday, and Monday and Tuesday next week.

Tickets are $10.00. Doors open at 6:30pm. Strange New Shoes go on at 7:00pm.

It's very rare for bands of this quality to grace the Four Corners area. Don't miss one of the Top 100 Bands of 2008.

Opening for National Product and Lorene Drive are Strange New Shoes. You may know them as The Shoes! They have opened for bands like Formula 151 at the Totah. They also recorded their first album titled "The Shoes - Untied" at the Totah. Don't miss this exciting and very talented group.

This is sure to be an action packed line-up.

Call (505)327-4145 for tickets or for more information.

Christopher Anton of Pseudocipher and Information Society is sharing the stage with Japanese CarCrash.

April 5th at 7:00. $8 at the door.

I can't wait to get started on the next one.

Check it out at http://www.thetotah.com/podcast.html

Give it a listen and tell me what you think. Let me know what you want to hear and don't want to hear on our weekly show.

Thanks to all who support The Totah Theatre

www.thetotah.com

Greg

That was, as a side note, the first Question Time I had been able to watch since the victorious Labor election last November. The Labor front bench seem to be a little green in terms of answering questions, but I really did expect that after 11 years in opposition. It's good to be able to see who the new 'Order Dogs' are for the Coalition now - Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull. It will make a change from Anthony Albanese and Lindsey Tanner. Speaking of Malcolm Turnbull, his questions over the past two days have been killers. He seems to be a hitman on the floor, and is targeting Wayne Swan something fierce. The new Speaker - Harry Jenkins - is an absolute hoot! He is great. He makes jokes, he has a laugh, and he is much more entertaining than David Hawker.

The only downside to the change in arrangements is that Kate Ellis is now seated down in the last seat on the bench. A shame really.

Anyway, Four Corners had a very interesting, at times amusing, feature piece called Howard's End, focused on the year leading up to the November 24 election as seen through the eyes of big-wigs who are now in opposition. It was something I found extremely entertaining, as I've been waiting for the 'revelations' and 'truths' to come out since the Liberals headed in a downward spiral. All the backroom meetings, the closed door conversations, and the whispering in the corridors would make for an interesting story for anyone interested in Australian politics. And, I feel, the show did that - it wrote an interesting narrative of what happened. Of course, there were a few key players absent from the piece; John Howard being the biggest name. It would have really made the show if Howard was there spilling the truth as well. Though, how much you can believe from everyone else on the show is up in the air. They are, after all, politicians.

What emphasises this last point (about relative truth) is the part where they showed Alexander Downer, during the APEC summit:

Alexander Downer: There is no other candidate for the Prime Ministership and I think he’s the best candidate…

Reporter: Would you tap him on the shoulder?

Alexander Downer: What sort of question is that? I think his leadership is in the best interests of the Liberal Party.

Quite clearly, from the stories that we were being told by the interviewees on Four Corners, there another candidate for the Prime Ministership:

Liz Jackson: That night, Thursday the sixth of September, Alexander Downer invited eight of his Cabinet colleagues to his suite at the Quay Grand Hotel for a drink and a confidential chat.

...

Peter Costello: I heard pretty, pretty soon afterwards.

Liz Jackson (To Peter Costello): Pretty soon…

Peter Costello: I got reports of what was going on.

Liz Jackson (To Peter Costello): And what was that? What were you being told by Alexander Downer as the outcome of the meeting?

Peter Costello: That I’d better get ready because there could be a change of leadership.

I remember this news hitting the papers, and then hitting the floor during Question Time, and it was hammered home so hard that anyone watching would have suspected the Liberals of not just being in trouble, but being in disarray. But then you had to question how true the information we were receiving was. Each person summoned to answer the charges emphatically denied anythin, but could never say they were there. It was something interesting yet confusing to watch at the time. But now, with most of the people speaking out about it, it has begun to all make sense.

Joe Hockey really came off looking quite good from this program. I had always liked the guy, but especially now. A focus point of the program was when WorkChoices was introduced. Part of the interview with Hockey is very interesting:

Liz Jackson: A new Minister for Workplace Relations was appointed to repair some of the damage done. Joe Hockey’s problem was that under the new laws, some people would be losers.

Joe Hockey: Quite frankly when I took over the job I don’t think many ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under WorkChoices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation. And once I started to raise those issues with colleagues and they became more informed of the impact of WorkChoices we introduced the fairness test.

Liz Jackson (To Joe Hockey): You’re saying to me that Cabinet colleagues were unaware that you could be worse off?

Joe Hockey: Some were, yeah, yep.

This is followed up by a statement by Andrew Robb that probably encapsulated the feelings of the Australian voters who voted Labor, as well as the campaign by the Labor party itself during the election month:

Andrew Robb: I think it was the most powerful symbol of the fact that we had stopped listening and that we’d run our race and that we’d been there so long, that we were no longer alert to the views of the Howard battlers, the people who'd put us there in the first place.

Any government who puts in place a policy that directly disadvantages the voters, and hasn't even dug deeper than the surface (in terms of the effects on the citizenry) for research, then that government is really looking for trouble. What government would even think about building a policy where people "could be worse off" under it? It was a shame that Hockey got lumped with the portfolio. Well, maybe not an entire shame. Seeings he was the face of WorkChoices, it seems remarkable that he kept his seat even though the policy was so unpopular. I think it might be because his constituents saw he got a bum deal from Howard.

On Kyoto, well, it came as no surprise to me to find out that Peter Costello wanted to ratify it. Though, I was rather surprised that he though they should have signed onto it before the climate change issue really came to the front in Australian politics:

Liz Jackson (To Peter Costello): So did you back Malcolm Turnbull when he suggested that Kyoto be ratified before the election?

Peter Costello: Well I actually think that the time for ratification was much earlier than that, having when it first came up endorsed the target, the time for ratification was then.

I had only ever thought that the Liberals had got serious on the issue because it had become 'popular politics'. And even their 'seriousness' about climate change was quite a few steps away from Labor's position. From what was said on the program, the party blames Howard for losing ground on this issue.

Anyway, the program is repeated tonight at 11:35pm on the ABC. I'll be watching it again just for th kicks. There are some good laugh-out-loud moments too. And because you know the outcome, it's like watching a bomb count down to 0. A great watch.

Thomas.

What a great place the west.

Durango is having a fierce winter this year! In town we have probably received over 7' of the fluffy powder so far and it's not stopping anytime soon. If you've heard about the torrential downpours in Cali & AZ then you know what's happening to us.

It's not stopping people from being mobile. I love watching people slide by on ski's and bikes. Actually I haven't attempted a bike ride in snowpack yet but will by the time it melts. I did ski last week for the second time ever! As I expected the fundamentals of skiing and ice skating run parallel. I know Justin was stoked to see me join him on the snow sticks.

This weekend is The Annual Snowdown Festival here in town.  The theme Ladies & Lords. Medieval Style. Below are updates.

Jan 29 2008

 Even though Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings are crumbling and looters stole most of the ancient artificats from the city, the cliff city of the Pueblo Native Americans still astounds people 800 years after their creation.

The Pueblo began to build their city in times of plenty, around the 1200's.  During a drought in the early 1300's the Pueblo abandoned the cliff dwellings.  It was discovered by whites in the 1880's and were quickly robbed, looted, and plundered.  Soon after, fortunately, a National Park was created around the site.  The arid climate and shelter from the cliffs themselves have beautifully and ornately preserved the dwellings.

The site is in Four Corners country (between Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico).  You can climb steep ladders and crawl through tunnels to see the largest cliff dwelling in North America first-hand.  This is not for those afraid of heights or small tight spaces however.  The highest point is at 8,572 feet above the ground!  Tours are available for history buffs.

Admission is $10 per car and the nearest hotel is the Far View Lodge, where rooms cost up to $102 a night.  You can also camp out in the park for a nominal fee.  The park is open year-round.  There are fewer crowds in April to June, but in July, there is a Mesa Verde Indian Arts Festival, which is always a crowd-pleaser. 

ABC television in Australia will tonight broadcast an interview with terror suspect Dr Haneef.  Tune in at 8.30 tonight and see who is the biggest liar; the Liberal Immigration Minisister, or the Doctor.