My wife, Pam, shot this picture on Monday at Coon Bluff park along the Salt River. It is one of many such pictures that she could have shot.

Coon Bluff is one of three Tonto National Forest parks that hug the river just a few miles north of the Route 202 and Power Road exchange in Mesa.

Anyone who has driven or biked on Power Road north from Mesa where it changes into the Bush Highway knows this is one of the most beautiful drives or bikeways in the Sonoran Desert.

Anyone who has turned off the Bush Highway to enter Coon Bluff has discovered a serene riparian retreat that is the equal of any such natural sanctuary in the Southwest. For my wife and me, it makes living in Mesa or the East Valley special.

Red Mountain towers above. Eagles, herons and egrets feed in the curving river. Kayakers play on the river. Fishermen and their children fish the river. Feral horses drink in it. Orioles, cardinals and flycatchers cruise in and out of the tall shade trees that line the river banks. And warblers and verdins flitter about in the nearby mesquite woods.

Unfortunately, some lazy pigs have found this wonderful place and show their disrespect for it and the rest of us by littering it.

So what can be done about it?

First, the Forest Service should include on the passes that users purchase a plea for users to carry out what they carry in.

Second, signs should be posted at park entrances warning that litterers will be prosecuted.

Third, there should be a telephone number those who see the pigs littering can use to report them and their license plate number.

Fourth, it wouldn’t hurt to see rangers make their presence known more often. I have never seen a ranger walk through the area.

It used to be said that you know you are having a bad day when the switchboard advises that Mike Wallace from 60 minutes is holding for you.
In today’s world, that power has shifted to SNL. Ask Sarah Palin. Or ask Michael Crow.
Saturday Night Live’s take-no-prisoners shot at ASU for not conferring an honorary degree on President Barack Obama is becoming viral.
I saw it on Greta Susteren’s show on Fox News while at the gym Monday night. Fox is not in the habit of plugging an NBC program; so this was out of the ordinary.
And there are now several places online where the SNL segment has been posted followed by a legion of scathing comments aimed at ASU’s decision.
Initially, I thought this would all blow over, but I’m now convinced the damage to ASU’s reputation runs deep and that ASU President Crow knows it.
I watched last week’s graduation ceremonies on ASU-TV on Cox cable and got more looks at Crow than commercial TV gave him. Through all of it, Crow looked like a man in pain. There was no heart in his remarks. The self-confidence and commanding presence that he once brought to so many meetings in the newsroom were nowhere to be seen.
When CNN was doing its post-mortem on the speech, David Gergen characterized Obama’s ASU honorary degree references as a rare and welcome display of presidential humor.
Initially, I bought into that point of view. But now it’s clear that this presidential humor bites, and like an Arizona Gila monster doesn’t let go. Witness Obama’s subsequent reference to ASU’s decision in his commencement address at Notre Dame.
I don’t know what can or should be done about this lapse in judgment and public relations disaster, but it has damaged years of work Crow has put into improving ASU’s reputation.
And that’s a shame.

I was ratted out…by my own wife…on Facebook.

This tale of snichery begins on Wednesday when I had a free lunch.

I went to Joe’s Real Barbecue in downtown Gilbert on customer appreciation day.

I got in line with several hundred other people at 11:51 a.m., shook owner Joe Johnston’s hand as he worked a very long line and thanked him for the free lunch, one of 6,000 that he had prepared for the free lunch and dinner day.

About five minutes later, the line passed by Mrs. Joe who handed me a coupon for a buy-one, get-one-free breakfast at Joe’s Farm Grill.

By 12:27 p.m., I was in the restaurant door. In a minute or so I was handed a bulging pulled pork sandwich on a plate with beans and coleslaw.

By 12:38 p.m. I had eaten everything on my plate, watched a swarm of young mothers feeding their toddlers and was heading for the exit.

Why did I do it?

Well, because I could.

I’m no longer the editor of the Tribune. That means I’m no longer covered by the Tribune’s strict code of ethics, which prohibits journalists from accepting gifts and free lunches.

And what a better place to get a free lunch than at Joe’s in downtown Gilbert.

Free at last.

Or am I?

I still occasionally write for the Tribune, and my editor is Le Templar who led the newsroom group that developed the code and became the go-to guy when ethical questions came up in the newsroom.

Maybe he wouldn’t approve.

Oh, well, I’ll just keep my mouth shut. If I don’t say anything it won’t be an issue.

“Honey,” my wife asked later Wednesday evening. “How long did you stand in line at Joe’s?”

I gave her the times that I had written down in my reporter’s notebook.

“And where did the line go to?”

I told her, even drew her a map.

She had pressed the send key before it occurred to me to ask why she wanted to know.

“Jess Harter was asking on Facebook,” she explained, referring to the Trib’s eating out reporter.

Oh, no!

Jess blogs about everything. Everyone in the newsroom and East Valley will know I got a free lunch.

I have only a hazy understanding of how my wife got into sharing her deepest secrets AND mine with Jess because I don’t do Facebook.

But it has something to do with newsroom office manager CJ Coppola and my wife being friends and CJ and Jess are friends and now for reasons that reveal much about the tell-all-no-matter-how-irrelevant age we live in, my daughter in Baltimore and my son in Claremont, CA. are pretty much up to speed on the East Valley restaurant scene.

Anyway, my goose is cooked. So I’ll just do what politicians do and apologize for an error in judgment and promise not to do it again. (Wait. Scratch that last part.)

If you have read this far, you are also a victim of this age of blogs that don’t shed light, but often shed heat.

I’m not going to shed heat, but I will share an opinion.

Joe Johnston and Mrs. Joe have to be the coolest people in the East Valley.

A few Saturdays ago, my wife and I went to the downtown Gilbert park to look at that huge marble or granite ball that floats on water and decided to try Joe’s new place, the Liberty Market, which is just caty corner from the barbecue restaurant.

A lady was cleaning nearby tables and my wife asked if she would give ours a once over.

“Do you ever see Joe?” my wife asked the help.

“Yes, I go home with him every night. I’m Mrs. Joe,” the table busser replied.

Doesn’t that tell you something about the Johnstons?

The best known and probably the most successful restaurateurs in all of Gilbert and she’s cleaning tables on a Saturday and he’s working behind the coffee bar.

They, as much as anybody, have made downtown Gilbert one of my favorite happening places.

Try not to laugh. A few months ago I would have laughed, too.

But that was before the park, before the Paul Bunyan-sized bowling ball that floats on water, before the Liberty Market opened, and before I got my free lunch.

I’ll have more to say about Gilbert’s town center in a future column. You’ll just have to wait.

Or you can read Jess Harter’s blog.

I received a call this morning at home from a woman who identified herself as Shelly.

She also identified herself as an advocate for the Valley Interfaith Project and wanted to know what I thought of the state budget meeting that I had attended at Red Mountain United Methodist Church 10 days ago.

My answer was not what Shelly was looking for.

First some background:  The meeting was entitled “Legislative District 19/Accountability Session.”

The meeting announcement flyer said that State Sen. Chuck Gray, House Speaker Kirk Adams, and State Rep. Richard Crandall had indicated they would attend.

Hosts were the Valley Interfaith Project and the Mesa Education Association.

My wife, who is an MEA member, asked me if I wanted to go.  Well, I live in District 19, and I may be a retired journalist, but I still can’t resist taking a ringside seat to a political head-butting contest.

And this had all the makings of one.  The three invited Mesa Republican lawmakers are conservative and the hosts are not.

The hosts wanted a 1 cent temporary sales tax increase and used the Bible to lobby for one.  And the two panelists (Adams was a no-show) didn’t get voted into office on a platform of raising taxes.

In one respect, I was disappointed.  The crowd of a couple hundred people was polite, and the two lawmakers (Adams was a no-show) were respectful, complimentary, and skilled at politely saying “no way.”

Well, I wasn’t really disappointed because I appreciate civility.  I saw so little of it in recent years from the flame-throwers particularly on the right who blamed “the liberal media” and me for illegal immigration and for all the other demons under their beds.

I told Shelly what bothered me was the way the host pastors used the Bible and sermonettes to call on the lawmakers to support a tax increase.

Basically, the argument was this.  Jesus advocated social justice.  State belt-tightening is leading to social injustice because the less fortunate, particularly groups of children, are losing government support programs.

So, we get into one of those what-Jesus-would-have-done-on-state-tax-policy discussions that can go on forever.

But Shelly made the mistake of asking for it.  So I gave her my take on the argument:

Jesus would not have asked Rome to confiscate people’s property through higher taxes to take care of “the least of these.”  We all know that Jesus tried to avoid a confrontation with political authorities through his famous “Render unto Caesar…” statement.

For one thing, when you increase taxes, you risk pushing more people, including families, who are on the margins into the less fortunante category, requiring yet more taxes to help yet more people in need.

For another, you get no credit at the end of the day.  I can’t very well tell Saint Peter that I deserve to be in heaven because I acted on my Christian faith by giving a large chunk of my paycheck to the less fortunate.

“Wait a minute,” he’ll say.  “You didn’t give anything.  That money was taken out of your paycheck by the government.  It doesn’t count when you are forced to give.”

But that’s exactly what the pastors were doing, as I saw it:  “Let’s bring about social justice by forcing all those other people to pay for it.”

One more thought and I’ll shut up.  There is that separation of church and state idea.  It’s a good idea because it protects religion.

What happens when the walls come down?  Somebody gets hurt, that’s what happens; and it’s never the government.  Look at Wall Street and look at Detroit.

The altar call came that night as meeting leaders asked those in attendance to stand up if they support a sales tax increase, I was one of the few who stayed in the pew.

I give at church–maybe not as much as I should, but at least it’s voluntary.

(Disclosure:  The writer is a United Methodist Church member.)