Marpril 2017 Joshua Tree Tortoise Telegraph

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Huge Desert Lily bloom!

he media keeps talking about a desert wildflower “superbloom,” which is all well and fine, however, we can see that superbloom and raise ‘em! We have a Desert Lily superbloom going on east of Twentynine Palms RIGHT NOW! (Well, maybe right now, depending on when you’re actually reading this paper.)

The first week or two of April, however, should be excellent times to head east on ol’ Route 62 to not only enjoy the proliferation of wildflowers like the dune primrose, desert star, and desert verbena, but to also enjoy a massive Desert Lily superbloom that’s taking place from the east end of Wonder Valley out past Ironage Road.

Send your Desert Lily and wildflower photos to us at tortoisetelegraph@gmail.com and you might get a prize!

In this issue: jai uttal—from devil with a blue dress to roots, rock, rama! and Shakti Fest this may artist snake jagger continues his true life story in the sixth installment of becoming snake jagger A portal to the new earth opens in garth’s boulder gardens this spring march events to read about while you’re stuck in line waiting to get into the national park Keep it real: help stop vandalism and theft in our national parks - put the NPS tipline# in your cell phone: 888-653-0009

there’s more Tortoise online! www.jttortoisetelegraph.com

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Tales from the tortoise

jaitouttal from devil with a blue dress roots, rock, rama! and Shakti Fest

by Steve Brown

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e’s 65, sitting on the banks of Ma Ganga (the Ganges River) in Rishikesh, playing guitar and singing a prayer to Lord Shiva. As the river courses out of the Himalayas behind him, with a warm and rich voice he sings the praises of the song to a contagious percussive Afro-Brazilian rhythm while his wife dances and his son happily interacts with the local children.

Welcome to the world of Jai Uttal where music, devotion, and family blend, with delightful results.

I’m not a yogi, I’ve never even tried yoga, and I have had only modest experience with kirtan devotional music, despite its popularity in the Joshua Tree area. But I often have enjoyed hearing what local friends and acquaintances have done with kirtan (some do it quite well), and Jai’s music expands upon what I’ve heard before. While I’ve never been “new agey,” I’ve always had a fairly open global perspective, and world music has been an integral part of that perspective, and I’m always curious about the spiritual components ofmusic.

At its core, kirtan is the repetitive singing of devotional mantras, with a kind of call-and-response format. It’s roots go back—way back—into Vedic tradition, with kirtan becoming popular during the Bhakti movement of Hinduism (we’re talking 6th century), the yoga of devotion. But you can take these devotional mantras and adapt them to a variety of musical influences. And adapt Jai does, almost timelessly, as in the song he plays alongside the Ganges.

Jai (born Douglas), grew up in Manhattan, the son of Larry Uttal, a record executive. His father would bring home the top 20 singles from the local radio station and play them for Jai and his sister. He even wound up at the recording session of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels doing Devil with a Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly.

Shorty Long and Mickey Stevenson’s song, mixed with Little Richard’s tune, was released

by Ryder in 1966, and went to #4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts.

The young Jai learned to play a variety of instruments, from piano and guitar, to harmonica, and his favorite—banjo.

“My first love was banjo,” he tells me. “Appalachian style, old style banjo.”

OK. We’ll let the banjo thing slide. For now. We’ve got a story to tell, after all, and we’ll never get there if we devolve now into the deep well of bad banjo player jokes.

But Jai wasn’t limited to Appalachian banjo music. He got into electric guitar, and notes, “Jimi Hendrix was really an inspiration.” Banjo sins forgiven.

Around age 17, his musical path led him to Indian classical music and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, who comes from one of the world’s leading musical families, and remains one of the most influential Indian musicians in history, and a master of the sarod. Though Jai had been listening to Khan’s music on albums, discovering the use of the drone, and raga melodies, it was at a performance at Reed College in Oregon where it seems his life’s direction was irreversibly altered.

“The night before the first class, Ali Akbar Khan came and performed at the school,” Jai remembers. “I was so completely blown out by the concert, I had almost like a vision.”

Jai’s scholarly career at Reed didn’t go so well, but he went down to Berkeley where Khan who had originally come to teach for the Asian Society of Eastern Arts in 1965, had founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967. He taught six classes a week, nine months of the year, for the next 40 years, and Jai remained involved with the college throughout that period.

“I was very connected, and still am very connected to his family, music, and legacy,” Jai explains. “That really changed my course.”

An interest in eastern spirituality brought Jai to India where he found his guru (or his guru found him), Neem Karoli Baba, and his experience with Indian music broadened from the classical to include devotional music, temple music, and the songs of folk singers. Maharaji, as the guru is known to his students, encouraged the practice of bhakti, devotional yoga, expressed through kirtan, and kirtan became the center of Jai’s music and his spiritual life.

But lest you think life only goes in straight lines, Jai was not to be typecast and put in a box. Instead, “I came back from India, continued studying with Khan, kept going back to India, pulled out my guitar again, had my own rock band, and played in reggae bands (like Jamaican reggae musician Earl Zero).” Jai picked up a digital sampler and sequencer and began to experiment by bringing all the influences he had been experiencing together—the Appalachian, rock, reggae, Indian classical, and the kirtan.

The resulting fusion of musical influences, combined with the contributions from jazz trumpet innovator Don Cherry and Indian singer Lakshmi Shankar, became his first album, Footprints.

“I assumed a couple of people would hear it and enjoy it,” Jai recalls. “I didn’t

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have any ambition about it. It was more like a hobby—writing bizarre songs. I had my band and my ambitions were more in western music. Then the album came out and got all these reviews. The whole world music genre was just starting then. Most of it was African and Middle Eastern fusion and this was the first album bringing out all the aspects of Indian music. Nineteen albums later, in a time when the music industry and audiences don’t really listen to albums any more, I have just released a double album, Roots, Rock, Rama!, which contains all the elements I’ve experienced all these years, and I’m going to be presenting a lot of this material at Shakti Fest. ​​ “The music I create is really just an expression of all the musical journeys I’ve had through my life,” Jai continues. “I’ve never been casual with my music. Everything I’m into, I’ve been deeply into. I studied Indian music for the past 40 years, and the Appalachian music I studied note by note. I’ve been deeply drinking of all this stuff.

His commitment earned him a Grammy nomination for his 2002 album, Mondo Rama. And his albums are filled with work by some of the best musicians in the industry, many of them produced by his longtime musical associate, Ben Leinbach, who played a main production role on Roots, Rock, Rama!.

For the past five or six years, Jai has been studying Brazilian guitar with Jose Neto, and I can hear the influence come through as he plays on the banks of the Ganges. AfroBrazilian musical influences meld with kirtan call-and-repsonse mantra, and there is dancing and prayer and music all woven together in a song that may seem only about four minutes long, but gives the impression that it’s always gone on, and always will.

“It’s never been an intellectual exploration on combining different kinds of music,” Jai notes. “It’s a very organic expression of what’s going on inside me. I’m a continuing student, and a little bit of a scientist. In my mind, it’s always a search, how can I express the next mood, all the stuff I studied and absorbed.”

Jai talks about how the chanting of the mantras in kirtan can be “held” in any kind of musical container we can imagine. He even notes there is punk rock kirtan, though I’m not sure I’ll be Googling that anytime soon. But any form of music can be devotional, if done appropriately, he explains.

“It all depends on the person engaged in the process,” he continues. “The essential part is the mantras, and reverence for the mantras, and the repetitiveness of the mantras. It’s quite natural for me. It’s a practice, a meditation. Even though it can be completely vibrant and energized, and sometimes very loud, or soft and gentle, it’s essentially a devotional meditation. I like the word held. It’s held in the vessel of all these different musical colors and rainbows of expression that come out of me.

“I think a lot of it has to do with the intention [of the music] and where the musician is coming from when creating or performing the music. We listen to all kinds of music at home and the music we love is the music that comes from the deep soul of the artist. Any music, if it’s coming from that deep place, is spiritual and devotional, as long as it’s coming from the soul.”

Jai adds that it’s not just his hard work and talent that makes his music work. When he has success musically, there’s something else involved.

“I credit that to grace,” he says. “I’m amazed. I work hard at what I do, and then I’m completely amazed at the results. Sometimes it seems that came from somewhere else and I think, this must have had a blessing attached to it.”

His new album is a milestone for him, personally and professionally, and he’s excited to be bringing it live to Shakti Fest in May. He says those attending can expect a joyful party and feeling of community from the whole weekend, centered around repeating God’s name and mantras. And when it comes to his performance at Shakti, he’s planned a more than full band, and intends to perform only one or two older songs, with the rest of the performance coming from his new album.

“It’s going to be an over the top divine spiritual devotional party from start to finish. I feel like 50 years of kirtan singing has gone into this album,” Jai elaborates. “I don’t want to sound pretentious, I put a lot into this, and I feel, in a weird kind of way, a big transformation into my spiritual life with this, stepping out with my being in a bigger way than before.”

What does Jai want from this new double-CD album? Not big world tours. He says he refuses to do what could come between maintaining his health and that of his family.

May 12-14 bhaktifest.com

“I just want to share the music on this album, and we created a beautiful music video. I want people to still relate to, and understand, and love the concept of an album instead of downloading one song. The concentration span of people these days is pretty short. They don’t want to read the full novel. I’m quite old school in that way. I want to hear the whole story.”

He also hopes for a tour of India, and while Jai and his wife Nubia Teixeira, and their son Ezra are in Nubia’s homeland of Brazil this year, he’ll be touring some cities there.

“I’ve been to Brazil a lot. It’s where I met my wife. Almost every time I’ve done some concerts there the last 18 years. This time we’re going to do a little more, spend time with my wife’s family—our son loves his grandma and cousins, spend a little vacation time of the beach—that’s kind of the way we try to live our life. We wrap our devotional practices, family, and professional life together.

“The main focus in my life is family. My wife and I have an 11 year old boy, about to turn 12, and raising him is the most important part of our lives, the biggest blessing, the biggest challenge, the biggest joy. More than anything, raising our son is the spiritually highest thing we do.

“I bring my son to almost every event I can,” he continues. “My wife is a yoga and dance teacher and when I play she often will do a dance performance or jump on stage and dance. My son is a musician and plays on the new album. I hope the time will come when we’ll tour together. Everything’s wrapped up together and that’s what I really love about our life.”

Back on the banks of the Ganges, the song goes on. Jai plays guitar and sings, Ezra takes photos with the local children, and Nubia and many others, dance, as they sing S.A.M.B.A., Shiva’s Adoration of Mata Bhavani’s Ambrosia. It was a really blissful day when they filmed the video, Jai tells me, despite the very real challenges involved. Musician friends he performed the concert with that day came together in an “incredible synchronistic confluence.” You can see it in the video of the song, beautifully edited by Andrea Boston.

I’m no yogi. Almost certainly never will be. But as I listen, I innately know there’s something to this, something old that doesn’t age, something that seems to not start, not stop, but just continue, there before, there now, there after. Like the waters of Ma Ganga at Rishikesh, it flows, always changing, always the same, deep, clear, hypnotic, a little mysterious, yet right there, flowing, like blood through a heart, like God through a soul. We can’t see the beginning, we can’t see the end. But we can sing and dance and live for a while.

Jump into the stream, if only for a while, at Shakti Fest, May 12-14, 2017, at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, and experience Jai Uttal’s Roots, Rock, Rama! live.

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Tales from the tortoise

becoming snake jagger the side of her face. Her face looked slightly disfigured for a day or two and poor Mark walked around like a guy who had elephantiasis.

By Snake Jagger

On one occasion Wally and I were headed to the beach on the north side of the island in a little Ford Fairlane he had, which he called his Maui cruiser, because it was kind of beat up and rusting, like many older cars on the island. We were heading out of Wailuku when we spotted a couple hitch hiking on the side of the road. I was not aware of this, but they were just standing there, and I didn’t know how Wally knew they were looking for a ride, because on the islands it’s a crime to put your thumb out to hitch a ride.

You just stood there until someone stopped.

The happy couple filed into the backseat and off we went. Well halfway down the road, on a very curvy part of the highway, Wally had asked me to roll a joint for us to smoke. I was, and still am, a fantastic roller, if I do say so myself. I picked up the bag of weed from the seat we were sitting on, and lo and behold, there was a huge centipede, wriggling its way toward me!

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by way of introduction

he desert produces some fascinating creative spirits, and often, they have stories as interesting and varied as themselves and their work. Whenever possible, we like to share those stories with our readers to give you a deeper look down the tortoise hole, into the minds and souls of our friends and hi-desert neighbors.

I’ve known Snake Jagger for quite a few years now, and his artwork has been featured on the cover of our sister publication, The Sun Runner. He’s featured in our Morongo Valley episode of our TV series, Southwest Stories, doing lip-ups and talking about Frank Sinatra and his Dad, lip synching competively, and being a pirate, something we share (it’s a long story).

Snake is a uniquely talented desert artist with a penchant for creating desert scenes of orderly, sometimes raked, desert landscapes, with the occasional UFO, doorway, or even a rake, included. It’s what he calls whimsical surrealism, and the name fits. He has a playful painting style that is a perfect match for his personality.

But don’t just listen to me. Read Snake’s story in his own words. I’ve done minimal editing because I like to let people tell their story their way. He’s working on a book, so the Tortoise Telegraph is serializing his story in this, and upcoming, issues. It’s a great way to get to know Snake, and it’s a hell of a ride.

You can also peruse Snake’s online gallery and shop online at www. snakejagger.com. And yes, that’s one of his works in our masthead. – Steve Brown

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Chapter 7 Aloha

ow that my beautiful little trailer was burned to the ground, I had no choice but to stay with friends down below in Palm Springs. If I remember correctly, I stayed with some black brothers who were Jehovah Witnesses—Nick, Big James ( that’s what I called him, still do too ) and their brother John. They were like family to me. I don’t talk to Nick or John much anymore ( for religious reasons ) but Big James is still my bro.

It’s a little foggy now, and I’m not sure how long I stayed with the brothers, but it wasn’t that long. And at some point I got a call from my friend and other big brother, Wally, saying he was in Maui and wanted to know if I wanted to come out there to help him open a new restaurant he was involved in, called the Bluemax.

Whaaaaaa? HAWAII? Are you freakin’ kidding me? All my life I have dreamed of the day that I would go to a tropical island. I was sooo there!

I still worked at the health food store, so I started saving my money, I needed about $500 for a one way ticket. I even had a one-man show at the health food store, of my artwork, and sold a painting or two to drum up the cash for my flight. This was going to be another great adventure for me, finally having the chance to live out one of my dreams.

Wally met me at the airport in Wailuku. The first thing I noticed was the smell in the air. It smelled like flowers. Gardenias, hibiscus and plumeria filled the air. There was a gentle breeze of coolness coming off of the ocean. I was here! Really here!

I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that I had just landed in a real paradise, a step above the wonderful life I had in the Vines. I probably would have made it here eventually, but I was very grateful Wally had been the one to get me there. Wally had a house in Iao Valley he was renting with a couple other people, one of them being his brother Mark, and his girlfriend LouAnn. There was a space in the basement that I was given to make into my room. Mark and LouAnn also had a room in the basement. I was OK with being there, the only down side was the giant cockroaches that would sometimes fly into you and knock you over, and the centipedes that would get very upset and come after you if you tried to kill them with bug spray or stepping on them. If you didn’t shoot them with a shotgun or pour boiling water on them, you just pissed them off. They would then disappear in an instant, and you knew they were still in the house and making their plans to make you pay for their trouble.

One night I was bitten by a teenage centipede,. The pain was very intense, woke me up from a deep sleep. Mark and LouAnn had been victims as well, and it pains me to say this, but Mark had been bitten in his family jewels, and LouAnn had been bitten on

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"Holy Shit!" I yelled out, "Centipede!"

Within a second I had jumped over the seat on top of the couple in the backseat, while Wally tried desperately to get away from the monster and at the same time, gain control of the car as we went careening around on this winding road. Finally he was able to pull over and we all got our and searched the car up and down, inside and out. It was gone! But you knew it was still in there. Took us awhile to get up the nerve to get back in the car. But we had some serious body surfing to do, so we had to chance it. We made it to the beach without incident. And the hitchhikers made it to Lahaina.

Lahaina. The beautiful and funky little town on the west side of the island of Maui. Just saying those words, Lahaina, and Maui, evokes a sense of tropical paradise to me. The Bluemax restaurant was located right smack dab in the middle of town, on the Front Street that faced the ocean, with the island of Lanai in the distance. It was a big wooden building like most of the buildings that surrounded it, but it looked much newer than its neighbors. When I first arrived there, they were in the process of building the interior, new beautiful wood bar and kitchen. I was first given a job sanding the railings around the bar.

Well I didn’t cotton to that job much, so I didn’t last long doing that. Instead Wally had me draw up the first-ever menu for the restaurant, which started out with a menu of mostly healthy items but later turned into a fancy steak house menu. I didn’t actually start working at the Bluemax until a year later, because the foreman on the job of construction didn’t need me there with my bad attitude about sanding. So I started looking for a job closer to home. There was a restaurant up the road from the house we lived in, it was called Pino’s and I got a job as a busboy there.

I was in Hawaii and pulling my own weight. And loving every minute of it!

portal to the new earth opens this spring at garth's boulder gardens

Portal to the New Earth An Evolutionary Gathering: May 5-8 Post-Event Village Building Immersion: May 8-12 www.portaltothenewearth.com

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ut Pipes Canyon way, if you head up Gamma Gulch Road, you’ll come to Gods Way Love. Meander westward on this dirt track and you’ll come across a remarkable piece of desert, and an even more remarkable man, Garth Bowles. Garth’s “Boulder Gardens,” as it is known, lies in an area I grew up exploring as a kid in the 1960s and 70s. It’s an area east of the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains with large bouldered canyons, hills, and broad washes.

This area was inspiring for a young man’s imagination when I was young, and in the 1980s, Garth got 640 acres here and added to the magic. Harlan Emil Gruber, who first met Garth in 2008, has been hosting annual gatherings at Garth’s Boulder Gardens called Portal to the New Earth since 2014. The latest will be held this May, along with a post-event immersive workshop.

Gruber’s a fascinating environmental designer who is known for his sculpture, furniture design, interior retail design, and his interest in designs for future habitats. He’s been published internationally, with his work exhibited in galleries from New York and Chicago to Taos and Albuquerque. He was the founder of Pluto Dog, Inc., designed stores and bars, produced sculpture installations, including sound and kinetic sculptures, as well as multimedia installations.

A Burner since 1999, Gruber created Playacycles as well as the Mutant Vehicle Labyrinth, and a series of Portals installations—Alcyone, Reformation, Pachamama, Turquoise, Octa, Heart Star, and others. In the Portal to the New Earth gathering, there are a variety of sound healing journeys and workshops based on all aspects of creating the New Earth paradigm.

There is meditation, yoga, sound immersions, boulder sauna, portal installations, ecstatic dance, interactive workshops, and group vegan meals by Sol Tribe cuisine.

The Friday evening program offers acoustic music with Earth Wake, Elisa Rose, Michael Mowgli, and Shamanatrix Missy Galore, while Saturday’s evening program focuses on electronic dance music with Kaminanda, Alia, Drum Spyder, Heart Wurkz, Sacred Sound, Ahee, Strato Sphere, and Golden Dragon.

Workshops will be led by Alaya Love, Abril Mondragon, Leela Hutchison, Matheo James, Jenny Bee, Josiah Geometry Samadhi, and Gruber himself. The Amethyst Portal with the Quasar Wave Transducer vibrating it, will be at the festival, as well as the climbable Heart Star Portal Outline. Gruber’s workshop, Conceiving Future Environments, will cover his 35 years of visionary environment design. There will be sound healing ceremonies, and art, including Vibro Electronica and the Galactic Garden Dome, a luminescent dreamscape performance space and blacklight tea lounge art gallery, that also offers blacklight body painting.

For our readers who want to explore planetary grid crystal activation, sacred geometry, conceiving future environments and new paradigms, as well as social permaculture, intentional community, and the evolution of consciousness, it’s recommended you reserve space early, as the event is limited to 200 tickets. You can learn more on our website at www.jttortoisetelegraph.com, or the event site at www.portaltothenewearth. com. –SB

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Tortoise picks Theatres Theatre 29 Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim. April 21-May14. A dark musical retelling of the Grimm fairy tales. 73637 Sullivan Road, Twentynine Palms. Tickets and information are available at www.theatre29.org, or call (760)361-4151.

Art & Culture 29 Palms Inn Desert artists on exhibit in the restaurant.

73950 Inn Avenue, Twentynine Palms. (760)367-3505, www.29palmsinn.com 29 Palms Visitor Center & Art Gallery Spring Renewal, April 7-June 30. 73484 29 Palms Hwy., Twentynine Palms Beatnik Lounge Revelations from the Edge: Discoveries, Lessons, and Gifts from the Mojave Desert.

Through April 2. Seeds of Change: Roots of Resistance, 6 p.m., April 8.

61597 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree. (760)475-4860, www.jtcpc.org The Glass Outhouse Gallery Opening reception for Marjorie Frankliin and Ann Chevrefils, April 1, Bill & Bob performing 5-9 p.m. 77575 29 Palms Hwy. (760)367-3807 Joshua Treenial March 31-April 2, various hi-desert locations. wwwjoshuatreenial.com Music 29 Palms Inn 73950 Inn Avenue, Twentynine Palms (760)367-3505, www.29palmsinn.com Live music nightly. Usually scheduled: Beverly Derby & Bill Church, Saturdays; Bob Garcia, Sundays; The Luminators, Mondays; Daniel Horn, Wednesdays; Bobby Furgo and company, Thursdays. The Wonder People usually play first Friday monthly.

Beatnik Lounge Diane Cluck with Bekah Fly, 7 p.m., April 2; Songwriters in the Round with Ted Quinn, Bill Bloomer, Urban Desert Cabaret, hosted by Rags & Bones, 5 p.m., April 9; Dandy Brown & Fuzz Evil, 6:30 p.m., April 18; Tremble Weeds Record Release Party, 8 p.m., April 20.

61597 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree. (760)475-4860, www.jtcpc.org

Autumn McKinsey, student photographer and daughter of Mike and Linnea McKinsey, former owners of the legendary Beatnik Cafe in Joshua Tree, sent us some photos from her desert wanderings. We’re running one photo per issue.

Here is a rare foggy day in Joshua Tree.

Have a hi-desert photo or story you’d like to share with our readers? Send it to us at: tortoisetelegraph@gmail. The ol’ Tortoise would love to hear from you! We’re finished with hibernation and now we’re out grazing on wildflowers. Tasty wildflowers!

The Palms Wonder Valley Experimental Festival #9. April 1, 5 p.m. Xome, Brutal Poodle, Thrall, Igor Amokian, Nature’s Miracle, Skunk Puppet, Justin Schied, Brian Akenoh, Meddicine Cabinet, J3M5, X-Eyes, Unmove, Third Ear Experience, Disappearing, Divine Brick, Hongo Killer, phog masheen. Free.

83131 Amboy Road, Wonder Valley. (760)361-2810 Pappy & Harriets Pioneertown Palace 53688 Pioneertown Road, Pioneertown (760)365-5956, www.pappyandharriets.com Upcoming: Desert Generator, Earthless, Brant Bjork, Orchid, The Shrine, Black Rainbows, April 8; Jim Lauderdale, April 22; John Doe Rock n’ Roll Band featuring Howe Gelb, April 27; Moonsville Collective, April 29. Regularly scheduled: Open mic on Mondays with guest hosts, The Shadow Mountain Band opening for other acts most Saturdays, The Sunday Band, most Sundays,. For complete calendar: www. pappyandharriets.com.

Hi-Desert Living

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Joshua Tree Retreat Center/Mentalphysics 59700 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree, (760)365-8371 Intro to Tibetan Spiritual Breath. Tuesdays, 6:30-8 p.m., Donation: $5. Improves subtle energies of the body by understanding breath and the natural relationship to healing.

Rainbow Stew 55509 29 Palms Hwy., Old Town Yucca Valley. For event schedule, see: www. rainbowstew4u.com Want to be included in our Tortoise Picks?

Send your event info to us at: publisher@ sunrunnersw.com.

Happy 89th Birthday Art! We want to wish a very happy 89th birthday to Art Kunkin, our favorite alchemist and the founder of the legendary “Freep,” the LA Free Press. Art is one of the true hidesert icons and we wish him all the best.

Art’s an exceptional guy, and someone we have a great deal of love and respect for, personally and professionally.

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Editor/Publisher/telegraph operator: Steve Brown Assistant to the editor: Juliett, the cat Photos by: Steve Brown, chris brewster, autumn mckinsey Distribution: eventually by tortoise, of coursus Submit story ideas, photos for consideration, dining/shopping/lodging/favorite places and event photos to: tortoisetelegraph@gmail.com advertising inquiries: tortoisetelegraph@gmail.com or 760-820-1222 (voice or text) see the advertising page at www.jttortoisetelegraph.com for pricing and specs. remember – support your local independent media and it can support your community! distribution inquiries: tortoisetelegraph@gmail.com join the tortoise telegraph online at: www.jttortoisetelegraph.com, on facebook at: www.facebook.com/jttortoisetelegraph on instagram at: www.instagram.com/jttortoisetelegraph join the sun runner, the journal of the real desert, online at: www.sunrunnersw.com on facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheSunRunner join southwest stories with steve brown online at: www.southweststories.us on facebook at: www.facebook.com/RealDesert

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thanks for joining us!

Keep it real!

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