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Mark Rey, former timber lobbyist, is "truly feared" by environmentalists in his new job as steward of the nation's dwindling wilderness, Andy Ryan reports in Seattle Weekly. "He never met a tree he wouldn't cut," Bill Arthur, director of the Sierra Club's Northwest office in Seattle, tells Ryan. "The timber executives ponied up a million dollars for Bush's election campaign, and Mark Rey intends to make sure their investment is richly rewarded." Nevertheless, some Northwestern enviros are talking about making a deal with the devil: sacrificing younger trees to save old growth forest.

In a rare post-show interview with Santa Fe Reporter's Dan Frosch and Jonanna Widner, legendary rapper KRS-One ruminates on hip-hop: from young turks trying to battle him to elder statesmen passing away. He also muses on how the industry perpetuates poverty among its own musicians and precipitates its own downfall with buffoonish caricatures of hip-hop life.

"'What's Ogden?' I said. 'It's the place where most of the boys pass thru and always meet there; you're liable to see anybody there.'" That's how Jack Kerouac described it 50 years ago in "On the Road," and he'd probably still feel at home today. But now, trendy 25th Street boutiques compete with downtown's empty storefronts and half torn down strip malls. And Kerouac's grimy railroad town has a new scourge. Kristy Davis writes about methamphetamine, money and mercy in Utah's second city.