4 Senators change course on SOPA
Jan 18th
4 senators have already changed course over the freedom-crushing SOPA bill. Encourage your congressmen to join them.
Boy doing well after hit and run
Jan 18th
This is Ethan Torres, the 2 year old boy who was the victim of a hit and run incident outside his home in Parker on Sunday. Parker Live’s Facebook comments section lit up with messages of support and outrage about the incident, as well as some information about the boy’s health from family members:
He has a broken rib, a bruised liver, and two holes in his lung. The doctors main concern is for his lung, they are giving him a couple more days to see how he does, and if the holes don’t close they will go in for surgery. But other than that he is a very active little boy, and in good spirits!
His activity level went from a 3 to a 10 yesterday. He is starting to act like himself again. The doctors are just concerned about the little holes in his lungs so they are taking xrays every morning to see if they are healing themselves. Maggie and Javier Torres would like to thank everyone for their prayers,phone calls, visits and thoughts through this. He is a tough little guy and is so loved.
There is still no further information about the vehicle involved or its driver. Anyone who can help should call Parker PD at (928) 669-2265. The photo above courtesy of CRIT Manataba Messenger.
Car hits a 2 year old and flees
Jan 17th
Parker Police Department needs your help to identify a vehicle involved in a hit-and-run incident on January 15th.
The vehicle came onto the sidewalk in the 1300 block of Quartz Avenue in Parker and hit a 2 year old boy riding a scooter before fleeing the scene. The child was knocked unconscious and had to be flown to a Phoenix area hospital as a result of his injuries. The incident occurred sometime between 1:30 and 2:00 p.m. The police department was notified about it while at La Paz Regional Hospital on an unrelated call.
The only information police have on the vehicle is that it was an older, small model white passenger car. It isn’t known whether the vehicle was two- or four-door.
If anyone has any information please contact the Parker Police Department at (928) 669-2265 or KLPZ 1380am at (928) 669-9274.
What we’ve forgotten about Quartzsite
Jan 16th
As I learned early from broadcasting a daily radio show and later running this website, you can’t give everyone what they want.
In fact, one of my heroes in life, who later became arguably America’s most prized entrepreneur of recent times, lived by the mantra that few people even know what they want. Apple founder Steve Jobs believed you’d have to show it to them first. (So, he never did a single focus group or survey or poll asking people what they’d like, and yet Apple built the world’s most valuable tech company – currently second-most valuable company – on the basis of trusting Jobs’ instincts. I’d suggest that those who own a business and would like to play this game ensure their instincts are good beforehand!)
I run into lots of people who rely on Parker Live for their local news. None of them would have told me before it existed that this is what they wanted (or needed). But the site now has around 30,000 visitors every month, an average of 1000 per day. Around half of these are regular readers. We also have about 500 people with Facebook accounts who now get our articles (including this one) in their News Feed every day.
And I get emails pretty regularly from some of these readers, telling us what they want. Some of them want more of this and less of that; some don’t like – or do like – Michael Roth; some think they perceive a bias in our coverage of some news item that they want to complain about (complaints welcome, by the way); some merely want to comment privately on something, or want to comment publicly but forgot their password. And our coverage of Quartzsite resonates positively in the minds of some of our readers while not so much in others! Observe:
“Isn’t this a Parker website? Isn’t there more going on in Parker to talk about!”
Etcetera. (Answer: ‘Sort of’, and ‘Nope’. Or at least not that day.)
The truth is, Quartzsite is so interesting from a news standpoint that the little town south of Parker made statewide news on many occasions in the past year and national news several times too. Of course, these are all for the ‘wrong’ reasons. News about Quartzsite typically focuses on the political imbroglio involving the current management of the town, its council and police administration, and the ‘revolutions’ (and counter-revolutions) from within and without that typically has Parker people rolling their eyes and shaking their heads.
But, no matter the virtue or otherwise of Quartzsite news – and rest assured, dear reader, that news deriving from the rest of La Paz County and the wider region is reported posthaste when it happens – I think it may have had the side-effect of causing us to forget something important about Quartzsite of which I was reminded at the weekend.
Myself and my cohorts at Hemet Productions spent most of the weekend in Quartzsite, Arizona; the several most-recent of a billion-plus hours spent filming for our documentary on the town. And it was a blast. We met all kinds of people: young and old, rich and poor, in town for business or pleasure, trading goods or browsing items new and used, raw and refined, mass-produced and homemade, big and small, new and old, shiny and rusted. Looking for skulls or skins? Gas pumps? Guns? Jewelry? Original books sold by the author? Musical instruments? Satellite dishes? Metal flamingos? Fresh lemonade? The people in Quartzsite have got it.
These people are riding around on bicycles, tricycles, battery-powered solar-cycles, quads… UTVs and golf carts and Segways, oh my. There are hobos, tramps, bums and transients. There are hippies selling incense candles next to veterans selling ammo boxes. There are rocks, of all kinds, everywhere. There’s a guy making metal letters. There’s an artist selling stained-glass window pieces. There’s a naked bookseller. There’s a ‘NO DOG S**T’ sign on a trash can. An old guy rode there on a lawnmower from Oregon. A young girl rode there on her mountain bike from Minnesota. A man from Huntington Beach put up a 69,000 square-foot tent filled with stuff to see.
As we rode through town on Saturday with the town’s first, second and third mayor, Richard Oldham in a 1935 Packard Eight, waving back at the throngs who clearly loved the car and its driver (only a few years between them), I realized what the hundreds of thousands of winter visitors in the area already knew: this was the place to be this weekend, and next, and for several after that.
What we’ve forgotten about Quartzsite (especially those of us in the Parker area and wider region who are still here throughout the heat of August listening to news of the town’s turbulent politics) is that there’s still a crazy good time to be had down there.
Visit soon. You won’t regret it.
JW
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Turning lane to be added at Bill Williams
Jan 13th
The Arizona Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Central Arizona Project, will begin a project to add a two-way left turn lane to State Route 95 at the Bill Williams National Wildlife Refuge Road.
Construction work will begin Tuesday (January 17th). Although no immediate lane closures are scheduled, there will be times when workers briefly stop traffic on SR 95 at milepost 161. ADOT advises motorists to plan ahead and allow extra travel time.
What to expect during construction:
- Work scheduled weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Intermittent lane closures, planned during work hours.
- Workers in place to direct traffic.
- The speed limit of 25 mph in the construction zone.
- Law enforcement on-site to monitor speeds.
- Message boards advising drivers of lane restrictions.
The $2.4 million project also includes drainage improvements, guardrail work, new pavement markings and adding an access road to the Central Arizona Project (CAP) Mark Wilmer pumping plant.
This project is scheduled to be completed by summer 2012.
Attorney refuses to work with Town of Quartzsite
Jan 13th
Local attorney Matt Newman is apparently refusing to do further business with the Town of Quartzsite, “at any hourly rate”, calling the current administration “tainted.”
This comes after Public Defender Michael Frame refused to work on cases involving the Town’s Attorney Martin Brannan, citing conflicts of interest and what he believes are politically-motivated actions against his clients by Brannan and the Town.
Newman adds his voice to this dissent in a Refusal of Appointment, saying:
It is my belief that the current administration of the Town has created an inherent conflict of interest by appointing the Town Prosecutor as the Town Attorney and Town Parliamentarian. It is also my belief that the current administration is specifically targeting certain individuals for prosecution due to their political views.
As it is impossible to know in each particular case if the defendant may be one of those individuals, I do not desire to represent appointed clients at this time.
Upon information and belief, the current Public Defender is not being paid for his services, and I cannot in good faith enter into any agreement with an administration as tainted as the current one.
A copy of his refusal was copied to Quartzsite Town Manager Alex Taft.
Truck found, trashed
Jan 12th
A Parker Live reader says they discovered T Watts’ light blue pickup truck and have been talking to law enforcement about it, a mere 3 hours after it was posted on this site.
The man was on the road to Black Meadow Landing (approximated above) when he spotted the truck around halfway there. He said it looked like it had been rolled. “It was totaled,” he said. He spoke to California Highway Patrol about it, who had it on a wrecker.
Parker Live also has been told that law enforcement may have been given a lead on the perpetrators, independently of the above source.
Thank you all for your help and for sharing this story.
