The Magic
of Yellowstone
Site News
4/28/10 Since the end of February, Yellowstone Newspaper has and will remain indefinitely on hiatus; however, today, there have been updates to the site. My blog has moved to its own domain at www.eclecticworld.org. The front menu has been updated, and a number of pictures from last year have been added to the images section of the menu. The domain registrar also has switched, but that's not particularly interesting. I also moved the defunct "Jim's Philosophy Page" writings onto the site for safekeeping. That was my original Web page, but there is no more Geocities, and so I had to rescue some of my writing from the Wayback Machine.
12/26/08 There haven't been a lot of changes to the site in the past 15 months, but at least it has stayed active; more people visited the newspaper in the past year than ever, especially during fire season. Today, I updated the look of the front page, adding the widget for the newspaper; it will remove one step in my daily routine whenever I do the newspaper. There were a lot more personal changes. I moved to Bozeman, Montana on December 23, 2007, and it's given me firsthand access to a lot of the stories I cover. But, as I am an activist at heart, it's also drawn me more into that and less into writing--and so the Web site has been relatively stagnant even though I have hundreds and hundreds more pictures, dozens more stories, and a wealth of new experiences and people to draw from. Ironic, no?
9/1/07 A new search engine has been added to the Yellowstone Newspaper Archives as well as to the front page of the Yellowstone Newspaper. Hopefully, this will prove useful to people using the site, especially as the archives grow. Remember that a lot of past links are forever dead, though when the Bozeman Daily Chronicle dropped charging to view their online version, their old articles re-appeared in the archives. At least, it helps people look for what was in the news.
7/1/07 Lack of new content has not meant lack of activity. There have been a lot of essays, and the newspaper has been updated daily. Today, new content has gone live, including rss feeds for the Yellowstone Newspaper. Welcome to the age of syndicated content, finally. See this blog post for more on these changes.
1/7/07 I've added a summary page for my writings. As a result, I've simplified the main menu for the page so that it isn't nearly so large. The summary page also includes a summary of each of the writings I have chosen to list. In the past week, I've also added a lot of photos to the May 2005 vacation. In fact, all the Yellowstone pictures are up from that trip; I'm now adding pictures from the Utah part of the trip. Visitorship is gradually rising as the newspaper continues to be updated and the new improvements are noticed. Getting images up is certainly right now my highest priority, but time is scarce.
12/28/06 Okay, so the Wildlife facts and resources page, and the Maps links page have now been updated to the new design. I also cleaned up a couple of bad links on the maps page; you'll also notice some new photographic touches to the pages. I used some of my own wildlife photos when I had them and some stock photos and public domain shots for the ones I didn't have. While there are plenty of other pages I could update to the new look and feel, especially the historical documents pages, I really need to get started on the photographs. That's content, and that will help me re-organize my images pages on the site. I'm running out of gas a little bit, but it's still exciting to see the new improvements to the site.
12/28/06 The train keeps chugging along. I've updated the look and feel of the Yellowstone Fact Guide, the Newspaper Archives page, and the front page of my autobiography. I've made several small edits to other pages as well (and of course, the daily update of the newspaper. I guess the next step is to edit the internal fact guide pages. Then, I'd like to start scanning some photos before re-vamping the images page to make it more up to date.
12/28/06 It's the middle of the night, and I haven't stopped working. I sure do work in spurts. Anyhow, I've updated the web design now for several more pages, the most prominent being the Yellowstone and Grand Teton jobs page and the Yellowstone Art Gallery. I think giving some sanity to my tables (making them much like the design used for the newspaper) should theoretically make these pages easier to update. Tomorrow (or later today!), I need to tackle the design of the fact guide. Then, I can switch to some more substantive work.
12/27/06 I've spent an entire day updating the site with the new look and feel, and I have a long way to go. Over the past couple of days, I have made a lot of cosmetic changes. My blog, Jim's Eclectic World, is now hosted within these pages. I've updated most of the main pages within the Yellowstone History Guide to fit the look and feel. I have not attempted yet to do the same for the historical documents within the history guide, but a look through shows that I've made changes to a lot of pages. I also now have updated this page as well to fit the new design. I think it looks much better, and it's given me a chance to fix some sloppy code. The next night and day calls for more of the same. A really able eye can also note a few content edits.
12/25/06 As a Christmas present to myself, I've revamped the front page of the Web site. I updated the script with the scrolling menus, changed the look and feel, and updated the scrolling menus. I've also discarded The Yellowstone Bookstore, which is still hidden on the site. I don't like the idea of having a front for Amazon.com. Any book you could possibly want that was in my bookstore is easier found on Amazon's site. It seemed incongruous for a person who hates profit and corporations to have a front for one. One thing you'll notice is a lot of links to my various writings; I've been a very busy writer this year. Note the update from two months ago; I've not only kept up with the newspaper; I update it twice a day. You can also see it in daily blog format at http://blog.myspace.com/jsmacdonald
10/24/06 I wrote and have published Ice Cold Fire--Return of the Young Romantics, which is Chapter 3 from the Summer of 1994 of my autobiography of my summers in Yellowstone. It's the first chapter I've written in almost four years and returns to a familiar place and a familiar topic. In the meantime, I've fallen behind on the newspaper and need to see if I can catch up today. Look for a new edition, hopefully, this evening, depending on what I can get done at work today.
10/6/06 Updated The Yellowstone Newspaper for the first time in over 3 1/2 years. After another hiatus, we'll see day by day whether I can keep this up for awhile.
2/19/06 Updated Yellowstone Fact Guide. It's amazing how quickly links die. Most of them end up somewhere else. Some amazing things disappear from the net forever. Anyhow, there are a few new links, but mostly just updated the old stuff. This needs a huge amount of work, since the resources expand exponentially. But, for now, this will do.
2/18/06 Updated Jobs
in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton. There were some dead links, some I undoubtedly missed the first time around, and a few that popped up in the last few weeks. I also added one job to fill in a blank space. Corrected a link on the Yellowstone Wildlife Fact and Resource Page and included more links to facts from Buffalo Field Campaign. As of this date, February 18, 2006, 803 bison have been sent to slaughter.
2/13/06 Updated the Links to Yellowstone Maps. I added some new maps, including some cool interactive maps from the NPS. The next big hurdle is fixing the links on the fact guide.
2/12/06 Updated the links on the Yellowstone Wildlife Fact and Resource Page and was generally disgusted by all the threats that Yellowstone animals continue to face. There are a few new links in there as well. It includes a link to a teach-in I gave on October 12, 2005, in opposition to the celebration of Columbus Day. The teach-in is entitled, Genocide Against the American Indian, Destruction of the Buffalo, & Imperialism in Iraq.
1/30/06 How is this for a general layoff! The last update to this site until yesterday was on March 17, 2003, not counting some hidden parts of the site related to anti-war protests that you could see at http://www.yellowstonemagic.com. That is not coincidental. The war in Iraq began on March 19, 2003, and since then almost all of my free time has been spent as an anti-war activist, and now organizer, with the DC Anti-War Network. Things with this site got so bad that Bruce Gourley offered to buy the domains, which I declined to do, and I even managed to let the yellowstonemagic.com domain name registration slip. I discovered this just in time to win it in an auction. Today was the first day in nearly 3 years that I've added Yellowstone-related content to the site. Today, I have begun a process of fixing links. The jobs page has been fixed, links (and a little bit of new material) fixed in the art gallery, as well as external links on the history guide. I even dabbled in fixing a few links in the bookstore. Right now, I'm considering a full revamp of the website, though part of me thinks that's very ambitious given that I'm still in over my head organizing against the war while working a full-time job. Life has changed a great deal, but I managed a trip to Yellowstone in May 2005, and though I still live in Washington, DC, I have plans to move to the Yellowstone region in the next few years. I had an amazing trip, and lucked out in being able to see a full eruption of Steamboat Geyser. I also saw a mountain lion, which was truly astounding. There are pictures, and some are up on the web; the clever peson will discover where, since there's one link you can reach in this labyrinth, which will take you to the pictures I have scanned from that trip. Anyhow, stay tuned, and for those looking for a job, the links should freaking work.
1/21/02 General news. In the last year, I created
a new page of images.
Unlike the past site, all images on the new site are from my own collection.
I have re-vamped pretty much everything. I am in the process of revising
the bookstore.
The history guide
has been listed as a select site in the Academic
Index. In October, I wrote a new chapter
to my autobiography,
covering part of 1994. The newspaper
is back up in full force. I am also using a very nice new search
engine for the site. It has a revised site index on it as well.
Updates will be listed in more detail as they happen on the discussion
forum.
10/00 Site re-created as The
Magic of Yellowstone. Links
on this page are updated where possible to the new page. Site news
updates will be made generally on the discussion
forum .
7/4/99 Put in a new chat
room. There are two advantages of this chat room. The first
advantage is that there are no annoying pop up advertising windows.
The second advantage is that this chat room will be on a server with other
chat rooms. So, it will be likely to find someone to talk with.
Like most things from Bravenet Web Services, this is an excellent free
service that saves us some work. Also, sometime this week, we are
likely to top 10,000 visitors--a recent increase in visitorship has helped
the site tremendously. What would help us is to know where you all
are coming from. Please sign our guestbook (no
longer active)or go to our discussion
forum and let us know who you are and from where you have been referred.
6/7/99 Beleive it or not, new stuff has been added
to the site...sort of. The National Park Service recently updated
their site making vast improvements. Links have been added to some
of the highlights, including their interactive tour of Fort Yellowstone,
a wonderful interactive map of the park, much more useful visitor information,
and a few articles here and there. A much needed link for lodging
information was also added. So, check out the relevant changes on
the following pages: the history
guide, fact
guide, and maps
page. Anyhow, for those who do not follow the page very closely,
the newspaper
is updated very regularly, usually daily. Jim has recently contributed
an essay to the opinion section of the newspaper about our values and the
brucellosis debate in bison. All comments are welcomed and encouraged.
Unfortunately no one participates in the discussion
forum, but all are strongly encouraged.
5/25/99 We have added a meta-search engine(no
longer exists--use Google; there's not much need for another search engine)
to our search engine
page. You may not only now search the site, but you can also search
the web while you are here. Obviously, this is a small addition to
the site, but it does not hurt. We are also offering to create a
more useful search engine for all you out there. If you link to our
site, so long as your site has any reasonable amount of taste, we will
create a search engine which includes only sites which link to us.
We will also give instructions on how one might find your site on that
engine. Clearly, the number of sites that link to us are quite small,
nothing compared to the real commercial Yellowstone sites. Trust
us, book referral fees have not even brought us a single check yet, although
many of you have made use of the resource. Yet, somehow, we get about
17 people a day inspite of almost no internet exposure and only a handful
of sites, generally obscure, which link to us. But, we feel we have
some good stuff to share, and so we welcome anyone who wishes to link.
4/16/99 This news is good, although a bit puzzling.
In searching the net yesterday, we found that we won an award--although
no one told us! We were the Waypoint Site of the Week for 3/1-3/7
(proof of that seems irreparably lost). Apparently, Waypoint
is an internet service provider of some kind and has a site of the week
award. As far as we can tell, assuming we have not won any other
awards that no one told us about, thus is this site's first award--although
being selected by the people who run the Hubbell Space Telescope for NASA
last December was quite an honor as well. We have not applied for
any awards, and so to get recognition unasked for is quite appreciated.
3/30/99 Reformatted art
gallery. Added a handful or slightly more works,
including a little bit about Frank Jay Haynes's life.
2/4/99 New and improved discussion
forum completed. This forum is more attractive and is more versatile
than the old forum. You can still see the old articles on the old
discussion forum (now you can't--forever inactive),
but don't reply there or no one will ever know.
1/25/99 Completed Chapter
12 of Jim's autobiography.
1/15/99 Created a page linking to all current news
about Yellowstone. Although this is not a newspaper, per se,
because we are not gathering the news ourselves. Nevertheless, we
hope that our links to current
newspaper articles about Yellowstone is a helpful resource.
12/12/98 Finsihed reformatting layout of Thumbnails
(no longer active). The changes were minor
but an improvement nevertheless. We also fixed some dead links on
the thumbnails.
12/11/98 Created a new search
engine for the site. Almost all searchable
files on this site are on the search engine. Soon, we shall add an
engine for the philosophy site, and we hope to add a search engine which
promotes sites with a National Park theme. More details as they are
worked out.
12/4/98 Finished creating an HTML file for Walter
Trumbull's Journal of the 1870 Washburn Expedition. This work
has not existed online before now and is not to our knowledge in print
anywhere in publication. The work as presented is an archived photocopy
of a couple of articles that appeared in The Overland Monthly in
May and June of 1871. It is interesting to compare this account with
Doane's account and Langford's (whose account is in print and has to be
purchased. . . you can find it in our Yellowstone
history bookstore which has every Amazon.com book
sold on the subject). Anyhow, this is a relatively rare resource,
and we hope you are able to appreciate it.
12/2/98 Reformatted Nathaniel
Pitt Langford's 1872 Superintendent's Report from GIF to HTML
Many thanks to Gene
Hamilton for having beaten us to the punch in
converting this text and his generous permission to use his work.
A project that could have taken a week or two took under 3 hours!
Interestingly, we discovered his site today noticing that he also beat
us to the punch in publishing Doane's Report to HTML. Too bad we
didn't discover this sooner. As he told Jim, it was too bad we didn't
finish our project sooner because he would have gladly used our work.
Anyhow, thanks again, Gene!
12/1/98 Finished two month project of reformatting
Lt. Doane's
Report of 1870 Washburn Expedition from GIF to HTML format.
11/2/98 The
Yellowstone Bookstore is now open for business.
This area of the site is very important to the future of the site and offers
a new opportunity for lovers of Yellowstone. Amazon.com pays us a
referral fee for all books purchased through links on our site to Amazon.
We have taken the time to link to every book that Amazon sells on Yellowtone.
This is an impressive list of about 400 books, much larger than any bookstore
I have ever seen. So, if you want to see our site going strong; and
more importantly, if you need a book on Yellowstone, please follow the
link to the bookstore. We hope you find the organization of such
a resource useful. In the near future, book reviews of several books,
especially some of the history books (as those are what we, Jim, in particular,
have read the most)--although we will not limit ourselves to history books.
Reviews will include a wildflower book, a book on a summer guide to jobs
in Yellowstone (a topic we are very knowledgable about), and a few others.
10/19/98 Created a new layout for the Yellowstone
History Guide and Yellowstone
Fact Guide. Other subpages also reformatted.
9/23/98 off of summer hiatus. Edited personal
information pages because Loree and Jim married as of June 27,1998, and
have moved from Seattle to Toledo, Ohio. More information will be
added soon to the page.
6/4/98 The Yellowstoning Experience is now
on summer hiatus. We will be in Yellowstone this summer where we
will have no computer access. You are free to use the site.
However, nothing new will appear until late August or early September.
4/6/98 Chapter
10 complete
3/27/98 Chapter
9 of Jim's autobiography
complete
3/20/98 links
to Yellowstone job information page now online
3/11/98 The page began in late May of 1997 on
geocities as Jim Macdonald's Yellowstone Home Page (a subsection of "Jim
Macdonald's Philosophy Home Page."). Jim began the page as a joke
after discovering the address of his best friend, Matt Klempner's page.
Soon after, the page took serious proportions, and Jim began working in
ernest on an outline for the site which still resembles the current format.
The page had an ugly background of a bleak Lower Falls and a font that
was unreadable on some browsers. However, the History
of Yellowstone Place Names and a section of Legislation
concerning Yellowstone was complete. Also, Jim compiled links to
many outside pictures. After several months, Jim's page was noticed
by Yellowstone Net who offered to host Jim's site. On Yellowstone
Net, the page gained exposure, a slight name change to where the word "Home"
was dropped, and a lot more developed. Jim and his fiancee Loree
envisioned a new site which hopefully will launch into a business venture
next fall. The concept of "yellowstoning" was born, and the page
was moved to its current site. Joining them is Jim's best friend
Matt whose home page "inspired" Jim to try his hand at HTML. The
site hopes to increase its stores of information, meet the ambitious concept
as defined by "yellowstoning" of providing an internet expression doing
tribute to a magical, romantic, and undeniably beautiful land whose experiences
are both simple and complex. Next fall, "The Yellowstoning
Experience" hopes to form formally as a business venture offering travel
guides focused on particular aspects of Yellowstone. For instance,
one concept is to create a Yellowstone History Travel Guide. As people
drive through the park, the guide will point out various historical points
of interest. The format should also prove to be unique. Another
concept is to provide children's activity books, and other family products.
Ultimately, and this is the distant dream of poor, aspiring young people
is to create a publishing house where works of literature, religion, and
philosophy might find their way on the market. However, this is primarily
a hobby for us. We do so for the love of it. We provide information
because we love this land. We talk about it because we love it.
We share our souls because it has loved us. The talk is that Yellowstone
has too many visitors and fees should be raised to handle them. The
truth is that Yellowstone has too many uninformed people, and easy and
free access should be made to the most relevant information.
We hope we have begun to ease this problem.
completed is a new chat
room , and a new discussion forum (this
discussion forum is now permanently defunct. It was an original created
using a horrible program on Front Page. You can use the new (almost
3 years old) discussion
forum by following the link.
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