Susan Ryan, a young archaeologist, has some unusual ideas about why the Anasazi left their homes in the Southwest, 700 years ago.
Also in this issue: In the city of Albuquerque, underdog candidate Eric Griego, a critic of sprawl, challenges incumbent Mayor Marty Chavez, a pro-growth booster.
Meloy’s last message — from bighorn country
Author Ellen Meloy died unexpectedly at her home in Bluff, Utah, last Nov. 4. The gifted writer, illustrator and environmentalist leaves behind an impressive canon of nature writing that includes Raven’s Exile, The Last Cheater’s Waltz and The Anthropology of Turquoise, a book short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. Eating Stone, completed just before her death…
The Latest Bounce
During President Bush’s 2000 election campaign, he promised that any decision about whether to store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be based on “sound science.” Now, his administration seems to be junking science altogether. In August, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it will cut the U.S. Geological Survey’s budget…
Boulder gets the gas-drilling blues
Energy companies are drilling holes straight through efforts to preserve open space on Colorado’s Front Range. Boulder County has saved about 76,000 acres from development by buying property and creating conservation easements. However, the county doesn’t always control the mineral rights underneath that land — which leaves the surface property open to drilling. Previous landowners…
Don’t ‘dumb and numb’ readers
I’m responding to your request to let you know what I think about color photos (HCN, 8/8/05: Dear Friends). I appreciate HCN for in-depth journalism on natural environmental issues in the West. I think you’re spending money unwisely on color photos when it could be better spent on content. Black-and-white photos illustrate people, tattoos and…
A quantum leap
The Aug. 8 issue is, in my opinion, a quantum leap for you guys, and not just graphically. The brighter newsprint and the full-color pix are super, but the “Gangs of Zion” story is world-class. Tim Sullivan is to be congratulated for solid reporting; HCN is to be congratulated for running an exceptional and unusual…
If it affects the West, it belongs in HCN
A recent issue of HCN included a letter from Ms. Kathy Crooks suggesting that the sole appropriate topic for the paper is environmental news of the West (HCN, 8/22/05: Leave sociology coverage to National Geographic). Thought I’d let you know that this subscriber at least considers your brief to be “the West.” Not just the…
Stick to environmental topics
I think it would be a better service to your readers to tell about the Superfund sites left at military bases rather than the socioeconomic effects on towns with their closure (HCN, 8/22/05: Leavin’ on a Jet Plane). I read HCN for environmental, not social, topics. Cheryl ChipmanBishop, California THE EDITOR RESPONDS The West’s environment…
Clovis highlights America’s eternal war economy
Clovis, N.M., won its battle to keep nearby Cannon Air Force Base open (HCN, 8/22/05: Leavin’ on a Jet Plane). This demonstrates that we are, indeed, a nation with an economy on an eternal war footing, where peace is just bad for business. The Air Force wanted to close Cannon to save money. Now we…
Unpaid advertisement for Parriott?
There should have been a box around the article about Jeremy Parriott’s fun-hog playground with the words “Unpaid Advertisement” at the top (HCN, 8/22/05: His playground pulls fun hogs off the public lands). Does your newspaper really believe that 320 acres will keep hundreds of off-road vehicle owners happily contained and off the thousands of…
Parriott offers a fair solution
Jeremy Parriott’s idea of having private parks instead of relatively pristine public land for mechanized road-rippers represents a fair solution for tree-huggers and trail-trashers alike (HCN, 8/22/05: His playground pulls fun hogs off the public lands). Such a scheme would help save fragile plants and animals, prevent erosion, and give off-roaders a place to frolic.…
A smart-growth bulldog
Albuquerque city councilman goes head-to-head with the incumbent mayor, and the developers who have long ruled here
Be a patriot — get your hands dirty
While foraging through my backyard garden the other day for cucumbers, peppers and hot-to-touch chiles, a slogan occurred to me: “Support Our Troops — Plant a Garden.” Gardening was as distant from my life as Afghanistan until I bought a house seven years ago. My newly acquired yard had bluegrass in the middle and a…
Heard Around the West
WASHINGTON A duck named Gooey has brought Diane Erdmann, a manager for Northwest Territorial Mint, a whole lot of attention, along with a possible charge of illegally harboring wildlife. The mallard had been attacked by a crow, and Erdmann took over its care from a friend, nursing the bird back to health and consulting a…
Methamphetamine fuels the West’s oil and gas boom
Long the drug of choice for rural down-and-out youth, crank becomes commonplace among drill-rig roughnecks.
Strange bedfellows make a grazing deal in Idaho
And influential Sen. Larry Craig is odd man out
Contaminated water can’t stop California sprawl
Rocket fuel ingredient and other pollutants now commonplace in groundwater
Anasazi: What’s in a name?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Out of the Four Corners.” A thousand years ago, when their civilization arose in the Southwest, the people who built these great stone structures did not call themselves Anasazi. The word did not even exist: It was created, centuries later, by Navajo workers who…
Out of the Four Corners
A young archaeologist searches for clues to what drove a mass exodus from southwestern Colorado more than 700 years ago
Exodus
Imagine that, aside from a few wanderers and pilgrims, no one ever returned to New Orleans. Imagine that the thousands of people who fled the French Quarter, the Ninth Ward and other neighborhoods in the face of Hurricane Katrina turned their backs on their homes, on the shops and the bars, and let them sink…
What’s at stake in the evolution debate
On my desk is the fragment of a tooth from an ancient camel that roamed the area around Fossil, Ore., 40 million years ago. My kids and I unearthed it on a summer camping trip, and today I found myself fingering it as I read yet another story about the evolution “debate.” This controversy pits…
Dear friends
HELP! SEND BOOKS! Our hearts go out to all those suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. We’ve recently learned about an unusual — and imaginative — way to assist the hard-hit region: Former New Orleans resident and author Janis Owens has created Books for Folks to send books to relief centers, libraries and schools…