Tiny Vilas, Colo., thought it was a great idea to open an online school and enroll at-risk students from far-away Denver – but neither the students nor the school district ended up scoring well at report card time.
Also in this Issue: Global warming spurs calls for new dams in the West – but where will the water come from to fill them?
Why the West should copy Swiss transit
This winter, my family discovered that Oregon’s Mount Hood is known for more than dramatic mountain rescues. Would you believe it could also be home to the mother of all traffic jams? Taillights for as far as the eye can see, gridlock for nearly an hour: That’s what the highway through the Mount Hood National…
The granddaddy of all collaboration groups
One thing you quickly learn in the rural West is that ranchers come in all shapes and sizes. There are the fourth-generation ranchers hanging on by their toenails with overextended credit and the eternal hope that cattle prices will rebound, the drought will break, and most of their cows will be found on the mountain…
Offline
Because of the Bush administration’s poor environmental performance, and because High Country News reports regularly on the environment, we are occasionally accused of having it in for the president. That’s not true, of course; the Bush environmental record just isn’t very pretty. It’s darn difficult to put a positive gloss on, for example, a Clear…
A brief, interpretive look at the Indian Wars
Author Michael Blake is best known for his fictional accounts of the often-violent cultural misunderstandings between Euro-Americans and Native Americans; his novel Dances with Wolves was made into a film and won several Academy Awards. But in his latest book, Indian Yell, Blake shifts his focus from historical fiction to historical fact. Chronicling 12 of…
Safe out there
When Jade shuffles down the abandoned railroad track that leads from her junked-up house to the rambling farmhouse I grew up in, the dogs go crazy, barking and snarling. I run out of the house to admonish them, embarrassed that these peace-loving dogs are tormenting the insane with their own insane behavior — behavior they…
Two weeks in the West
Doomsayers think suburbia will be slaughtered by rising oil prices, or drought. But for now, gas is relatively cheap, the grass is still green, and the population keeps on growing. Suburbs continue to gobble up the Western landscape. Don’t be fooled, though: Suburbia is suffering. But don’t blame water or oil for the cul de…
Heard around the West
COLORADO A ski instructor at Powderhorn Ski Resort near Grand Junction, Colo., was riding a lift some 30 feet above the Red Eye trail when he looked down and saw a wide-awake black bear. It was standing at the mouth of a cave no longer blocked by snow. Rick Rodd took a quick photo, but…
Market cooling
Will California and the West knock down global warming by buying and selling carbon?
Into thin air?
Global warming has spawned a call for new dams — but there may not be any water to fill them.
Educating the economy
Western towns court colleges to boost the economy and culture
Tripping over T-Rex
Name: Bob Harmon Hometown: Bozeman, Montana Vocation: Chief preparator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies and crew chief Known For: Finding the first dinosaur bones with soft tissue Bob Harmon is not an excitable man. His face isn’t animated as he points out the sauropod leg he is building out of fossils and…
The stories behind the statistics
Ray Ring’s painstaking assembly of the human stories hidden behind the conflicting statistics of industrial accidents in oil and gas was magnificent work (HCN, 4/2/07). I have been reading the U.S. Department of Labor’s Daily News Summaries for six months now, and this is the finest piece they have ever reprinted. Congratulations to the author…
Energy’s dark side
This great piece of journalism makes me want to weep (HCN, 4/2/07). How can our lawmakers be so careless as to allow this crap to continue? We need state and federal OSHA enforcement and reform! Thanks, Mr. Ring and HCN, for exposing a side of our energy consumption that few of us consider. Joshua Moro…
Company values
Great package (HCN, 4/2/07). It reminds me of stories my mom told me about growing up in Sopris, Colo. She said when there were cave-ins at the coal mines, the mine bosses would get the mules out and leave the dead miners inside. The mules were valuable, she said. The dead miners weren’t. Lori Ozzello…
“Safety is for wussies”
I can’t tell you how much I admire your “Death in the Energy Fields” project (HCN, 4/2/07). It’s been a long time coming. As I read it, I couldn’t help recalling my days as a young reporter in Sidney, Mont., in the heart of the Williston Basin. I covered the death of a 34-year-old oilfield…
Risky business
I worked in the oil fields in the mid-1950s, so I have some direct knowledge of what that work and the workers were like — 15 years before OSHA was born. I’m sure that all the facts in the article are true (and I hate what all those rigs are doing to the land) but…
Blame cows, trees and the sun, not just humans
Jonathan Thompson says in your March 5 issue that “thanks to humans, the earth is warming up, sea levels will rise, and pestilence and severe weather events will follow” (HCN, 3/5/07). Approximately 40 percent of our warming is due to solar activity. Cows contribute methane gas and even our forests give off carbon dioxide. Sea…
Rural Education 2.0
SPRINGFIELD, COLO. — The man in the Sodbuster Bar walks with a slight limp, the result of old injury. “I was operating a seismograph rig when it went off a hillside outside Meteetsee, Wyo.,” he said. “It fell 382 feet with me inside. I wasn’t supposed to make it, but I did. I eventually got…
Dear friends
VISITORS It’s not often that we get an international visitor. A journalist from Tokyo, Japan, dropped by in late March. Takashi Kikuchi, who writes for Festival magazine, was in western Colorado to cover The String Cheese Incident, a bluegrass/calypso/funk jam band from Boulder, Colo., that has toured in Japan. Takashi came to Paonia to see…
The case for filet of filly
Imagine a proposal to scatter millions of pounds of poisoned meat around the United States, close to human populations. Much of it would be accessible to scavengers — including eagles, hawks, coyotes, foxes and badgers, as well as dogs and cats. Any animal feeding on the poisoned meat would probably die. This scenario is likely,…