The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – the West’s most powerful water agency – uses a shrewd blend of Wall Street tactics and rural diplomacy to keep the water flowing to L.A. and its environs.
Don’t give up on us
My subscription had run out on HCN and several other magazines and I found myself drowning in periodicals. I have always been a huge supporter of HCN, but for the last year or so, I was less and less impressed with the journalism. There were fewer and fewer articles about environmental issues, and lower-grade reporting…
They’ve earned it
All I can say to Evelyn Spence is, “Been there … Done that! NOT doing it anymore, so eat your heart out, babe!” (HCN, 10/15/07). Your day will come whenever you get tired of the rocks poking you in the back and the smoke stinging your eyes. If you have a tent, you have more…
When’s breakfast?
How wonderful that you can experience a little of what I was able to experience 45 years ago, when campgrounds weren’t crowded, you could drink from springs and creeks before giardia was imported from central Asia, many places that are now housing developments were wilderness, and we didn’t have Gore-Tex, lightweight tents, foam mattresses, sleeping…
We prefer pinot grigio and brie
I read with understanding and dismay the essay by Evelyn Spence on the RV blight (HCN, 10/15/07). I hope she will soften her point of view in due time … I’m an elderly rancher/horse dealer/painter, with two RVs at present, both of which she forgot to mention: “Chinook” and “Airstream.” Music to my ears. Named…
Offsets, schmoffsets
I appreciate Rick Craig’s illuminating the concerns of the scientific community, and some forward-thinking members of Congress, regarding tree planting as a means of offsetting CO2 production (HCN, 10/15/07). Planting trees does nothing to alleviate our appetite for fossil fuels and petroleum-derived consumer products. Real estate developers are now jumping onto the bandwagon of planting…
How a restaurant changed the world
Chez Panisse is a French restaurant in an old home in Berkeley, Calif. Its menu is set, like that of a dinner party, and changes every night. Whether or not you’ve eaten there, you’ve felt its influence, which has rippled through the West and the world over the past 37 years. The organic craze and…
The power of music, the power of obsession
Flamenco, says a character in Sarah Bird’s dramatic and well-written novel, The Flamenco Academy, is an “obsessive-compulsive disorder set to a great beat.” The novel weaves the history of flamenco with the search for identity and the power of obsession. Albuquerque high-school seniors Rae and Didi make an unlikely duo. Rae, the narrator, is a…
Two weeks in the West
Thousands of Southern Californians fled their homes in October as smoke billowed from buildings and 70 mile-an-hour Santa Ana winds whipped flames across the landscape. Residents took up shovels and garden hoses to fend off the flames until fire crews arrived from across the state, the rest of the West and even Mexico. Seven people…
Sniffin’ out scat for conservation
NAME Wicket OCCUPATION Scat detection dog AGE 3 HOBBIES Playing with balls, chasing the stream from a hose Go to work,” Aimee Hurt calls. It’s a cool August afternoon in Montana’s Blackfoot Valley. Dressed in an orange vest and bear bells, Wicket begins sweeping across the trail, running in wide arcs, jumping downed trees, traveling…
Will the cat come back?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service claims that border fencing won’t jeopardize the jaguar because the U.S. Southwest is unneeded turf for conserving the species worldwide (HCN, 10/15/07). Unless someone reverses this myopic policy in court, we can forget about federal protection of jaguar habitat any time soon, since, by inference, the same would apply…
Children of the canyon
Thank you so much for publishing “Eminent domain’s poster children” (HCN, 10/15/07). I hope it serves as a way to inform people about the issue we are facing in southeast Colorado. This proposed land grab stands to ruin not only lives but the beautiful landscape and history of this area. We are working together as…
Happy campers
I find I must respond to Evelyn Spence’s somewhat arrogant and self-serving essay on RV owners (HCN, 10/15/07). There are as many reasons why people choose to camp with RVs as there are people who own them. What you don’t understand is that many of us are not camping all of the time. Sometimes we…
Even four-footed employees deserve to retire
For at least two decades, Edith Ann belonged to everyone, and to no one. Nobody could agree how old she was, just that the little bay quarter horse had lived at California’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area for as long as anyone could remember. Three generations of park visitors knew Edith Ann, and many made…
L.A. Bets on the Farm
Faced with unprecedented drought, the West’s most powerful water agency is mixing Wall Street tactics and rice farm supplies to hedge against Southern California’s risk of going dry.
The Sunflower State says a historic no to coal
Southwest Kansas gets little national attention. I recall a Calvin Trillin story about a small town there on the parched plains, isolated and insignificant. Yet the town had become a vital part of the Vietnam War because of its factory, then in frantic production manufacturing concertina barbed wire. Before that, Truman Capote made the small…
Coming to a farm near you: Los Angeles
Each year, my family and I visit my father-in-law at his house in the desert, just over the mountains from Los Angeles. From there, we can’t see the great beast they call L.A., but we can feel it. The San Gabriel Mountains loom black against the city’s nighttime glow. At all hours, a steady stream…
Dear friends
THE CHANGING EDITORIAL GUARD With this issue, we bid a fond farewell to Editor John Mecklin, who is headed to California and the challenge of starting up a new, policy-focused magazine. Since coming to HCN a year ago, John has implemented a long-needed revamp of our editorial and copy-flow processes, significantly broadened the scope of…
Bury it standing
A few weekends back, I was out in the front yard, digging a deep hole. I cut out wedges of turf to mark the dimensions, then went down through layers of topsoil. The first foot was easy, through rich moist dirt. After that I hit seams of gravel. The ground got drier and harder the…
Safe crossing
Armed with new research, traffic engineers are finding ways to stop highway carnage
Heard Around the West
UTAH AND OREGON The West used to pride itself on a live-and-let-live attitude. No more. In Orem, Utah, on Feb. 11, a judge will begin hearing the case against Betty Perry, 70, who refused to water her lawn and then resisted arrest when a policeman came to cite her for having brown grass. The jury…
Tractor politicking
Dennis McDonald pulls Montana to the left
West Nile finds a home in the West
Western states account for half the country’s viral infections