The women in Stefanie Raymond-Whish’s family have a history of breast cancer, and the young Navajo biologist wants to know whether the uranium on the reservation might have something to do with it.
On Cancer’s Trail
The women in Stefanie Raymond-Whish’s family have a history of breast cancer. Now the young Navajo biologist is asking why.
Not so fine a line
I applaud Craig Childs for furthering public awareness about the destruction of archaeological sites, and agree that archaeologists need to be more concerned about whether or not an artifact should be collected, and what happens to it after it is collected(HCN, 4/28/08). . But in his effort to conflate archaeological investigation with pothunting, he makes…
Buy a t-shirt instead
I have been visiting the backcountry of the Southwest for many years. Craig Childs’ statement in “Pillaging the Past” that 90 percent of archaeological sites have been vandalized seems accurate from what I have witnessed (HCN, 4/28/08). When I first set foot on Cedar Mesa in southeast Utah almost 30 years ago, artifacts such as…
Art with a conscience
I was shocked and saddened to read Childs’ grim report (HCN, 4/28/08). I looked on eBay under “Anasazi” – sure enough, there was all kinds of stuff for sale. Shocking. There’s a way to enjoy this art without robbing graves. I bought a pot at the Acoma Pueblo. It sits in my living room. The…
‘Shooting ourselves in the head’
The personal right to self-defense is not so broad as to include the intrusion into the safety and well-being of others in order to exercise that right (HCN, 4/28/08). Guns are not only in the homes of the households they are supposed to protect, they are violating our communities. They are in fast-food restaurants, on…
The (non)idiot’s guide to energy
We all know what a carbon footprint is. But for those ready to go beyond Global Warming 101, energy specialist Carol Sue Tombari has condensed our national conversation about energy decisions into a mercifully compact and readable book called Power of the People: America’s New Electricity Choices. Tombari, the manager of stakeholder relations at the…
Cowgirl meets lawsuit
Jackalope Dreams, Mary Clearman Blew’s fifth book and first novel, depicts the head-on collision of the Old West and the New. There are cattle, and meth labs; ranches lost to real estate developers and young people gone to cities; the end of cowboying as a lifelong verb and the rise of cowboy tourism. Corey Henry,…
Two weeks in the West
With oil prices spiking past $120 a barrel, earthquakes and cyclones killing tens of thousands in Asia, and food prices spurring riots abroad and wrestling matches in the grocery line at home, the morning news is beginning to sound more than a little bit apocalyptic. In the West, you might expect the survivalists to cry…
The amphibian heart
The road was covered with toads. Crouched on the two-lane mountain blacktop, posed like speckled sphinxes on the yellow line. I saved as many as I could, leaping from my idling car to scoop up their warm dimpled bodies and deposit them in adjacent Sonoran Desert. But too many were already belly-up or smeared across…
Population’s Paul Revere?
NAME Frosty Wooldridge AGE 61 KNOWN FOR His e-mails, blogs, letters and books about overpopulation, and by extension, immigration. HE SAYS “You can ignore reality, but at some point reality will not ignore you. In the U.S., we’re now on track to add 100 million people in the next 30 years. We can bring about…
Heard Around the West
ARIZONA For sheer excitement, read the current issue of boatman’s quarterly review, published “more or less quarterly” by that elite group, Grand Canyon River Guides. A special 25-page section revisits the dangerous spring of 1983, when an unusually snowy winter was followed by a May snowstorm and suddenly warming temperatures. Roaring like a freight train,…
Climate cash-in
Western farmers and ranchers use crops – and cows – to tap into the carbon market
Fields of overkill
Conservation, farmers scorched by food safety concerns
Green and mean
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund builds on anti-Pombo election strategy
Rural West going to the dogs
Feral and free-roaming canines wreak havoc on wildlife and livestock
A patient
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “On Cancer’s Trail.” Kathleen Tsosie sits in the waiting room of the San Juan Regional Cancer Center in Farmington. A one-year breast cancer survivor, she has just received devastating news: A new growth has been spotted in her remaining, healthy breast. Dressed in a…
A well
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “On Cancer’s Trail.” Between Haystack Rock and Mount Taylor, on an expansive sweep of desert near the eastern edge of the Navajo Reservation, Kerr McGee and Homestake mined uranium ore for decades, hauling it down the road in uncovered trucks. The Homestake Mill is…
An activist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “On Cancer’s Trail.” Scientific research on breast cancer is important, but if lives on the reservation are being saved right now, it’s largely through the efforts of people like Nellie Sandoval, Stefanie Raymond-Whish’s mother. Sandoval, a retired high school guidance counselor, works to ensure…
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal…
Uranium: It’s worse than you think
When people think of Durango, Colo., they usually think of the scenery, or the tourist attractions, or the disproportionate number of healthy, spandex-clad bicyclists, runners and raft guides. Rarely do they think of cancer. Perhaps they should. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Durango. It was a nice place to grow…
Dear friends
FELLOW NEWSMEN COME TO CALL Kevin Haley, the “founder, publisher, editor, janitor and copyboy” of the San Juan Horseshoe, dropped by to say hi. The Ouray, Colo.-based parody newspaper bills itself as “Refried News for a Half-Baked World.” From Salida, Colo., came Mike Rosso, webmaster for four newspapers owned by Arkansas Valley Publishing. He said…