A writer tries to dig up the buried history of Colorado’s Rocky Flats weapons plant, now home to a controversial wildlife refuge.
The call of the tame
Jack London was a sustainable farmer
Wind setbacks
Local governments grapple with where to put wind farms
Rocky Flats lives on
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Half-life of Memory.” GRAND JURY FOREMAN WES MCKINLEY:”… I kind of like the bomb. We are the super country on the planet because we got the biggest weapon … I wasn’t a red-hot activist or had an ax to grind, or anything. ……
The importance of memory
In Nicole Krauss’ sparse and astonishing novel, Man Walks Into A Room, local cops find a disoriented man wandering along Highway 95 in the desolate Mercury Valley of Nevada. After the officers get him out of the shimmering heat, we learn that the man, Samson, has a brain tumor that has obliterated a large chunk…
A voice in the wilderness
For 20 years, Jim Stiles has published one of the most essential alternative newspapers in the West: The Canyon Country Zephyr, based in Moab, Utah (latest motto: “All the news that causes fits”). With sharp, see-all-sides reporting, the independent has taken on the excesses of extractive industry, the failings of the New West economy, and…
Shooting a double victory
Full-Court Quest: The Girls from Fort Shaw Indian School: Basketball Champions of the WorldLinda Peavy and Ursula Smith479 pages, hardcover: $29.95.University ofOklahoma Press, 2008. Sixteen years before women in the U.S. gained the right to vote and long before women’s public sporting events were considered decent, a team of American Indian girls from Montana traveled…
The struggle to remember the nuclear West
After toxic waste leaks, catastrophic fires and years of protests, Rocky Flats was raided by both the FBI and the EPA.
A battle for the land — and soul — of the West
The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and RecoveryHoward G. Wilshire, Jane E. Nielson, andRichard W. Hazlett617 pages, hardcover: $35.Oxford University Press, 2008. It’s no secret that the West’s public lands are in deep trouble. The American West at Risk presents a familiar litany of problems: damage from overgrazing,…
No backup on the Northern border
A rural county is saddled with international responsibility.
Red light, green light
Despite the midwinter economic-recession blues plaguing much of the West, environmentalists have reason to feel good. After eight years of being frustrated by President George W. Bush, suddenly they’re getting traction. Signs include: On Jan. 20, just hours into his term, President Barack Obama froze all the Bush deregulation efforts that had not been finalized…
Canary in the old growth
The search for an ecosystem’s vital signs
Culture and family
Besides being a way to ensure that only Indians got the pitiful and paltry benefits that the federal government was giving to the Natives they made treaties with, blood quantum was an insidious way of permanently removing the land and memory of a people (HCN, 1/19/09). What has happened to many Native families is a…
“Five-fingered humans”
I’m a white boy who grew up on the Blackfeet rez in north-central Montana. I have distant Cherokee cousins, but my blood quantum is less than 1/16th, so I never thought it worthwhile to seek out the potential benefits, if tribal membership of an ancestor could have been proven (HCN, 1/19/09). I consider myself a…
The long arm of the Hoffman
Ray Ring’s excellent article on the Wyoming political pressure that has kept Yellowstone Park’s eastern entrance open in winter despite the high cost, considerable danger, and minimal snowmobile traffic neglected to mention a key background factoid on this issue (HCN, 2/02/09). Cody, Wyo., for years had a powerful ally in its demand to keep Sylvan…
DOE and the volcano
Judith Lewis’ story “Mountain of Doubt” in the Jan. 19, 2009, issue of HCN provides an admirably accurate and balanced description of the history of Department of Energy-led efforts to establish Yucca Mountain as a safe repository for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. Beyond the politics, Lewis explains, “Doubts about Yucca Mountain’s geologic suitability have…
Justice for all
Salt Lake City attorney serves the homeless