Westerners have a knack for new and innovative thinking, as this special issue of HCN shows.
The Universe on Blacktop
A family dumpster-dives for cash and satisfaction.
Changeable weather
The West’s environmental movement got buffeted by strong late-winter winds, both good and ill. First, President Barack Obama has targeted the federal government’s 22-year-old multibillion-dollar effort to bury nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. He vowed to devise “a new strategy” on dealing with nuclear waste, while seeking little money for Yucca Mountain in his…
Slumdog U.S.A.
In recent months, the big-screen blockbuster love story, Slumdog Millionaire, has brought images of a ramshackle Mumbai slum to millions of American viewers. Although the slum may have been a bit prettified, it did the trick: Moviegoers were shocked, offended and deeply moved by how the poor of other nations live. The movie’s popularity has…
Raising cows — and kids — in the West
The Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American WestLinda Hussa, photographs by Madeleine Graham Blake272 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of Nevada Press, 2009. The families described in The Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American West are traditional in that they are not “traditional” at all: One mother is single, and…
History viewed through gunsights
Famous Firearms of the Old West: From Wild Bill Hickok’s Colt Revolvers to Geronimo’s Winchester, Twelve Guns That Shaped Our HistoryHal Herring189 pages, hardcover: $24.95. TwoDot/Globe Pequot Press, 2008. Chief Joseph was carrying a lever-action Model 1866 Winchester rifle that fired .44 Rimfire cartridges when he led the Nez Perce against the U.S. Cavalry…
Tarp Nation
Squatter villages arise from the ashes of the West’s booms and busts
See you in April!
Last summer, we switched to a 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule; that means we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around April 13 — now you’ll have more spare time to work on your taxes. Water on the BrainFor all of you folks who love to speculate…
INNOVATE, Part III
The West is the new frontier, for ideas
INNOVATE, Part II
The West is the new frontier, for ideas
Tough choices
The Feb. 16 issue manages to spotlight the “I want”/”I don’t want” schizophrenia of many who claim to love the environment. First, the article “Wind setbacks”: How can some of you look in the mirror after expressing rabid support for alternative energy sources like wind, if you insist that the turbines that generate the energy…
Share the tracks
Our railways are the only transportation systems where both the movable equipment and the track infrastructure are owned by the same company (HCN, 2/02/09). In all other haulage systems, the “tracks” are shared by competing companies. Look at the highways, airways and waterways. Thus, individual railways have an advantage, because they do not have to…
Scattered to the winds
I am one of the residents of the San Miguel valley in New Mexico where the company Invenergy is looking into locating industrial-size turbines (HCN, 2/16/09). My neighbors and I have been researching the impact of the wind industry, and many of us are concluding that in the push for renewables, it is preferable to…
The half-life curse
Hannah Nordhaus’ excellent exposé “The Half-life of Memory” is troubling on many fronts, but none more so than the quote from Jim Kelly given by Wes McKinley (HCN, 2/16/09). As one of the plant engineers at Rocky Flats, Kelly’s statement that “we didn’t need to pollute like that” is an indictment of the whole sordid…
Collateral damage
Regarding your story on the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant: I was new in Boulder in the early 1950s, when the announcement was made that this large defense plant would be located between Boulder and Golden (HCN, 2/16/09). Ever since, I have pondered the question, “Why would our government locate a prime defense plant (target)…
INNOVATE, Part I
The West is the new frontier, for ideas