You can’t treat it as a supply-and-demand economy; nobody ever chooses to get sick.
'Asta Bowen
Posted inMarch 13, 2000: Libby's dark secret
A barbed tragedy is lodged in Libby
Note: This essay is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story,”Libby’s dark secret.” You remember asbestos: It used to be the hottest little insulator around. For years we crammed it into buildings and warships, wrapped it around water pipes and brake pads, wove it into fireproof clothing and flame-resistant drapes. Then we found out how […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Children teach tough lessons
School is a terrible place to have to spend your days. As any disgruntled student can tell you, the walls are sterile, the teachers suspicious, the curriculum irrelevant, the freedoms nonexistent. And, out of all the places on earth I could be, I have chosen to spend my workdays here. I made this decision, perhaps […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
How an eco-logger views his work
Not many loggers have a degree in creative writing. Fewer serve on the board of a state wilderness association or argue philosophy with timber giants like Plum Creek in northwest Montana. Bob Love does. He’s been called the “eco-logger” by some, the “Una-Logger” by others, and these days he runs a one-man selective logging business. […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Lessons from a rampaging river
It’s obvious from news photos that the city of Grand Forks, N.D., will never be the same after this year’s cataclysmic flood and fire. What’s not so obvious in the scenes of washed-out and burned-out buildings is that the landscape is not all that has changed. Mike Jacobs, editor of the Grand Forks Herald, calls […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
No nagging or preaching here
Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning, Northwest Environment Watch, 1997. 86 pages, illus. $9.95 paperback. When was the last time you heard an environmentalist complain that we’re recycling too much? No street-corner shouter or mealymouthed apologist, John Ryan is the sober, credentialed research director of Seattle-based Northwest […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Stripmining history and culture for dollars
Who owns Crazy Horse? Were the great Oglala warrior still alive, there would be no question: Crazy Horse, who helped Sitting Bull orchestrate Custer’s last stand, was not the owning kind. But 120 years after his death, the Minnesota Court of Appeals has affirmed a New York brewery’s right to market “Original Crazy Horse Malt […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
A mystery the size of your fist
I am wondering about beargrass. This summer brought such an explosion of blooms to the Northern Rockies it was front-page news – more beargrass than anyone can remember, more beargrass than anyone can explain. So much beargrass that you don’t have to be a naturalist to stop the car and marvel at the hillsides blazing […]