Spam, that quivery quasi-meat, needs a support group. In a list of 1997 bests and worsts in the food world recently, the Arizona Republic zeroed in on the Jell-O-like pink substance as top contender for “worst recipe.” The winning (or losing) recipe came from Spam’s national recipe contest, which “always provides a good candidate,” according […]
Betsy Marston
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Heard Around the West
Ski-hats off to 33-year-old Karen Hartley, the stranded Utah skier who kept warm for 18 hours on Christmas Eve by dancing in the dark and singing “old disco songs, show tunes, popular and current stuff, Christmas tunes and even camp songs,” reports AP. She never panicked; she kept her head, and when a helicopter arrived […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 1998: After the gold rush
Dear friends
Reading into 1998 The bad thing about taking a break, which we accomplished by skipping the Jan. 5 issue, is coming back to a towering stack of accumulated papers from Western cities and small towns, as well as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post Weekly. As we troll for story leads, […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Heard around the West
The driver was a Romanian-born mathematician zooming 96 miles per hour through Montana – a state famous for its disdain of speed limits – and he was royally ticked off when Highway Patrol Officer Silkitwa Rivera pulled him over. Constantin Pirvulescu ranted and screamed, the officer recalled, and kept insisting, “There is no limit. You […]
Posted inDecember 22, 1997: Gold Rush: Mining seeks to tighten its grip on the 'last, best place'
Dear Friends
Snow time in the Rockies Winter has crept up on us, even though the town of 1,400 where we work boasts “banana belt” status. Avalanche reports take the place of weather or traffic bulletins on KVNF, our public radio station, embellished by personal accounts from disc jockeys. Here are a few of the mishaps that […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Heard around the West
What, me worry? That’s the question Alfred E. Neuman has been asking ever since his creation in 1950 by Al Feldstein, a Brooklynite who recently moved to the Paradise Valley, near Livingston, Mont. Sacred cows from political pundits to the pontiff were all fodder for Feldstein’s Mad Magazine, which encouraged kids to question authority and […]
Posted inDecember 8, 1997: Mono Lake: Victory over Los Angeles turns into local controversy
Dear Friends
Looking back Each year in the fall we take stock of our work over the last 12 months and ask you to do the same. About the time you receive this issue, you should also find an annual report from us in your mailbox. You may also find a request for help in continuing the […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Dear Friends
Into the desert HCN staffers Rita Murphy, Jason Lenderman, Sara Phillips and Peter Chilson and about 175 other anti-nuclear protesters walked onto the Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site Nov. 9. Without fuss, security guards escorted everyone right into a barbwire detention pen because it is unlawful to enter the test site without permission. Staffers […]
Posted inNovember 24, 1997: Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
Heard around the West
Armed men in camouflage drove their muddy vehicles out of Western towns in droves this month, with or without deer and elk in tow. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department staffer Mike Thompson says his state used to put hunters on the spot by asking drivers at a check station near Missoula to queue up, […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Drawing from life
“Weather is the perfect natural phenomenon for the scrutiny of the journal-keeper. It’s always happening, you don’t have to go far to check on it, and you need no sophisticated equipment to study it… Draw the various clouds and cloud formations you see, paying particular attention to their volumes in space, their lights and shadows…” […]
Posted inNovember 10, 1997: Drain Lake Powell? Democracy and science finally come West
Heard around the West
If your product is ostrich and emu and you call your Missoula, Mont., business the Alternative Meat Market, it just makes sense to try to send some un-beef steaks directly to the White House, right? Right, though marketer Kim Mecca first found herself trapped in switchboard limbo. Finally she connected with White House chief usher […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Dear Friends
Thinking out loud Patricia Nelson Limerick, the bane of the Old West’s historians – those (usually) white men who said white folks brought civilization as they rolled over a mostly empty, heathenish continent – came to Grand Junction, Colo., recently. During the afternoon she talked informally with members of the Western Colorado Congress, a coalition […]
Posted inOctober 27, 1997: Deconstructing the age of dams
Heard around the West
Pity poor Joe Camel, the billboard cigarette huckster now out of a job. “Cancer-mongering just ain’t the same without Joe Camel,” laments Eric Scigliano in the Seattle Weekly. But thanks to the e-mail grapevine, folks in Washington state have come up with new careers for the cool spokes-cartoon. Our favorite: Filling potholes with tar from […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Leaning Into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West
Whenever I fill out a form that asks me to list my occupation, I put down “farmer,” the same word I use when I’m asked my husband’s occupation. The following is a true story: The man reading the form says, “Your husband is a farmer?” “Yes, my husband and I are farmers,” I reply. “You […]
Posted inOctober 13, 1997: The land is still public, but it's no longer free
Heard around the West
Imagination is a wonderful thing. Conjure up this scenario: It is a hot summer day at Yellowstone National Park, and hundreds of tourists await an eruption of the Old Faithful geyser. Everyone checks watches, wondering about a delay. What is Old Faithful if not relatively faithful? What no one knows is that beneath the heaving […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Heard around the West
“Welcome hunters!” say the blaze-orange signs on stores in many rural Western towns. Out in the woods, the sentiment is not necessarily shared by other mammals. One bowhunter in Wyoming unexpectedly became prey himself, AP reports. A grizzly bear with two cubs nearby charged Greg Dolph, who thought to escape by climbing 15 feet into […]
Posted inSeptember 29, 1997: The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace
Dear Friends
The gardener’s payoff The best thing about the rain that continually pelted the West this summer is that gardens grew to gargantuan size. Now they’re flooding larders with zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, late corn, patty pan squash, calendula blooms to color a salad, dill and much, much more. This is the reward we reap, not by […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Dear friends
“Depressing … diligent” Last spring we asked you to “give us a piece of your mind” by filling out our ninth annual reader survey. We asked for it and you delivered: 1,820 replies (10 percent of the paper’s readers) telling us what you liked, what you thought stepped over the line, what other newspapers and […]
Posted inSeptember 15, 1997: Yellowstone at 125: The park as a sovereign state
Heard around the West
Cows continue to get heat for everything from spreading E. coli bacteria to stomping on salmon eggs. But ranchers protest that no one ever talks about the good things cows do. Heard around the West just read about one good thing in the Salem, Ore., Capital Press. It seems cows tend to push objects with […]
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Dear friends
Corrections Richard Millet, executive vice president of Denver operations at Woodward-Clyde, tells us that Robert (not Bill) Moran was employed as a part-time geochemist at his company, so he was not head geologist, as reported by HCN staffer Heather Abel in her lead story about “mining’s corporate nomads’ June 23. He also says that the […]