Now people all over the country, if not the world, refer to it as the “sunscreen speech”: “Wear sunscreen” it begins. … “Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth … Do one thing every day that scares you … Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly … Get to […]
Betsy Marston
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Don’t blame women
Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle, Wash., isn’t very big at 1,400 members and five staffers, but its reach is ambitious. In less than four years it has published five reports, including The Car in the City, Stuff, and the latest and perhaps most provocative, Misplaced Blame: The Real Roots of Population Growth, by Alan Durning, […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Dear friends
The contrary West We won’t regale you with old saws about weather, such as the one that goes, “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait a minute – it’ll change.” But we’d like to, because here and in some places like eastern Idaho, where it’s been so damp there are fears of a […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
Heard around the West
The Aspen Daily News isn’t shy about its willingness to dish the dirt. Its motto? “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.” Bren Simon, the wife of shopping-mall developer and Indiana Pacers owner Melvin Simon, may have recollected those words once the free paper began printing juicy stories about the couple’s illegal […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Owens Valley finally loses patience
A water grab 84 years ago that turned one of California’s largest lakes into a dust bowl and enabled Los Angeles to boom may not have been permanent. By a vote of 6-1 July 2, rural elected officials ordered Los Angeles to forego diverting 43 million gallons of water a day from Owens Lake. The […]
Posted inAugust 4, 1997: Vanishing habitat
Heard around the West
Once a plump owl earnestly told boys and girls: “Give a hoot, don’t pollute!” Then the bird went mute during the controversy over northern spotted owls losing their nests to loggers. Well, the 25-year-old mascot of the Forest Service is back, reports the Jackson Hole News. While on sabbatical Woodsy may have enjoyed a stay […]
Posted inJuly 7, 1997: While the New West booms, Wyoming mines, drills ... and languishes
Heard around the West
For sheer chutzpah, nothing beats Las Vegas. This gambling boomtown dares to downsize New York’s Statue of Liberty, compress Egyptian pyramids into city-block-size containers, and as wry writer Dave Barry put it in a bazillion dailies recently, “every week or so somebody out there builds a new casino the size of Czechoslovakia, but with more […]
Posted inJune 23, 1997: On the trail of mining's corporate nomads
Heard Around the West
If this is heresy, so be it: We’ve begun to pity bureaucrats in the West who take the brunt of the public’s contradictions and righteousness. When some of these non-elected officials stick their necks out to protect a public resource, they often get them cut off. And because they’re “public” servants, all of us get […]
Posted inJune 9, 1997: Chaos comes to Costilla County
Heard around the West
“You better run a BIG retraction,” howls Dan Feller, a history professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. What was Heard Around the West’s little error? Informing you that a recent “Darwin Award” to a lawn-chair-flying fellow last year was a netmyth. The story of Larry Walters soaring to 16,000 feet for almost […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
For urban dropouts
John Clayton, who lived in the Boston area before moving to rural Montana, has written a no-nonsense book that could help disgruntled urbanites make an informed decision before hitting the highway. The title says it all: Small Town Bound: Your guide to small-town living, from determining if life in the country lane is for you, […]
Posted inMay 26, 1997: The sacred and profane collide in the West
Heard around the West
Reader Frazier Nichol in John Day, Ore., had a deep thought the other day, maybe the same day he opened his fortune cookie and found a contemporary bit of wisdom: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” We know that’s the way the cookie crumbled, because he […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Cry Wolf
With The Great American Wolf, wildlife biologist Bruce Hampton has written a book almost as compelling as the fiercely intelligent predator itself. Hampton, who lives in Lander, Wyo., first tells us how white hunters in the West sought to wipe out wolves, which were viewed as competitors in the taking of “helpless’ buffalo, deer and […]
Posted inMay 12, 1997: Planning under the gun: Cleaning up Lake Tahoe proves to be a dirty business
Dick Randall, a fighter for the West
Staff was sorry to hear of the death of Dick Randall in Rock Springs, Wyo., at the age of 72. A fervent conservationist, Randall in his youth worked as an aerial coyote-gunner for the federal Animal Damage Control agency. Suffering from the effects of several air crashes, and more important, a change of heart about […]
Posted inApril 28, 1997: Evangelical Christians preach a green gospel
Heard around the West
Stolid and solid at 1,500 pounds each, beef cows keep getting a bad rap. Fear of mad cow disease is chasing away burger eaters, and doctors have long warned that juicy steaks clog arteries. Now come two researchers who tell us in Conservation Biology magazine that cows cause fires. Joy Belsky and Dana Blumenthal connect […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
A Utah vendetta
When some members of the Utah Legislature get mad, they try to get even. A rural Utah lawmaker, furious at actor Robert Redford’s support of the state’s new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, introduced a resolution recently to turn Redford’s Sundance resort into a wilderness. “Mr. Redford has made a tremendous amount of money off what […]
Posted inApril 14, 1997: Beauty and the Beast
Heard around the West
Spring is here. We know, not because our boots sport two-inch mud platforms after a step outdoors or because sunny mornings tend to mutate into dramatic whiteouts, but because news from around the West seems to zero in on the human body: in the classroom, in the buff and in the rough. The student story […]
Posted inMarch 31, 1997: Big Sky, big mess in Montana
Heard around the West
Vail and most other ski resorts in Colorado have enjoyed deep snow and sunny days lately, and everything should be hunky-dory, right? Wrong. Vail and other destination ski areas are “desperate” because they lack lift operators, maids and other workers, reports the Steamboat Pilot. Part of the problem stems from pre-employment drug testing that screens […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Dear friends
Like a moth Idaho storyteller and folk singer Rosalie Sorrels sang at Paonia’s Paradise (movie) Theater last week, and thanks to two Stupid Band sound engineers from Montrose, Colo., her voice was clear and powerful. Yet the setting was as intimate as a cabaret, and the audience of 70 or so seemed entranced. Sorrels sings […]
Posted inMarch 17, 1997: Working the Watershed
Heard around the West
When birds fall from the sky as thick as snowflakes and a stunned moose splays itself over the hood of a car, does this portend something … weird? First, the phenomenon of the falling web-footed grebes: 3,000 of them plummeted to the snow-covered fields of central Utah apparently believing they were dropping safely onto bodies […]
Posted inMarch 3, 1997: Hunters close ranks, and minds
Dear friends
Heaven-o … Kissy lives! Stories here and elsewhere about a south Texas county that decided its employees should answer the phone with a spritely “HEAVEN-O” were tough on those who picked up the phone. It rang a lot. We were among those who called Kleberg County to see how the anti-HELLo greeting was going, and […]