Virtual relationships? They’re all the rage. But over at the San Francisco regional office of the Forest Service, leaders of the forester team fret. In a nutshell, nobody talks shop face to face; the preferred method of communication is computer e-mail. So the team leaders sent a message – by e-mail, of course: On the […]
Betsy Marston
Posted inFebruary 17, 1997: No home on the range
Heard around the West
We should all have the problem Mark Wattles has just south of Portland. “I have a lot of money. I don’t know what to do with all the money I have,” he told the Oregonian. Hollywood Entertainment Corp. president Wattles does think he needs a bigger house, so he’s building a 50,000-square-foot mansion on the […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 1997: Bringing back the bighorn
Heard around the West
“Hello” seems like such an innocent word. It’s not Western and boisterous like howdy! stuck up like How-do-you-do? or ethnic like hola, but it does the job; it gets the gab going. But not in Kingsville, Texas. There, hello smacks of Satan. So county employees now answer their phone with a cheery “HEAVEN-O,” avoiding all […]
Posted inJanuary 20, 1997: Bees under siege
Heard around the West
Does everyone become slightly unhinged when one year lurches into another? We detect a certain recklessness in late 1996-early 1997 news reports. Some stories feature surliness and hostility, while others reveal a plucky determination to survive anything – even a flood in the middle of winter. We begin with the better news, although it features […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
An 84-year-old postal veteran
The struggle by Red Lodge, Mont., that kept alive a downtown post office may be duplicated 150 miles away in Livingston, population 7,500. Recently, 1,500 Livingston residents signed a petition calling on Postal Service officials to forego a move to spacious new quarters and retain the 84-year-old post office in the heart of town. “It’s […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
Dear friends
Digging in Winter finally fell on Paonia after fooling us for so many weeks with sunny days and skittish snow. The ski areas are happy about their feet-thick bases, and local water supplies, though still in snowpack, seem robust. But it isn’t cold yet, with that dry, biting cold we’ve come to expect in December. […]
Posted inDecember 23, 1996: El Nuevo West
Heard around the West
You can be feminine and far fetched, or is it petite and a patriot? The shy editor of a newsletter called Marilyn the Patriot Matchmaker, admits, “I’ve always liked the kind of guys who’ll get me shot.” Enter this female foe of the New World Order, Marilyn, no last name given, who wants to link […]
Posted inDecember 9, 1996: Motorheads: The new, noisy, organized force in the West
Even in Quiet Places
It is a secret still, but already your tree is chosen. It has entered a forest for miles and hides deep in a valley by a river. No one else finds it; the sun passes over not noticing. But even while you are reading you happen to think of that tree, no matter where sentences […]
Posted inNovember 25, 1996: Pollution in paradise
Dear friends
The aftermath With this issue we get our chance to punditify, prognosticate and otherwise ponder what Western voters meant to do when they each took five or 10 minutes to punch out their preferences: Urban voters may pull down levers in booths with curtains; rural voters tend to stand at open lecterns and punch out […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Utah tells Babbitt to back off
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has been sued by the state of Utah for his decision to reopen the process of wilderness designation (HCN, 9/2/96). Filed Oct. 14 in federal court, the suit challenges the legality of Babbitt’s “re-inventory” of Bureau of Land Management lands in Utah without public involvement. Babbitt announced on July 24 that […]
Posted inNovember 11, 1996: Cease-fire called on the Animas-La Plata front
Eyes of fire
It was March 7, 1996, on the fourth day of a 10-day lion hunt in the Peloncillo Mountains of southern Arizona, when rancher Warner Glenn and his hunting dogs happened on a big cat they’d never seen before in America. It was a jaguar, and Glenn, in this quickly produced little booklet, tells us he […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Casualties of controversy: Two editors’ jobs and a biologist’s naivete
Now that the public has gotten into the habit of regulating bear hunting through initiatives, the issue has become increasingly polarized. That became obvious this summer when Colorado bear biologist Tom Beck stepped out of the hunting culture to write an essay critical of the sport and attitudes toward it. Among other observations in the […]
Posted inOctober 28, 1996: Has big money doomed direct democracy?
Dear Friends
Braving blaze orange It’s hunting season again, and who knows it better than this office? Our neighbor to the south is a meat locker which works overtime this season, thanks to pickup loads of dead deer, elk and, lately, bear. The gang of cats that patrols the alley seems in hog heaven while the animal-lovers […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 1996: Can this man break the right's grip on Idaho?
Dear friends
Odds and ends Thanks to Boulder, Colo., reader Evan Cantor who sent us 10 years of back issues of High Country News. They’ve been snapped up by Paonia High School, which school secretary Judy Briscoe tells us has become much involved in interdisciplinary teaching. And thanks to Evergreen, Colo., writer Dyan Zaslowsky, who passed on […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Bear with us
If you’re a hiker or angler in black bear or grizzly territory, a modest little handbook, Bear Aware: Hiking and Camping in Bear Country, could save your life. It concisely explains the bear essentials of coexistence, such as staying alert in the outback, venturing out only with a large group, sticking to the trail and […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Recycling gets rapped
Is recycling really a stupid idea driven by people too willing to believe that their minute actions can change a culture built on conspicuous consumption? Writing in the New York Times Magazine June 30, John Tierney answers “yes.” In fact, he says, “Recycling is garbage.” Citing studies by conservative think tanks such as the Cato […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 1996: The filthy West: Toxics pour into our air, water, land
Dear friends
New interns Recently, while chewing sloppy melted chunks of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and watching shadows cast by moonlight cross the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, intern Patrick Dowd got his first taste of the area around Paonia. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, moving inland in 1991 to […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 1996: Last line of defense: Civil disobedience and protest slow down 'lawless logging'
Dear friends
Fires – again First, you read about the 700 new fires breaking out in Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington and Wyoming – most started by lightning. Then, if you live in Colorado or Nevada, where fires are already burning, you notice the intense salmon colors of dawns and sunsets. Suddenly, it seems, the West […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
A tree did it
On July 2, a blackout in the West left 2 million people without electricity. The culprit, it turns out, was a cottonwood tree in southeastern Idaho. Or perhaps it was the maintenance folks who allowed this lone tree to grow so close to a power line that electricity jumped to it. When this “flashover” occurred […]
Posted inAugust 19, 1996: Western voices
Dear Friends
A celebration of essayists We are not calling this issue devoted mostly to essays “special,” but it certainly feels that way. It is the first time we have taken such a large break from straight reporting to feature stories that stem from personal experience in the West. Staff debated the idea and finally plunged. An […]