Milk may have a wholesome image, but the West’s big dairies are not a healthy place for immigrants to work.
How the West made cheeseburgers cheap
Way back when I was in high school, kids used to snatch copies of the student newspaper right off the racks. They were literally starving for what was inside it. That doesn’t mean they were interested in the content. No, what they wanted was the coupon for McDonalds that appeared in each issue. And that’s…
A new land grab
The Oglala Sioux are on a path to reclaim their territory and their culture
Writers of the Native American Renaissance
In Beauty I Walk: The Literary Roots of Native American WritingEdited by Jarod Ramsey and Lori Burlingame395 pages, softcover: $27.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2008. “Appreciation” is a slippery word, especially when applied to culture. More shallow than understanding, but deeper than mere pleasure, you might describe it as knowledge lite. Perhaps that’s why In…
A wedding, a story
Here in Paonia, Colo., the peaches and tomatoes are finally ripening and High Country News is still welcoming lots of summer visitors. Dale Benjamin and his son, Jordan, of Vancouver, Wash., dropped by the office with Dale’s cousin, Hal Brill, a Paonia local. A USDA consumer safety inspector back home, Dale said he was glad…
As the crow flies
Crow Planet — Essential Wisdom from the Urban WildernessLyanda Lynn Haupt230 pages, hardcover: $23.99. Little, Brown and Company. 2009. Even though crows are unusually smart, make attentive parents, use tools, can learn to speak and are notoriously playful, they can’t seem to shake their bad reputation. They’re far more “loud, large, and conspicuous” than most…
Collaborative misinformation
Gary Nabhan’s hit piece on Jon Jarvis, Obama’s nominee for Director of the National Park Service, is misinformed, replete with false assertions and does a disservice to dedicated, longtime agency employees (HCN, 8/3/09). Nabhan’s assertion that Jarvis and Point Reyes National Seashore Superintendent Don Neubacher are trying to “phase out” and “evict” oyster farming and…
Reid’s water grab
It is good to see Harry Reid’s cover being blown by Ray Ring (HCN, 8/3/09). For people in rural Nevada, Reid’s two-faced BS is common knowledge. Here in Lyon County, Nevada’s largest ag-producing county, Sen. Reid is the power behind the $200 million added to the Farm Bill to purchase the water rights of local…
Righteous steak, too
Your review of my book Righteous Porkchop had a serious flaw (HCN, 8/3/09). The reviewer suggested that I intentionally avoid criticizing cattle ranching because of my own involvement in it. This fundamentally misses the argument the book is making about modern industrialized food production, namely that today’s confinement poultry, hog, and dairy operations, which keep…
Ring’s Reid grab
I was dismayed at the meanness and lack of balance displayed in the article entitled “The same old Sen. Reid” (HCN, 8/3/09). If it were not for the hard work of Harry Reid, we would not have the passage by Congress of the Omnibus Bill, Great Basin National Park, removal of lead from the drinking…
Romancing the stone
NAME Maurice McKinneyAGE 83HOMETOWN Whittier, Calif.OCCUPATION Retired gold miner and gemologist HCN SUBSCRIBER SINCE 2008 (longtime reader) For some time now, we’ve been receiving occasional — and very entertaining — letters from HCN reader Maurice McKinney. The self-described rockhound writes about his love of gems, Mexico and the great outdoors. “All my life I was…
Lawless future
Hard times extra hard for state parks
Solar salvation?
Timber companies and unemployed workers look to renewable energy for a boost.
Dairy injuries and deaths 2003-2009
At least 18 people died working in Western dairies between 2003 and 2009; many more were injured. This list of deaths and injuries, compiled from state and federal safety agency reports, is certainly incomplete, thanks to loopholes and differences in state and federal reporting requirements as well as underreporting by workers. When possible, supplementary information…
Extinguished
Wildfires have intensified in the last 10 years, says Michelle Ryerson, chair of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Safety and Health Working Team. More extreme fires require more complex methods of firefighting, leading not only to higher costs but a change over time in the risks that firefighters face. In 1987, Ryerson’s team began keeping…
The new Third World
People are desperate for medical care in the West’s inner cities and rural areas.
From Tuscany to the Mohave
A war bride’s journey West
The dark side of dairies
A broken system leaves immigrant workers invisible — and in danger.