Refugees struggle to find a home in an unfamiliar land.
My father’s political career
The family also wins and loses.
Conservation for the adrenaline crowd
Can the Red Bull generation go green?
Refugees unsettle the West
Meatpacking, Ramadan and other cultural collisions in Colorado
The diplomacy of water
Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West (Second Edition)Norris Hundley Jr.433 pages, softcover: $24.95; hardcover: $60.University of California Press, 2009. Norris Hundley’s book Water and the West has long stood as the classic account of the epic negotiations to divide up the Colorado River’s water.…
Our national parks: Another idea
In 1912, James Bryce, the British ambassador to the United States, proclaimed that the national parks are “America’s best idea.” Others have called the parks “America’s best places.” But if the parks are our “best” places, what about all those other places where we live and work and go about our daily rounds? Don’t they…
Buddy, can ya spare a subscription?
An HCN subscriber who owns an energy corporation in California got in touch with us earlier this summer. He wanted to do more than renew his subscription, he said — he wanted to send seven-month gift subscriptions anonymously to 20 former readers who had not renewed because of personal hardship (job losses, etc.). A huge,…
Fish stories
Regarding your story “The Most Cooked-up Catch,” I was there when the 200-mile limit was, in fact, first imposed (HCN, 8/03/09). (Editor’s note: Congress enacted the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone in 1976.) I was a freshly minted Coast Guard airman sent to Kodiak, Alaska, in 1967 to commence fisheries enforcement for the new 200-mile limit.…
Green delusions
Audubon’s equivocations in Arizona are just the tip of the iceberg (HCN, 10/12/09). In the last decade, mainstream environmental groups have been co-opted, again and again, by wealthy entrepreneurial “benefactors.” Often these benefactors leverage their massive donations into a seat on the group’s board of directors, where policy is set. Even as human-caused climate change…
When cows are outlawed …
In a letter to the editor, rancher John Marble writes, “I doubt many items in the organic produce aisle are grown with as little environmental impact as our beef” (HCN, 9/14 & 9/28/09). A while back, I discovered a remarkable statistic: Making a pound of beef creates 36 times the greenhouse gas emissions that creating…
Still riding the edge
Riding the Edge of an Era: Growing Up Cowboy on the Outlaw TrailDiana Allen Kouris254 pages, softcover: $17.95.High Plains Press, 2009. Diana Allen Kouris grew up on a ranch, riding horseback with her siblings in untamed country surrounded by the ghosts of Indians, mountain men and outlaws. “It could have been a hard way of…
A new kind of ministry
Sierra Leone to Denver
An orphan heads to college
Sudan to Tucson
The newest Westerners
See end of story for a complete package of refugee stories in this issue. It was right about the time that my teeth sank into the Basque BLT (marinated pork loin, bacon, the works) that I had my epiphany. OK, maybe the timing wasn’t quite that serendipitous, and maybe it was less an epiphany than…
More than English
At a Denver school, refugees learn American ways as well as language
Refugees, by the numbers
See end of article for a complete package of refugee stories in this issue. 16 million Number of refugees worldwide in 2008 60,193 Number of refugees who settled in the U.S. that year 19,264 Number who settled in Western states 0 Number who settled in Wyoming and Montana• • •2.6 million Minimum number of refugees…
Seeking a vocation in no-man’s land
Iraq to Berkeley
A hard-fought immigration victory
Russia to Seattle
Socialism and the West
This region was built on government subsidies and aid
Watts of water
Will pumped storage help power the West’s renewable energy boom?
A loophole you can squeeze a feedlot through
Growing up on a dryland wheat farm in eastern Washington, Scott Collin learned at an early age not to waste water. “I got more whippings when I was a boy for running the water well over than anything else,” he says. So Collin took notice last year when Easterday Ranches Inc. proposed a 30,000-head feedlot…
Death by a thousand wells
Unregulated wells strain short water supplies in Washington’s Yakima Basin and throughout the West
Indians vs. Greens?
“Environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty.” So said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. in late September, shortly after he joined northern Arizona’s Hopi tribal council in “unwelcoming” environmental groups from those tribes’ lands, which sprawl across portions of three Southwestern states. The national press regurgitated the story with…
The good seats don’t come cheap
More proof that if you’ve got power, you probably have money that helped you get it. Sixteen Westerners are among the 50 richest Congressfolk, according to Roll Call’s annual ranking. The math, however, amounts to lowball estimates: On financial disclosure forms, lawmakers report in ranges ($1 million to $5 million, for example), so the totals…