The Crested Butte News, a successful independent newspaper in a small Rocky Mountain town, has come full circle and is once again owned by a chain.
Also in this issue: The North Coast Journal has been published in Arcata, Calif., for almost 18 years by Judy Hodgson, a journalist who believes in stirring the pot.
‘They both do not exist’
“They both do not exist.” — Wyoming Attorney General Patrick Crank, equating the federally protected Preble’s meadow jumping mouse with the mythical jackalope. Crank made the comparison at a congressional hearing on the mouse in Greeley, Colo., in September. U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., led the hearing. This article appeared in the print edition of…
The BLM chooses to say ‘yes’
John Leshy is correct when he states in your Sept. 4, 2006, article “When Can the BLM Say ‘No’?” that “It’s absolutely clear that the agencies have discretion (about offering leases).” The BLM’s attitude that it has “little authority to prevent drilling,” is the consequence of a self-imposed Bush administration policy not required by any…
Fight fire with fire
When Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., verbally attacked a Forest Service Hotshot crew in the Billings airport in July (“You did a piss-poor job. … didn’t do a goddamn thing but sit around and get paid $10,000.”), the Hotshots did the only thing federal employees can do: Instead of responding to Burns, they called back to…
Nuclear power is no silver bullet
Nuclear power cannot solve all our energy needs. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore thinks a greater amount of our power should come from nuclear energy. However, it’s unsuitable for anything beyond baseload demand because nuclear power plants cannot be easily turned on and off. There are ways around this, but they add considerably to the already…
The next boom: oil shale
Remnants of the nuclear frenzy that swept across the Colorado Plateau from the 1950s still scar the landscape, especially in the form of exploration roads carved into the wilderness. Bob Dawson’s image on the cover of your Sept. 4 issue reflects the fact that impacts on the built environment often fade more quickly than disruptions…
Enviros avoid the real problem
“Reborn” by Jonathan Thompson in your Sept. 4, 2006, issue beautifully displayed the intellectual dishonesty of the environmental movement, as exemplified by Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore. Neither friends nor enemies of the environment want to reduce demand by “talking about population control or conservation measures. …” Instead, they want to build nuclear power plants to…
Resist!
In response to your Sept. 4 story, “States crack down on illegal immigrants”: I care about the West. I don’t want to walk in a forest which sports two humans for every tree, or hike on an ocean beach that is solid human bodies — Coney Island, for instance. Resisting immigration seems to be the…
A tribal renaissance
If, when you think of Indian country, you think first of its particular heartaches — alcoholism, violence, poverty, and hopelessness — then read Blood Struggle, Charles Wilkinson’s inspiring account of Indians’ political and legal victories during the last fifty years. A catalog of Indian achievements rather than problems is rare, welcome, and a little unexpected,…
Dottie Fox, one of the greatest old broads
It’s never pleasant to read the obituary of someone you’ve met several times and admired for more years than you can remember. But the several obituaries of wilderness advocate Dottie Fox of Aspen, 86, who died Sept. 11, glowed with admiration for her joie de vivre and effectiveness. As reported by the Rocky Mountain News,…
What’s wrong with the EPA?
If you’re wondering why this nation’s environmental laws aren’t implemented coherently or consistently, grab David Schoenbrod’s latest, Saving Our Environment from Washington. From a Natural Resources Defense attorney turned Yale law professor, the book is part memoir, part manifesto. And considering the potentially boring topic, Schoenbrod does an excellent job of explaining how laws such…
Roadless returns!
On Sept. 19, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte reinstated protection for some 50 million acres of roadless national forest land. (Separate rules govern the roughly 9 million roadless acres of Alaska’s Tongass.) Laporte ruled that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act when, in 2005, it repealed President…
Big yellow taxi — in Duke City
At once meditative and profane, Robert Leonard’s Yellow Cab traces his after-dark odysseys as a University of New Mexico anthropology professor who moonlights behind the wheel of a taxi. Leonard makes us privy to the stream of confessions from the back seat, narrating them in a breezy, urban voice, with the world-weary persona of someone…
It’s shady in the Interior
The U.S. Interior Department’s top watchdog, Inspector General Earl Devaney, blasted the department before Congress on Sept. 13 for waiving billions of dollars in federal royalty payments from oil and gas companies. He’s also disgusted by the department’s refusal to address conflict-of-interest issues, specifically those including J. Steven Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist-turned deputy…
Half a Roan for gas, and half for everyone else
The BLM’s management plan for western Colorado’s Roan Plateau, released in Sept. 7, manages to upset everyone. The plan opens the plateau’s gas reserves to energy companies, irking environmentalists, but limits surface development to only half of the 34,758 acres on top of the plateau. The plateau, known for its wildlife and scenery, is believed…
Take that nuke waste and shove it
“We wanted to put a spike right through the heart of this project and this does it,” said Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, R, praising the Interior Department’s Sept. 7 rejection of the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe’s plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods on its reservation. The site, southwest of Salt Lake City, would have…
Free will flounders in the courts
Judges in Nevada and Montana threw out a handful of libertarian ballot measures in September. Montana State Judge Dirk Sandefur ruled that petition circulators engaged in a “pattern of fraud,” deceiving people into signing the petitions for a trio of ballot measures in that state. The measures sought to limit land-use regulations and taxes, and…
The longevity of place and race
Westerners, in general, live longer than other Americans, according to a recent study by the Harvard University Initiative for Global Health. Northern Plains residents live longest, but 29 of the 50 counties with the highest life expectancy are in the West — 16 in Colorado. Native Americans, however, aren’t as fortunate: Nationally, they have a…
Give us your poor, your uninsured…
Many Westerners live in poverty, but even more lack health insurance. U.S. Percentage below poverty level: 12.6 Percentage without health coverage: 15.7 New Mexico Percentage below poverty level: 17.9 Percentage without health coverage: 21.1 Arizona Percentage below poverty level: 15.2 Percentage without health coverage: 8.1 Montana Percentage below poverty level: 13.8 Percentage without health coverage:…
Stirring the pot
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: The North Coast Journal, published weekly in Arcata, Calif., for almost 18 years, features in-depth journalism with a strong arts and entertainment section. The local media scene: Two dailies, one printed in Humboldt County for many…
A paper with bite
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: The Taos Horse Fly is a 7-year-old monthly whose name says it all: Its stories sometimes leave bite marks. Local media scene: Dominated by the long-lived weekly Taos News, owned by the same company that owns…
News from the gas fields
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: Roughneck is a two-year-old monthly covering oil and gas in Sublette County, Wyo., the top natural gas producing county in the U.S. Local media scene: Two local weeklies, including the Pinedale Roundup, cover community news; Roughneck’s…
Undaunted muckraker
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. How many American journalists can claim that their reporting helped oust two presidents? Navajo Times reporter Marley Shebala can: Her tireless muckraking helped lead to the downfall — and eventual imprisonment — of Navajo Nation Chairman…
From the ground up
A staff walks out; a grassroots newspaper is born
Zine Roundup: Sweet simplicity
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Undaunted muckraker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Dan Price’s media empire is centered in a kind of hobbit hole in a meadow in Joseph, Ore., where his 2003 Toshiba photocopier prints 200 copies every two months of…
Homegrown news: Money can’t buy it
Note: this essay introduces several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. A hissing wind blew against the wavy glass of the single-pane window. My fingers pounded on the sticky keyboard. It was 2 in the morning. I’d given up drinking coffee a few hours earlier and was now mainlining,…
Zine Roundup: Gone fishing
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Undaunted muckraker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Named for the brown rubber boots with hefty soles popular among fishermen, the zine Xtra Tuf is a richly tinted window into the fishing industry’s turbulent culture. Its creator, Moe…
Leave only footprints, and turn the darn phone off
The other day on a national forest trail, we passed a lone hiker. Cell phone glued to her ear, chattering away, she stomped by us without the usual trail civility of at least a smile. Engrossed in the world at her ear, I doubt she even registered the beargrass blooming at her feet. Since cell…
Dear friends
HCN NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT It’s that time of year again, when we come to you on bended knee, asking for help keeping High Country News going. Unless you’ve given recently to our Research Fund, you should be receiving a letter soon. For comments from writer Jane Braxton Little about the importance of the Research Fund,…
Film: Lens of compassion
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. Philomath, Ore., nestled on the Coast Range’s eastern flanks, looks like an average logging town. On a Saturday afternoon, kids pushing BMX bikes scamper across the main street. American flags hang limp in the late summer…
Radio: Spice for the ears
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. It sounds as if a lone angel alighted on the head of a pin, and encountered — to her surprise — a choir of angelic cousins there. Of course, we know that angels like gathering in…
More Radio Waves
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Radio: Spice for the ears,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Connecting Communities Five Northern California stations used satellite technology to string together a temporary network in mid-July. The Seven Rivers Radio Network hosted a two-hour, live call-in…
Online: Web watchdog
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Radio: Spice for the ears,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Four years ago, Dave Frazier spent a whole summer in court, suing Boise over the city council’s decision to build an $18 million police station without putting…
Our Green Mountain
In Reno, Nev., there is a hole in the air where a hotel/casino once stood. Back in the 1980s, my wife and I sometimes stayed there. I stand across the street from it today, and I wonder where life goes. I gauge the approximate height of five or six stories, guess where a room would…
Online: No more talking heads
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Radio: Spice for the ears,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Jennifer Napier-Pearce, who runs the Salt Lake City-based podcast Inside Utah, calls audio recordings “the theatre of the mind.” Combine that with the “magic of the Internet,…
Heard around the West
COLORADO In the photo, it looks like a cozy den for hobbits, peeking out from underground with a hillside rolling right over its roof. But the builder of this “ultimate secure home” boasts that it can “withstand almost any natural or manmade disaster you can name,” including a nuclear blast and biological and chemical war.…
Waterblogged
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Water in the West is a bit like Tibetan Buddhism: Everybody claims to be interested in it, but few people have the patience to figure out what it’s about.…
The wet Net
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. John Orr created the “Coyote Gulch” blog in 2002 to follow Denver-area politics, but the following November, that topic converged with his other love — Colorado water. Voters were…
Sleepers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. If you’re a paper-and-staples kind of person, several magazines and newsletters provide good independent commentary on water, including the Water Education Foundation’s Western Water magazine, the University of Arizona’s…
The myth trafficker
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. DOUGLAS, Arizona — Keoki Skinner sits on a park bench under moonlight, talking quietly into his cell phone. There’s a rumor going around that a federal agent is involved with a drug trafficker, and Skinner wants…