Good-bye, for a while
High Country News takes its semi-annual vacation, skipping the July 11 issue. It will return with the July 25 issue. The idea is to give readers a chance to catch up on the issues that have been piling up in bathrooms and on espresso tables.
Pun-ishing address change
There is nothing more boring than an address change card, unless it comes from the Mineral Policy Center, with an announcement that the organization “has moved to new digs’ and an invitation to “drop by and take a lode off your feet.” MPC’s address is routine, but its telephone number is 202/887-1872.
Visitors
Law professor Joe Feller of Arizona State University stopped by on his way from Comb Wash, Utah, to Boulder, Colo., where he will summer as a guest of the Land and Water Fund of the Rockies. Joe, who has attracted ranchers’ attention with his work on affected interests, says he is leaving grazing for the moment, to work on forest issues.
Subscriber Gary Williams of Eden, Utah, came by with his friend, Jim Hassell of Glenwood Springs, Colo. They were in Paonia for a wedding.
Other recent visitors were Stephen Ahearn, who manages Arizona’s energy office in Phoenix; Charles Kubert of Chicago, who was traveling between Aspen and Telluride; Steven Martin from Arcata, Calif., who is with Humboldt State University’s natural resources department; Mary Hamilton and Lee Travenner from Missoula, Mont. Lee is a consultant on small hydropower projects.
Transitions
High Country News board member Judy Donald has left her position as executive director of the Beldon Fund in Washington, D.C., to move to Wallingford, Conn. Judy was with Beldon for 12 years. Her place has been taken by Diane Ives.
Congratulations to High Country News board member Tom France, an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula, Mont., on his marriage to Lucy Rudbach at the Teller Wildlife Refuge on June 18. By extraordinary coincidence, the wedding coincided with the spring meeting of the board of High Country News in Missoula. Although Tom begged off the day-long meeting, due to an afternoon wedding ceremony, the board did adjourn in time to catch the evening reception.
Corrections
The staff at Wildlife Damage Review says we reversed some numbers on their address. The correct address is Box 85218, Tucson, AZ 85754. They also say there is a new analysis of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Animal Damage Control Program, written by economist Randal O’Toole. You can reach the Review at 602/884-0883.
Writer Jon Christensen tells us Kennecott Corp. makes $90-$100 million a year. The figure we gave in a lead story May 30 – $400 to $600 million – is for parent company RTZ.
Summer interns
New intern Bob Wilson recently graduated from Colorado College in Colorado Springs with majors in geology and English. He spent previous summers working for the Park Service in Alaska and Washington as a backcountry ranger. He enjoyed the midnight sun in Alaska, but doesn’t miss the swarms of mosquitoes. Geology research last summer took him to northern Greece, where he studied stream erosion near archaeological sites and developed a lust for Greek food.
Born and raised in Albuquerque, N.M., Bob intends to stay in the West. “Many of my friends from college are traveling or looking for jobs in cities,” he says. This fall he wants to keep writing and find a “meaningful, paying job” in Colorado.
From a place she calls both bizarre and beautiful comes our newest intern, Utahn Pam Ostermiller. Pam grew up in Spring Lake, a town of about 300 close to Provo.
After recently graduating with a degree in print journalism from Utah State University in Logan, she came to Paonia to soak up as much as possible about environmental reporting.
Pam finds great pleasure in watching birds, foreign and cult films, and in wandering the Utah deserts.
After leaving HCN in the fall, she plans a tour of the southern United States, starting in a sea kayak along the Baja Peninsula.
In the spring, she hopes to join the Peace Corps with her husband, Jeff.
Donica Mensing, a new summer intern at HCN’s Great Basin bureau in Nevada, traces her Western heritage through four generations of mining, ranching and suburbanization. Donica’s great-grandfather mined gold in Bodie, Calif., and her grandfather grew up on a cattle ranch on an Indian reservation. Donica grew up in the suburbs of California.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree in science, technology and public policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has worked for the National Park Service, the Forest Service, environmental planning firms, and conservation groups. Last year, Donica says, she and her geographer husband and their three children “fled” the now tarnished Golden State for the “real West” of Nevada. This fall, Donica will pursue another master’s degree in a new environmental journalism program at the University of Nevada, Reno.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dear Friends.
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