Anyone reading about the Tejon Ranch — California’s largest contiguous private property — has probably heard about the three controversial development projects: Tejon Industrial Park, the Tejon Mountain Village and the Centennial Planned Community. But have you heard about the Tejon Golf and Hunting Resort, or maybe the Whitewolf Village and Shopping Center? People haven’t […]
California
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
The People of the Sea
California’s Salton Sea could dry up and die, or be fixed and developed. Either way, its renegades, recluses, ruffians and retirees will lose.
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
The Chaparralian
California’s raging fires fuel one man’s fight for the much-maligned “elfin forest”
Posted inApril 16, 2007: Phoenix Falling?
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA There’s nothing like a bunch of twitchy-tailed rodents to annoy some people. The squirrel population in a Santa Monica park has mushroomed to 1,000, even though the city has tried poison and gassing to knock down the numbers and reduce any risk of the animals spreading disease. But nothing slows the animals’ reproduction rate […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Excremental gains?
A stink over ‘sludge’ raises larger questions
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
River Redux
Thanks to a historic and grudging compromise, water and salmon head back to the San Joaquin River, six decades after they were taken out.
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
State of Jefferson: A place apart
Name Brian Petersen Age 40 Vocation Entrepreneur: Runs a local car wash, fabricates signs, grinds stumps, manufactures plastic trays for bed-bound laptop users, and silk-screens T-shirts for local soccer teams. He recently bought a $30,000 laser-engraver whose commercial potential, he says, is untapped; he’s still dreaming up ways to use it. Known for Promoting the […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
On the ballot: Will Californians vote to build an off-ramp from the oil highway?
Californians will find more than a dozen initiatives on their ballot this Nov. 7, including one aimed at helping them kick the oil habit. Proposition 87 would raise $4 billion over 10 years for the California Energy Alternatives Program Authority by taxing oil produced in the state. Part of an effort to reduce oil consumption […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
What we love will save us
In troubled political times, go to the mountains.
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
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 […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
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 […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Unpaved with good intentions
New easements keep farmland in production despite spiraling property values
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Heard around the West
OREGON Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne recently visited a factory that makes luxury recreational vehicles, those behemoths that look like city buses and sport monikers like Inspire, Allure and Intrigue. In a press release, Country Coach Inc. president Jay Howard said he was pleased with the secretary’s support for his company’s high-end mobile homes, and added […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
The merry — and meditative — farmer
In Blithe Tomato, California farmer Mike Madison writes about whatever strikes his fancy: neighborhood dogs, old tractors, and what it’s like to tangle with the local gophers for control of his tulips and olive trees. (He admits to losing 25 percent of his net income to the pests.) Madison’s collection of short essays makes it […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA What “whiskered blob of blubber” terrorizes swimmers, raids fishing nets and once in a while shoves people off boats? A sea lion is the answer, reports the Los Angeles Times, in its vivid story of a horde of “pit bulls with flippers” muscling their way into Newport Beach for the summer — again. Last […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The wild, wild weather
Blame it on climate change or the vagaries of nature, but whatever the cause, weather in the West has been extreme — and wacky. The Southwest has become a tinderbox, while Northwesterners are sopping wet. WASHINGTON Average yearly moisture: 37.02 in.* Moisture June ‘05-May ‘06: 41.53 in. Nine consecutive days of downpour hit western Washington […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Tribes look to cash in with ‘tree-market’ environmentalism
Carbon banking could help restore forests and fight global warming
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
The life of an enigmatic seabird
One of the great North American ornithological mysteries in recent history was solved not by a scientist or a birder, but by a tree-trimmer. Working in an ancient Douglas fir in California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Hoyt Foster began to lop off a limb 148 feet above ground when suddenly he was confronted by […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA Governing magazine calls Vernon, Calif., “the strangest town in America.” Although 44,000 people work there, only 93 people actually live in the tiny Los Angeles suburb; when election time rolls around, 60 people show up to vote. The Los Angeles Times wrote an exposé of the unusual town, which behaves more like a private […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Pete McCloskey rides again
In February, a new vendor appeared at the weekly farmers’ market in this southern Bay Area town. Pete McCloskey, a soft-spoken 78-year-old farmer with a thatch of unruly gray hair, stood before a folding table flanked by bags of organic oranges. But McCloskey wasn’t pushing fresh fruit; he was hawking his homegrown politics. Former Rep. […]