SUMMER BREAK HCN staff will be taking some much-needed time off during the last two weeks of June. We’ll be enjoying our families and praying for rainstorms. Look for the next issue of HCN to reach you around July 24. WELCOME, ABBIE AND JESSICA Two new faces have recently appeared in the HCN office. Abbie […]
Colorado
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
The Latest Bounce
Asbestos victims in Libby, Mont., can now qualify for Social Security disability benefits. In late May, the Social Security Administration, under the prodding of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., issued a new ruling that allows victims of tremolite asbestos to receive disability benefits. More than 1,500 Libby area residents suffer from exposure to tremolite asbestos, the […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
The noisy democracy of the West
The problem seems unavoidable: Historian Peter Decker wants to write about what he knows and loves, his adopted home in rural Ouray County, Colo. But his passionate prose is sure to spark more visits from outsiders, perhaps helping to destroy the very isolation that he cherishes. The first edition of Old Fences, New Neighbors appeared […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Dear friends
CHANGES AT HCN High Country News is searching for its next editor in chief, following Editor Greg Hanscom’s announcement that he’ll be leaving us at the end of the year, after 10 years with the organization. HCN’s former associate editor, Matt Jenkins, apparently got lost en route to California, where he was planning to set […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
On a wing and a prayer
Gunnison grouse must fend for survival without help of Endangered Species Act
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
‘Miss Fish Hatchery’
Name Jenn Logan Vocation Wildlife conservation biologist Age 33 Home Base Alamosa, Colorado Known for Her efforts to protect and save endangered fish She says “I love the challenge of persuading a person to care about suckers or toads.” The very walls were chirping: There were crickets in every crack and cupboard of Jenn Logan’s […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Dear friends
WELCOME, NEW INTERNS Having worked as a bicycle messenger, Wall Street broker, jeweler, car detailer and welder, Allison Gerfin is ready to try her hand at something new: an internship at High Country News. Allison wandered between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts for a number of years, from New York City to Portland, Ore., […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Dust and Snow
High in the snowy San Juan Mountains, tiny particles have big implications
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
Dear friends
WELCOME, CARMELLA Carmella Hensyel has joined HCN’s marketing department. Carmella worked most recently as marketing and sales director for Scenic Mesa Ranch in nearby Hotchkiss, which offers guided hunting and fishing. When the ranch began raising bison, Carmella helped develop and promote products ranging from buffalo meat to leather furniture: “It was extremely important to […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Dear friends
VISITORS Katie Lee, the grande dame of Western folksingers, river runners and environmentalists, graced us in early April with her merry grin and insouciant manner. She’s been updating her 1998 elegy to Glen Canyon, All My Rivers Are Gone, and says a new edition will be published soon (HCN, 12/21/98: A river rat remembers). Katie […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Norton eases road claims
In a parting gesture last month, outgoing Interior Secretary Gale Norton opened the door for counties and states to claim control of roads crossing federal lands managed by her department. Revised Statute 2477, enacted in 1866, allowed states and counties to construct highways across public land (HCN, 12/20/04: The road to nowhere). Although the act was […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
Dear friends
LOCAL GRASSROOTS ACTION WSERC (“wuh-serk”), this valley’s local environmental group, has been called many things, including, of course, berserk. For a small group started around a kitchen table, the Western Slope Environmental Resource Council has accomplished a lot in its 29 years: It stopped a major powerline through the valley, convinced local coal companies to […]
Posted inApril 3, 2006: Land of Disenchantment
Dear friends
HCN EDITOR WINS AWARDS FOR SILVERTON PAPER Congratulations to new Associate Editor Jonathan Thompson, who recently took home seven awards from the 2005 Colorado Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest for work he did while publishing and editing the Silverton Standard & the Miner. Jonathan won first or second place in several categories, including feature and […]
Posted inApril 3, 2006: Land of Disenchantment
Norton Departs
A look at Interior’s counterrevolution — and its unintended consequences
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Dear friends
WE’VE COME A LONG WAY … Pick up a pre-2003 copy of High Country News, and you might find it hard to believe that you’re looking at the same publication. It was in ’03 that we ditched the black-and-white, pick-it-up-for-a-quarter-at-the-local-diner design that had been the paper’s signature since its founding in 1970. We shrank the […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Painting for progress
The call of the wilderness sounded more like a holler to Joan Hoffmann in 1963. At 13, already a headstrong artist and budding environmentalist, she was determined to go backpacking with the Sierra Club. Neither her urban family of Southern California golfers, nor the fact that she had to sew her own sleeping bag, could […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
Is everyone a Realtor?
Realtors are everywhere in the West these days — including the seats of power
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
The Latest Bounce
Rural Nevadans may ask for a little federal help in an epic water fight. Las Vegas is moving forward with a controversial plan to pump groundwater from beneath the Great Basin (HCN, 9/19/05: Squeezing Water from a Stone). Now, some citizens in rural White Pine County are looking to curtail that plan by asking their […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Dear friends
NEW BLOG ON THE BLOCK A new online experiment for HCN, or the last best place for a nuclear waste dump … you decide. We’ve got our own blog now, where Paolo Bacigalupi, our Web editor, comments daily about what’s happening in the West. Check it out at http://blog.hcn.org/goat and send comments, tips and suggestions […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Heard around the West
COLORADO The sex-change doctor who created an unusual kind of economic development for the former coal-mining town of Trinidad, Colo., died last month at the age of 82. Stanley Biber began operating on men who wanted to be women in 1969, and over a 34-year span, according to an obituary in the New York Times, […]