CALIFORNIA Never at a loss for novel ideas, the animal rights folks at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, want the mayor of San Francisco and other city leaders to change the name of the city’s Tenderloin District to the “Tempeh District.” Tempeh, for those who prefer hamburgers and are unfamiliar with it, […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Disaster traveling is my specialty
People who know me refuse to travel with me. I don’t understand this. I think I am the perfect travel companion — curious, unflappable, knowledgeable, cheerful, seasoned, undemanding, prepared. But friends claim that I don’t go on vacations; I go on disasters. People travel for a lot of reasons — to lounge around and do […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Bridging American Indian students’ scientific achievement gap
Michael Ceballos’ grandfather dropped out of school at 13 to help support his family. He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad, first laying track, then as a foreman. When he retired, his grandchildren thought he might spend his pension and bonus on a new car. Instead, he enrolled in college. Today, his grandson, a genial […]
Posted inGoat
Fun with (census) numbers
I was over in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley this weekend, drinking a beer and soaking up the spring sunshine, when I noticed a headline — front page, above the fold — blaring from a newspaper box on the sidewalk: HISPANIC POPULATION GROWS. Oh c’mon, I thought, is this really news? No, it isn’t. But then […]
Posted inRange
What’s in a code name?
Although we’ve seen ample news coverage of the American raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, one question persists. Did the code name “Geronimo” refer to the overall operation or just to bin Laden? Discussing the exact meaning of a military code name might seem like an arcane pursuit, but the use of “Geronimo” […]
Posted inRange
Tribes need foreign policies
Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is trying to change the national debate about the deficit, the role of government and the impact of those policies on the day-to-day economy. “There are principled ways of cutting the deficit … putting Americans back to work,” the Columbia University professor recently said in a speech, as quoted in […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
An epic tale of the Northwest: A review of West of Here
West of HereJonathan Evison496 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. Once home to the Siwash and Klallam tribes, then to frontiersmen and a Utopian community, the fictional town of Port Bonita, Wash., provides a fertile backdrop for Jonathan Evison’s second novel, West of Here. Alternating between the late 19th century and the year 2006, Evison reveals […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
Good-enough mothers: A review of Wrecker
WreckerSummer Wood304 pages, hardcover: $20.Bloomsbury USA, 2011. In her second novel, Wrecker, New Mexico author Summer Wood draws on her personal experience as a foster parent. Wrecker is a bruiser of a boy who “seemed to need to feel his body collide with the physical world to know he existed.” He’s born and mostly raised […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
“Shoot locally”
In late March, High Country News was one of the sponsors of our hometown’s inaugural Paonia Film Festival. Twenty-two short films by western Colorado filmmakers were presented at the Paradise Theatre, including HCN Online Editor Stephanie Paige Ogburn‘s stop-motion animation about boots in love. The Audience Choice award for “Most Environmentally Conscious” film — a […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
What’s in a name?
The West of yore must have been a miserable, filthy place, with lonesome settlers teetering precariously atop a stack of long odds. Or so you might conclude after surfing the U.S. Geological Survey’s database of place and landform names. The region certainly has a corner on Disappointments, with 46 of the nation’s 53 references falling […]
Posted inBlog
EJ activist Ed Abbey?
Spring semester is winding down, and the students in my course Rhetoric of the Environmental Movement are reading Edward Abbey’s 1968 memoir, Desert Solitaire. After having duly investigated news reports, scientific studies, websites, and environmental impact statements, they appreciate Abbey’s lively and eccentric voice and his vivid descriptions of the landscape of Arches National Park. […]
Posted inGoat
The Visual West
I like how our local cemetery, nestled in the shoulder of a small hill above town, is shaped by both natural and human forces. Among the varied stones and markers of the dead and a scattering of native juniper trees and planted arborvitae, I will usually spot a small herd of mule deer and loose […]
Posted inWotr
Remember the mines before China buys them all
In 1911, Thomas Edison received an odd gift from some Western mining executives: a cubic foot of solid copper. The aging inventor joked that the 486-pound cube might make a nice paperweight. He kept it on display at his New Jersey laboratory, a shiny reminder that the light bulb that made him rich and famous […]
Posted inWotr
The West’s dams share a dirty secret
Soon after I moved to Colorado from the humid Midwest 20 years ago, I learned that a reservoir is not a lake. My family and I were eager to test our new canoe on the local reservoir, which I’d driven by a month earlier. Its dark waters lapped against a thick conifer forest. I couldn’t […]
Posted inApril 18, 2011: Muddy Waters
The sign maker
When you arrive in town, anywhere in Stehekin, his signs are the first thing you see. On slabs of wood chainsaw-ripped and elegantly routed, in rustic block print or flowing cursive, Phil’s signs are never stenciled, never sloppy. They mark the post office, the school, the bakery. They mark trailheads and trail junctions. They are, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Sign up now, get free gun.”
MONTANA What’s next — offering a free derringer with every mammogram or a free Uzi with the purchase of a La-Z-Boy? You just might see it happen, because guns sell. The managers of a Radio Shack in Hamilton, Mont., found that out after they placed a giant sign above their Super Store: “Protect yourself with […]
Posted inWotr
Journeys we take at home
Every day, I hear the same thing from parents whose children have grown up. “Enjoy it while you can,” they tell me. “It goes so fast.” With a 3-year-old boy, Elias, who consistently wakes up in the middle of the night “needing sumfin” and a 6-year-old girl, Willa, who also wakes up frequently, saying “I […]
Posted inGoat
Sublime tourist trap or logistical nightmare?
Take a moment to consider the greats: The world’s largest ketchup bottle in Collinsville, Illinois. (Photo courtesy of Max Stahl) Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska. (Photo courtesy of Ian, a.k.a. Sandstep).
Posted inFebruary 1, 2010: 'The environment ... is where we live'
The SWOP letter
Signed by 100 people of color, charging racism in the environmental movement
Posted inWotr
The wall along our southern border is a joke
In the minds of many Americans, the U.S. border with Mexico has become the heart of darkness, a place wracked with violence and beyond the reach of the law. Politicians play up these fears with legislation such as the bill introduced last month by California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, which would require hundreds of miles […]