Monsoon season struck Paonia with a vengeance in the muggy final days of July. Beyond window-rattling thunder and heart-stopping lightning, the storms have brought deluges of rain, sending irrigation ditches flooding over their banks and washing out roads and driveways. Our flood of summer visitors through HQ has continued unabated, as well. High Country News […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Caveman of Southeast Alaska
From deep beneath the Tongass, Steve Lewis calls for conservation
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Tough justice, hard fate
Then Came the EveningBrian Hart272 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury USA, 2010. In Brian Hart’s debut novel, a Vietnam veteran, believing his wife died in the fire that destroyed their cabin, goes crazy with rage and remorse, and commits a crime that makes the reader gasp. Bandy, who’s also half-drunk at the time, ends up in jail, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Truth, lies and poetry
War DancesSherman Alexie209 pages, hardcover, $23.Grove Press, 2009. In the title story of War Dances, a World War II veteran tries — and fails — to glorify the dying moments of a fellow soldier. “I was thinking about making up something as beautiful as I could,” he tells the dead soldier’s grandson. “But I couldn’t […]
Posted inBlog
From prom queens to dam dialogue
“She kept us out of trouble,” is how former High Country News publisher Ed Marston describes the first intern to take up the post in Paonia. Mary Moran arrived in the fall of 1983, just a month after the organization moved from rural Wyoming to rural Colorado and Ed and Betsy Marston took over as […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
These boots were made for walking…
I appreciate Cherie Newman’s review of Joe Hutto’s The Light in High Places in the July 19, 2010, edition. However, Newman missed the key point. She quotes Hutto writing that “it is not the greed of multinational corporations with their vicious bulldozers, chain saws, and oil rigs” consuming the earth’s resources and polluting our environment, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
The upside of apathy
I realize that probably over 90 percent of Americans have this affliction called nature illiteracy and I think that it is just because they do not “connect.” They are busy power walking, driving at top speed in their isolation chambers, or roaring along in the dust of an ATV or even sliding over the snow. […]
Posted inWotr
When you bike in Boise, “STOP” means maybe
Boise, Idaho, one of the most liberal cities when it comes to bicycling, issued new rules of the road this June that basically said to both drivers and bicyclists: “Don’t be jerks.” The rules said drivers should make room for bikers as they pass them and not harass them, while cyclists should never ride recklessly […]
Posted inRange
The data story: How much? How many?
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Every agency that serves American Indians and Alaska Natives must answer these questions in order to fuel the decision-making process: How much will it cost? How many people are served? And, by the way, who is an Indian? None of the answers are easy. The demand for federal services is growing as […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
A vault, not a souvenir shop
In the July 19, 2010, issue, HCN included a sidebar article entitled “How to Return a Pot.” There is, however, no legal process for returning artifacts taken from public lands. We often receive calls from people who have artifacts and want to return them. We can give your readers several reasons not to ever place […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Summer blizzard
Wonderful things are everywhere — but you have to pay attention in order to see them.
Posted inBlog
Tribe denies trash
Editors Note: This piece is cross posted from Mother Earth Journal, where reporter Terri Hansen writes about indigenous people and the environment. SPOKANE, Wash.—At the last minute, the Yakama Nation blocked a bid by Hawaii to ship their household garbage to a landfill that sits amid their ancestral lands in south central Washington State. U.S. […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Crime crackdown in Indian Country
A federal effort to improve public safety on reservations gets a rocky start
Posted inWotr
Remembering Trixie at county fair time
Memories of a Wyoming barrel racer and a moment in the winner’s circle
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Discovery and recovery in a Mojave casino town
Going Through GhostsMary Sojourner296 pages, softcover: $25.University of Nevada Press, 2010. Shadows inhabit every corner of Mary Sojourner’s newest novel, Going Through Ghosts — spirits of ancestors and deceased friends, fragments of characters’ souls. The settings — casino coffee shops, riverside benches, buses — are places a Westerner will recognize as haunts of the lonely […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Of rivers, boats and baseball umpires
Another Waythe River Has:Taut True Talesfrom the NorthwestRobin Cody208 pages, softcover: $18.95.Oregon State University Press, 2010. Robin Cody inspired me to buy a kayak. A confirmed landlubber, it didn’t occur to me to become familiar with my local waterways until I read Cody’s eclectic collection of essays, Another Way the River Has: Taut True Tales […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Private equity not prudent for tribes
“The Ute Paradox” was well-written and thoroughly researched (HCN, 7/19/10). However, I have devoted 22 years of my working life to the Southern Utes’ success, and must respectfully disagree with some of Jonathan Thompson’s conclusions. The article states that “Mr. Jurrius … brought capital from a huge private equity firm with which the tribe was […]
Posted inAugust 2, 2010: The Fiery Touch
Some notable arson wildfire cases in the West
Sidebar to “The Fiery Touch”