Paonia, Colo., was a planned rest stop for visitors Helen Pohlig and Marilyn Rudolph, who were driving from Arizona to Helen’s home in St. Paul, Minn. “We purposefully chose a route that would take us through here,” said Helen, a lawyer and longtime subscriber. On their tour of HCN headquarters, she brought her dog Annie, […]
Communities
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Building a more effective environmental movement
The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism from the Spotted Owl to the Polar BearDouglas Bevington285 pages, softcover: $35. Island Press, 2009. In The Rebirth of Environmentalism, activist Douglas Bevington explores the relationship between large national organizations like the Sierra Club and small “grassroots biodiversity groups” like Northwest California’s Environmental Protection Information Center. Bevington describes the […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Crossing over
A city girl moves to the mountains for love
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Plus they never have to mow the lawn
The only thing missing in “Mobile Nation” was the real reason all those communal, neighborly, flag-waving, self-identified not-liberal RV settlers are so happy (HCN, 3/15/10). First, they don’t have to work any more. Second, there are no children around. And last, the government gives them a place to live for almost nothing. So much for […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Size matters?
I’m still laughing at one of the photos in “Mobile Nation” (HCN, 3/15/10)! Was that a bit of editorializing in the photo of the gentleman in his land-yacht watching the “male enhancement” commercial? Was the author trying to make some sort of Freudian connection between the size of a guy’s RV and his, uh … […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Skeptical of Calera
I have read several positive reports (including the one in HCN on March 15) about Calera Corporation’s presumed process that uses seawater or brine to sequester carbon dioxide, particularly from coal-fired power plants. Calera claims to produce a mixture of calcium and magnesium carbonates (limestone, dolomite, etc.) that can be used as a substitute for […]
Posted inApril 26, 2010: Nevada's Pot of Gold
Viva la Archives!
Budget cuts threaten California water’s institutional memory
Posted inWotr
The burbling air show of migrating snow geese
I was visiting Choteau, Mont., with my friend, Bill, when a cheery checkout clerk said, “I bet you’re here for the geese.” Our blank looks confirmed our out-of-towner status. “Snow geese,” she said. “They’re migrating north again now.” She told us how plump Arctic birds gather by the thousands in the wheat fields near her […]
Posted inBlog
EJ for Earth Day
I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try. – Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of […]
Posted inWotr
Warning: Water policy faces an age of limits
Change comes hard to Western water policy. The Prior Appropriation Doctrine, interstate compacts, groundwater law, the “law of the river” — all of these seem set in stone in the minds of the region’s policymakers. Of course, the West’s rivers aren’t bound by such a static existence. Indeed, they are changing in fundamental ways, opening […]
Posted inBlog
Out of tragedy, High Country News soldiers on
“1978, the year the Senate shortchanged Alaska?,” asked the cover headline of the Sept. 8 High Country News issue that year. The article outlined the Senate “horsetrading” over the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the bill that in 1980 ultimately created or expanded 15 of Alaska’s national parks and preserves. The article contained only […]
Posted inWotr
A scrappy community weekly hangs in there
These are challenging times in the newspaper industry, but from where I sit as editor and publisher of the tiny Silverton Standard & the Miner, high in the Colorado Rockies, things don’t seem all that bad. Well, at least not much worse than usual. This is the oldest newspaper in the western part of the […]
Posted inWotr
Idaho and the new spaghetti Western
President Barack Obama may have won the national health-care battle, but Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is still loaded for bear. He’s proud he was the first governor to sign into law a measure that requires the state attorney general to sue the federal government if it tries to make Idahoans buy health insurance. Idaho has […]
Posted inGoat
No s#%@w
One look at the Oregon landscape, and you wouldn’t suppose “squaw” is a dirty word. Roughly 130 geographic locations in the state are labeled with the S-word. S- creeks, S- mountains, S- lakes and S- peaks — it’s found all over the place (and not just in Oregon, as HCN has reported). This June, however, […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
On the river
As spring moves reluctantly into the West, thoughts turn to streams brimming with snowmelt. The Animas River, which winds through Durango, Colo., may be that community’s hottest flashpoint. For years, tension has been building between the river’s inner-tubers – a ragtag fleet of low-budget floaters — and just about everyone else, especially commercial rafters. It’s […]
Posted inGoat
Women writing the West
Over the weekend, I drove to Denver for The Association of Writers and Writing Program’s annual conference, which assumed a bit of a Western theme this year. Poets and writers overran the downtown convention center, sampling from a myriad of readings and panels. One of these focused on the challenges women writing west of the […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
The cyber-gasfield
Maybe you’re one of the millions who’ve discovered Facebook in recent years. You relish the deep connection to long-lost friends, and even neighbors, that only the Internet allows. Maybe you enjoy “friending” ex-lovers who wish you were dead, and high-school jocks who ignored you except to punch you out in the locker room. Or maybe […]
Posted inApril 12, 2010: The Butterfly Sting
Horses running wild
$118.2 millionBLM wild horse and burro program budget request, 2011 $2.5 millionU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf management budget request, 2011 (Northern Rockies) 26,600Number of wild horses and burros Western public lands can sustain (BLM estimate) 32,000Number of wild horses and burros now held in corrals and pastures (after being removed from public lands), up […]
Posted inBlog
A model for community environmental participation
“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.” – James Madison As any first year medical or law student can probably tell you, a patient facing an invasive medical treatment must first give the doctor her “informed consent” […]
Posted inWotr
Only 40 years ago, the Earth got its day
The upcoming 40th anniversary of Earth Day is a testament to Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin who conceived of the celebration during a 1969 tour of the West. Earth Day turned out to be a brilliant idea, but Nelson went on to accomplish even more, shaping environmental protections that many of us take […]