“Burn him, burn him, BURN HIM!”
Communities
Back to the future: Public Health hospitals
Seattle-based Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, will move into its new headquarters near Lake Union next year. Then Amazon will leave an old Art Deco building, once known as the U.S. Marine Hospital. What if we took this empty building and turned it into a hospital? What if we staffed it with federal employees? […]
A life unwound
Blame By Michelle Huneven 304 pages, hardcover: $25.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Patsy MacLemoore is a hard-partying 28-year-old who managed to earn a Ph.D. from Berkeley but drank herself out of the running for the most prestigious jobs, landing at a middling college in Pasadena, Calif. It’s the spring of 1981 in Michelle Huneven’s latest […]
Book lust, Western-style
This fall looks to be one of the best in a while for new book releases. 2008 was a disastrous year for the publishing industry (as it was for many others), and publishers are now hoping for redemption with a strong fall lineup. Big-hit writers like Pat Conroy, J.M. Coetzee, Alice Munro, Wally Lamb, Richard […]
Bordering on injustice
A Glass of WaterJimmy Santiago Baca240 pages, hardcover: $23.Grove Press, 2009. The largest kindnesses sometimes come in the smallest forms. The title of Jimmy Santiago Baca’s first novel, A Glass of Water, is a nod to one such kindness. “Thirst (is) master,” he writes of the parching conditions migrant farmworkers endure. Baca, an Apache/Chicano memoirist, […]
Confronting life’s essentials
Every so often, I long to relocate to a metropolis far from my sleepy Oregon hometown and my third of an acre of Douglas firs and screech owls. “Oh, Melissa,” chides a friend used to these yearnings. “Just take a vacation and move your couch.” The desire for change entices us. Those who live in […]
Why some men are the way they are
Nine Ten AgainPhil Condon200 pages, softcover: $17.Elixir Press, 2009. Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want ItMaile Meloy240 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Riverhead, 2009. Where The Money WentKevin Canty208 pages, hardcover: $25.Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009. Three recent books of short stories feature complex but credible characters in relationships tingling with tension. Even as they play on […]
Indian Country & health care reform
Will ‘poor old grandma’ redefine this debate? You hear a lot about grandma now that Congress is back to work on health care reform legislation. “Poor old grandma” is a reason opponents say they will fight health care reform. Grandma will lose services, her Medicare will be less than it is, and some bureaucrat far […]
The Cheney International Center
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne donated about $3.5 million to the University of Wyoming, and in return UW named a 20,000-square-foot center in Cheney’s honor. The Cheney International Center will house the university’s international programs, which include the study of global economic systems, international culture and social issues, international development and […]
Timothy Egan’s Western odyssey
A talk with the author of five books about the West
Victorious in Victor
Students and teachers at the Teton Valley Community School in Victor, Idaho, are heading back to school with a new spring in their step. That’s because their design won the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom–a competition hosted by Architecture for Humanity, selected from more than 400 qualified entries from over 65 countries, which I blogged […]
Coming home to the cosmos
A wandering meteor-chaser puts down roots
Medic!
Picture yourself on the front lines of a massive wildfire — soot smeared into the creases of your face, your clothes stiff and itchy with days-old sweat, your palms blistered from grubbing a fire line through duff and brush with a Pulaski. What dangers might you face? Falling snags? A fire sweeping uphill faster than […]
A conversation with Michelle Nijhuis
Photos and an interview with the author of “Township 13 South, Range 92 West, Section 35”
Township 13 South, Range 92 West, Section 35
A home of mysteries and restless souls
Obama’s speech to students
Whipped up by right-wing talk shows, conservatives are criticizing President Obama’s back-to-school speech — which will “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning,” according to the U.S. Department of Education — as “indoctrination.” The Associated Press reports that: Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna requested additional information […]
Audio: Where the buffalo roam
Josh Zaffos talks about the Lakota reclaiming their grassland on the Pine Ridge Reservation
A new land grab
The Oglala Sioux are on a path to reclaim their territory and their culture
Ray Ring’s “Affirmative actions”
In his recent HCN report “Affirmative Actions” (August 17 edition), Ray Ring makes this statement: Obama’s array of appointees mirrors the percentages of blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans in our society. More than anything, these three controversial appointments highlight the (environmental) movement’s chronic failure to recruit minorities into its top echelon. Over almost 40 years […]
