People are desperate for medical care in the West’s inner cities and rural areas.
Communities
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
From Tuscany to the Mohave
A war bride’s journey West
Posted inGoat
Classroom innovation
In eastern Idaho, one small rural school recently gained international fame. In late July, the Teton Valley Community School of Victor, Idaho, was recognized as one of eight finalists in the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom. The competition, sponsored by Architecture for Humanity, received 400 submissions from 65 countries. Finalists included two other U.S. teams […]
Posted inRange
This Week’s HCN Reader Photo
This week’s reader photo comes from Flickr contributor T. R. Baker, and features Nevada, in black and white. You can add your photos to HCN’s Flickr photo pool. We’ll pick one to feature each week on our Web site. Don’t forget to tag them “highcountrynews.” You can also check out last week’s selected reader photo […]
Posted inRange
Birdwatching in the desert
Lightning flares in the bruised afternoon sky over the Arizona-New Mexico line. Wind scrapes across the grey-green flats from the west, flinging a fistful of gray birds through the air. Purple rags of cloud stream ahead of the storm. A chill strikes the desert. Thunder claps. I take cover under the overhung cut bank of […]
Posted inRange
The health care debate comes home
If you pay attention at all to the network news, you’re no doubt aware of controversy surrounding August Recess town hall meetings which Members of Congress have been conducting in their districts. The news reports I’ve seen show folks making angry accusations and claiming that aspects of health care bills which have been moving forward […]
Posted inGoat
Clash along the Columbia
Ten simple words. For the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in western Oregon, ten words introduced into an existing law would restore their relationship with the land upon which their ancestors lived. Other tribes, however, consider the move risky. Last month, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) introduced a bill in Congress that would add the Grand […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Brushed aside
Washington’s floral greens industry falters as beleaguered harvesters leave
Posted inWotr
Off the road again
Jack Kerouac wrote his entire novel “On the Road” in just three weeks. He used a continuous roll of teletype paper, as if pausing to put in a new sheet of paper would have caused a pile-up on his imagination’s highway. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said that Kerouac provided us with “a vision of America seen from […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
The spirit of the place
The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in MontanaRick Bass384 pages, softcover: $26.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. The Yaak Valley in the northwestern corner of Montana is one of the wildest places in the continental United States, home to grizzly bears and mountain lions, wolverine and elk. Nature writer Rick Bass, who lives there, has devoted […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
But is it any good?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “From Corn to Cabernet.” Colorado wines are higher in acid than the California wines that Westerners are most familiar with. They bear more resemblance to the wines of central mountainous Europe, such as Austria and northern Italy, than to West Coast wines, says Kansas […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Desperate people
The Mechanics of Falling and Other StoriesCatherine Brady227 pages, hardcover: $25.University of Nevada Press, 2009. In 11 deftly rendered short stories, Catherine Brady’s latest book, The Mechanics of Falling, introduces us to fragile people whose precarious lives are unraveling. Most of the book takes place in California, especially in and around San Francisco with its […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
From Corn to Cabernet
A burgeoning wine industry takes Colorado agriculture uptown
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Hikers and bikers
Summer brings many visitors our way. Rod Vanderwall of Boulder, Colo., stopped by our Paonia office to renew his subscription and pick up a snazzy HCN T-shirt on his way to Cortez in southern Colorado, where he’ll be reviewing the energy conservation needs of a community college. As head of energy management for the Office […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Meet the makers
Please wait while the player loads. Note: you must have javascript enabled and the Adobe Flash Player installed. Read more about Colorado wine in our recent feature, But is it any good? This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Meet the makers.
Posted inGoat
Obama in Grand Junction
Promoting his health care package, President Obama will appear Saturday, August 15 in Grand Junction, Colorado, where some of Western Colorado’s angry natives are primed — by right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck and others — to vent their opposition, not just to Obama’s health care proposal but to his presidency as a whole. Some […]
Posted inGoat
A culture of violence
On July 12, a gang member brutally attacked a female police officer on the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The officer was forced to shoot the suspect and is now in hiding with her family, said John Mousseau, chairman of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council, at a hearing in D.C. last month. […]
Posted inRange
On the upper Clark Fork River
Summer is in full swing on the Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch—the birds are chirping, the mosquitoes are plentiful, the hay is cut, and the cattle are grazing. Since hiring on in June as the Clark Fork Coalition’s Ranchlands Program Manager, I’ve had a chance to get a feel for the day-to-day operation of the ranch, […]
Posted inAugust 17, 2009: From Corn to Cabernet
Cigarette wars
Northwest Indians want no taxation in their sovereign nations
Posted inGoat
West Nile figures trickling in
The Centers for Disease Control say that only 35 cases of the West Nile virus have so far been reported in the United States this year, but the season is just getting started: late summer and early fall are the times when most infections occur. Of the 35 cases, 19 are in the West and […]