If America is the land of beckoning opportunity, Mexico is the land of bargain operations — and cheap dental care, and sensibly-priced treatments for chronic illness. At least, that’s what Mexico is to about a million Californians each year. A group of researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles recently added another scuff […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Bring on the chickens
There is nothing funnier than a hen running. She clucks so seriously, leaning so far forward, wings spread out, moving that wide load on quick, skinny legs. I know chickens are getting trendy these days, but the main reason I keep yard chickens is for the laughs. My daughter was a colicky baby, and for […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
It’s picturesque, preserve it!
In the western Colorado resort town of Crested Butte, the debate over housing regulations centers more on the small stuff in people’s backyards — those picturesque sheds, old-time outhouses and even falling-down chicken coops. The town council recently passed a law protecting all of it — no matter how dilapidated — since many outbuildings in […]
Posted inWotr
The movie-magic West rides again
This time of year, you’re bound to see photos of ranchers branding cattle, along with all those newspaper pictures of graduations and proms. And why not? A photographer can find a picture waiting everywhere, of neighbors helping neighbors, handsome cowboy types with spurs and coiled lariats, little kids wearing Wranglers and big hats. There’s smoke […]
Posted inGoat
False Claims Virus on the loose!
All humans like to believe their community, region or country is special. This has led to countless specious claims to greatness based on size: the tallest flag pole, the deepest canyon, the highest waterfall, the oldest building….and so forth. Some of these claims are, of course, true; but the vast majority of them are not. […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Time to breathe
Stargazing and geology satisfy the spiritual needs of a Utah writer and teacher
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Paddling toward shore
Northwestern tribe takes a new/old approach to stemming the Native health care crisis
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
The bizarre intersection of humanity and nature
Rancho WeirdoLaura Chester212 pages, softcover, $18.00.Bootstrap Press, 2008. The cover of Laura Chester’s Rancho Weirdo features a cartoon of an armless human bound in a black sheath, banging its bloody head against a boulder. The image could be a metaphor for the stories in this collection — tales in which middle-class people, wrapped in conflicts […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
With pipedreams for plumbing
The environmentalist who boasted that his new house would be the “greenest home in North America” is running into a few problems. For one thing, Ronald Abramson, the chief executive officer of a renewable energy company called NextGen Energy Partners, chose to build his 13,000-square-foot home in Boulder County, Colo., which prides itself on its […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
It’s (really) not about the bike
A free weekly out of Salida, Colo., called Base Camp posts an unusual mission statement for a publication touting the outdoors and all the fun you can have skiing, biking and hiking. Editor Jim Williams says, “It’s easy to think we need this or that expensive, high-tech apparati to just go have fun.” But often, […]
Posted inGoat
The “Bennett Thaw”, at last
Last week, President Obama signed legislation putting an end to a time warp in Indian land. For more than 40 years, Navajos and Hopi living near Tuba City, Ariz., had been prohibited from building new roads or new homes. Nor could they improve existing homes, or even install electricity and running water when those services […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
Open season on white males?
In many ways, the perspective piece “Last Rites and Forgotten Landscapes” by Laura Paskus was profoundly moving. She mourns the deaths of these women and justifiably decries investigators for labeling them as prostitutes even before the bodies were identified (HCN, 4/13/09). However, Paskus goes too far when she pointedly casts men as the perpetrators of […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
New urbanists
Regarding your recent story “The Growth Machine is Broken”: The real estate bust is the best thing to happen to the Sonoran Desert, although fears that the bulldozers will be on the crawl again in a few years are legitimate (HCN, 4/27/09). Yet I believe important changes are taking place that were not mentioned in […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
The rest of the story
Terray Sylvester’s Uncommon Westerner profile of the legendary Harold Klieforth alludes only obliquely to Dr. Klieforth’s contributions to the meteorology of mountain lee waves, and the awe-inspiring Sierra wave in particular (HCN, 4/27/09). Dr. Klieforth’s knowledge of the airflow over the Sierra Nevada is unequalled, both from a lifetime of research and from personal experience […]
Posted inGoat
John Sutter’s paramour was named Manuiki
Native American sovereignty, trans-Pacific tribal ties, an intriguing new twist to the Gold Rush and centuries-old gossip about John Sutter’s love life: all that in a surprising article that recently ran in the Sacramento Bee. It’s a must-read for anyone who gets a kick out of learning that western history is more complicated than most […]
Posted inMay 18, 2009: The Rise of the Minotaur
The Rise of the Minotaur
Bull riding explodes from its Western roots into a modern spectacle
Posted inGoat
Dancing to the Tohono O’odham polka
“Waila” is taken from “baila,” which means dance in Spanish. Blending polka, waltz, tejano, cumbia and Norteno, Waila’s roots go back as far as the late 1700s, when European immigrants brought their accordions with them to work on the railroads. When electricity came to the reservations in the 1950s and ’60s, the Joaquin Brothers amped […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Drop-dead bargains
Bargain hunters found an unusual offer recently in the Mountain Valley News of western Colorado. For a limited time — until Memorial Day, May 25 — Mesa View Cemetery in Delta breathlessly announced, “If you purchase one grave space at our regular price in the Garden of Peace, our upright headstone section, you will receive […]
