Okay, so you got up this morning, scraped the scum off your teeth and that last bit of change from your kid’s piggybank, and headed down to the corner coffeeshop to buy one cup of endless refills and spend the rest of the day surfing the Interweb looking for some good news to brighten up […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
The myth of minority favoritism
A myth is circulating around the West, and it goes like this: Regardless of your level of competence, if you’re black, you’ll beat out everybody else when it comes to getting a job with a federal land-management agency such as the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management. A hint of this myth appeared in […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Welcome, new board members
We’re delighted to announce that Marley Shebala and Jesus De La Rosa have become our newest board members. Marley is the senior news reporter and a photographer for the Navajo Times in Window Rock, Ariz. Marley is Dine (Navajo) and Ashiwi (Zuni Pueblo). Her mother’s clan is Toaheedliinii (The Water Flow Together Clan), and her […]
Posted inWotr
Wherever you go, there you are
I lived alone in Paris for six months when I was 20. Technically, I had a roommate, an 80-year-old Frenchwoman who’d helped her father smuggle Jews out of the city during the Nazi occupation. She took in boarders to help pay the rent on her Latin Quarter apartment, and I was just one in a […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
The fine art of bureaucracy
Artists helped further a government agenda
Posted inJanuary 19, 2009: Blood Quantum
Blood Quantum
A complicated system that determines tribal membership threatens the future of American Indians
Posted inGoat
Understanding agriculture…and farmers too!
If you know farmers, you know that most of them can be relied upon to provide gloomy reports looking backward and gloomier forecasts going forward. If most of the farmers I know have a good year, they will not talk about it but instead will tell you about all the bad things that are about […]
Posted inGoat
Reflections on “Methow homecoming”
Christopher Solomon’s essay (Methow homecoming, 12-8-08 edition) struck a heart chord with me. Like Solomon I escaped from the East Coast with a master’s degree (mine was more useful; it came with a teaching credential) and went looking for a home in the West. And like Solomon and Rick Bass whom he quotes my wanderings […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Parking is primo in Vail
Ah, Vail, where big money still gets spent on a crucial item like a parking space. The Vail Daily says a treasured spot within Vail’s heated indoor Founders Garage is now on offer for $500,000. “Parking is going up in Vail,” said Buzz Schleper, the spot’s owner. “There’s always somebody out there who has money […]
Posted inArticles
Video: Humor in a world gone mad
Travis Kelly creates cartoons in order to stay sane
Posted inWotr
Hunting is the ultimate do-it-yourself experience
Garden-raised vegetables are probably the tastiest, and eating food raised from seeds you planted yourself always gives a deep sense of satisfaction. But nothing beats hunting for connecting you to the land. I came to this conclusion recently. Over most of my life, I equated hunting with killing, even though I was raised in Montana, […]
Posted inWotr
The only thing we have to fear …
Maybe because Christmas and the New Year are traditional times for celebrating a sense of community, it’s also a good time to acknowledge some of the rough patches in the rural Shangri-La where I live: the growing demands at the local food bank, dissension in the town of Joseph, Ore., over our governance, the 23 […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Life during wartime
Refresh, RefreshBenjamin Percy256 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2007. In Refresh, Refresh, his second collection of short stories, Benjamin Percy examines the fallout of the Iraq war on the people at home. Set on Oregon’s high plateau, these tales are shaped by the tension between the banal and the bizarre. The collection’s eponymous knockout story describes […]
Posted inWotr
You better watch out, that’s for sure
I’m as sentimental about Christmas as the next guy, but after years of listening to the holiday carols and Christmas standards, I find some troubling messages embedded in those songs. At the heart of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, for instance, is a small herd of really nasty reindeer. The song was written by an advertising […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
For the love of stuff
I don’t find most theistic versions of the afterlife compelling, but over the last few weeks I have become convinced that if there is a hell, it surely involves shopping for a car. After an epic quest, my wife and I finally decided on a 2-year-old Subaru, which will allow us to travel Wyoming’s wintry […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A blaze of bullets
Twice a year or so, says a fire chief in Medford, Ore., a blaze breaks out in somebody’s house and bullets start banging as well. “Actually, it’s not uncommon for us to deal with ammunition during fires,” says Medford Battalion Chief Ken Goodson. A recent Jacksonville fire was a doozy, though, because James Frings sold […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Fa-la-la-la
We’re taking a two-week publishing hiatus in late December, like we do every year. We’ll be working on new stories, saying farewell to our latest excellent crop of interns, and singing carols. Our traditional Open House won’t be held this year, though — another victim of the economic meltdown. Enjoy the holidays and look for […]
Posted inGoat
Oregon sees huge rise in food stamp recipients
A record half a million Oregonians are struggling to feed their families, and the state’s unemployment figure reached 8 percent in November, the highest in five years. Jackson and Josephine counties saw increases of 19 percent, and the Bend area’s food-stamp recipients rose by 28 percent over last year. More than half of the 21,850 […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
John Daniel: A good animal, too
Ourselves When the throaty calls of sandhill cranesecho across the valley, when the rimrock flaresincandescent red, and the junipersare flames of green on the shortgrass hills, in that moment of last clear lightwhen the world seems ready to speak its name,meet me in the field alongside the pond.Without careers for once, without things to do, […]