Travis Kelly creates cartoons in order to stay sane
Communities
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, […]
Posted inArticles
A word in favor of rootlessness
The joys and perhaps necessary virtues of not settling down.
Posted inGoat
Bailout comes to the West
Turns out Washington is bailing out more than just Wall Street. Federal help is also coming to the streets and cul de sacs of Western suburbia, from Phoenix to Las Vegas. Arizona, California and Nevada will all get big chunks of cash (from $72 million to $530 million) from the U.S. Department of Housing’s Neighborhood […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Down on the farm
Valley (HCN, 12/8/08). When I climb to the top of our pasture and look towards the Blue Ridge mountains, I cannot see even one new house built after we moved here 30 years ago. Remarkable reprieve! Cropland, pastures and small forested patches still dot the sloping hillsides. Julene Bair’s poignant writing reminds me of the […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2008: What a mess
Banish bigotry
I read “The persistence of bigotry, Western-style” with a chill crawling up my spine, and I don’t think it was the flu virus I’m battling (HCN, 12/8/08). I’m left with the strange feeling that some regional socialization patterns stopped evolving sometime around the 1950s. I doubt the children and parents telling those “jokes” have been […]
Posted inWotr
The perfect imperfect Christmas tree
I love going into the woods to cut my own Christmas tree. It’s not that I want to snub the Boy Scouts, who host a tree lot in town. I’ve spent a lot of time in those urbanized groves, searching for the perfect conical tree, and sampling hot chocolate. But a backcountry tree hunt is […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Dinosaur dance steps — maybe
Did a bunch of dinosaurs really hang out together 190 million years ago, leaving their many footprints behind? When a University of Utah geologist announced that a “dinosaur dance floor” had been found within what’s known as the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in northern Arizona, it made big news. But four Western scientists — including […]
Posted inWotr
Lessons from the mighty Maya
One theory about the collapse of the Maya civilization in Mexico some 1100 years ago is based on evidence that they had perfected a bureaucracy of corn. Exhaustive rules governed how corn was grown, distributed and consumed. A rigid hierarchy defined every individual’s social position and allotment of corn, and this cultural arrangement lasted 650 […]
Posted inWotr
Here comes change
Recently I had the opportunity to watch a short but very moving video about an elderly Dine woman named Pauline Whitesinger from Big Mountain on the Navajo Nation. In it, she speaks about who she is, where she lives and what informs her life. Her nephew, Danny Blackgoat, translates her words, listening and speaking quietly. […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Going underground
For the past few years, it looked like the West would see a resurgence in hardrock mining, thanks in large part to China’s booming economy. In late summer, copper prices were around $4 per pound; molybdenum hovered over $30 per pound. Towns like Leadville, Colo., which was devastated when the Climax molybdenum mine shut down […]