The joys and perhaps necessary virtues of not settling down.
Communities
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 […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Drink for a good cause
As Capital Press put it: “Winemaker Budge Brown is on a mission — to find a cure for breast cancer — and he’s doing it one bottle at a time.” After his wife, Arlene, died of breast cancer three years ago, Brown, who grows grapes in California’s Pope Valley, decided to buy a wine label […]
Posted inArticles
Interview: Tito Naranjo on the Pueblo world view
A Native American explores the underlying tension with archaeology
Posted inGoat
On predators, ranchers and public land grazing
Jim Eischeid’s letter to HCN in the November 24th edition pointed out the irony that “the large majority of those ranchers get sweet subsidized deals on the use of the public lands for grazing, and yet they vilify the efforts to restore the wolf on those very same lands.” Eischeid then goes to the heart […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Nonprofitable times
Conservation groups hunker down for the economic crisis.
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Birds of a feather
Home Ocala, Fla. (Dave); Bozeman, Mont., and Patagonia, Ariz. (Tam)Subscribers since 2002 At a remote watering hole in northeastern Montana called Harry’s Nite Club, HCN readers Dave Schweppe and Tam Scott and HCN intern Andrea Appleton crossed paths one moonlit October evening. Andrea was on assignment, and Dave and Tam were on their annual visit […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Congratulations, Theo
HCN‘s most famous hometown scientist, Dr. Theo Colborn, just received a prestigious international prize, the 2008 Goteborg Award for Sustainable Development. Theo is the founder and president of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, which studies how industrial toxins affect the health of humans and the environment (www.endocrinedisruption.com). The prize, awarded by the city of Goteborg, Sweden, […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Out in the cold
Selling the family farm severs connection with place and past
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
The missing puzzle piece
Bringing native perspectives into archaeology for a more complete picture of the past
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Two men, two paths
The OtherDavid Guterson256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Random House, 2008. David Guterson’s newest novel, The Other, tells of the lasting friendship between two men. One chooses a life in the woods, while the other finds joy within city limits. Guterson, best known as the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, writes of the delicate balance between the […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Digging deep
Addicts get back to the land in northern New Mexico
Posted inArticles
Slideshow: Back to the garden
Recovering addicts find roots in the soil of New Mexico