Conservative Western Republicans embrace the Cuban cause
Communities
Posted inMarch 3, 2008: The People of the Sea
Staying put
Lately my cat, Daisy, has me thinking about Al Gore. Daisy’s not as young as she used to be. She lazes most hours on the rug in front of the woodstove, snuggled inside the cardboard lid to a ream of paper from Office Depot. The lid is now festooned with a homemade quilt draped over […]
Posted inWotr
The West loses a scrappy daily paper
Just as the booming — or busting — West needs her most, the Albuquerque Tribune is no more. The paper published its last edition on Saturday, Feb. 23, after 86 years of rough-and-tumble journalism that included winning a Pulitzer Prize. The paper was owned by the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., which decided last August that […]
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Who will work in the West’s future company towns?
One day last summer, I gave directions to two young Asian women on bicycles who were looking for the grocery store. Further chatting revealed that they weren’t tourists. In scattershot English, they told me that they were from Thailand and had come to Cody, Wyo., on temporary work visas to serve up hamburgers in Wendy’s, […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Following the tracks
Walking along the railroad tracks, I never could decide if it was easier to stretch my stride from one tie to the next, or if I should follow my natural rhythm, letting my foot land sometimes in the crushed stone ballast and sometimes on wood. I wanted the walking to be easy, unconscious. It wasn’t. […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Heard Around the West
WYOMING Perhaps in jest, the award-winning Jackson Hole News&Guide wants readers to come up with a new welcome sign for the town. The current greeting at Teton Pass is definitely outmoded: “Howdy, stranger, yonder is Jackson Hole, the last of the Old West.” With the town now urbanized and chock-full of New West bazillionaires, the […]
Posted inFebruary 18, 2008: Reluctant Boomtown
Reluctant Boomtown
Mining abandoned Superior a decade ago. Now the industry is ready to return, but this little Arizona town is not sure it wants it back.
Posted inWotr
Lake Powell’s sandstone walls speak after 232 years
Across the Southwest, Native Americans, explorers, miners, settlers and Mormon pioneers have left dozens of inscriptions on rock walls. Now, a rare historical marking has been authenticated on one of the canyon cliffs that surround Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The inscription was carved when the United States was only six months […]
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Hank, the non-cow dog
A story in my local Montana paper, the Missoulian, described the growing problem of family pets harassing wildlife and livestock. It seems that the expansion of urban life into the wild is taking its toll on deer, elk, cattle and all kinds of burrowing creatures. The story really hit home as my dog Hank, aka […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Die with me
“Indians must either fall in with the march of civilization and progress,” wrote Major James McLaughlin, military director of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, in 1889, “or be crushed by the passage of the multitude.” More than a century later, three writers uncomfortably assess that prediction, and find that Native Americans have indeed fallen into […]
Posted inFebruary 4, 2008: Unnatural Preservation
Heard around the West
UTAH Jim Stiles, publisher of the Canyon Country Zephyr in Moab, has been called cynical, chronically ticked off, dour and – more kindly perhaps – curmudgeonly. He is greatly annoyed by the Lycra-clad bicyclists that invade his part of the world, and he’d like the rip-’em-up crowd of ATV and four-wheel-drivers to take a hike. […]
Posted inWotr
Here’s a new way to think about Black History
Every February, the contributions of black Americans are recognized during Black History Month. Since I’m black and work for the Bureau of Land Management, a mostly white federal agency, I appreciate that. But I also have a complaint: Why has its observance become so predictable? By now, I am sure that everybody knows that black […]
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Running the gantlet of Homeland Security
Albuquerque’s international airport, dubbed The Sunport, ranks as one of the smaller and friendlier airports around. That’s important for Westerners like me. Since traveling became an uncertain business, being met by “our” people behind the counter, in shops and at the gate, goes a long way to ease nervousness for infrequent flyers. This is particularly […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
New West, Next West
The New West is one of the easiest default settings for contemporary American fiction. Start with a dissolute or desperate main character and throw him down in an urbanized, or, better still, suburbanized landscape. Add a little Western scenery – mountains and rivers, just out of reach – but focus on the housing developments and […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA Snap your fans for the late Beverly Allen, a petite woman just over 5 feet tall who became a high-kicking, feather-bedecked showgirl at the age of 80 with the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies. This is a group you have to be at least 55 years old to join, and Allen, reports the Los Angeles […]
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Misplaced Jurisdiction
Justice in Indian Country needs an overhaul
Posted inJanuary 21, 2008: An energy oasis in the political desert
Tackling Utah’s trash
NAME Issa Hamud AGE 48 HOME LIFE Married, eight kids. DRIVES 2004 Ford F-150. HOBBY Four-wheeling with friends. NEXT PROJECT Hamud hopes to build an Environmental Education Center on the site of the current landfill once it closes. It will feature a glass wall exposing a cross section of the landfill to its 30-foot depths, […]
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The day the view died
The view of the War Memorial Stadium, seen by westbound drivers barreling down Interstate 80 just east of Laramie, Wyo., died of obstruction in August 2007. The view was 57 years old. It had long been lauded by both newcomers and old timers as the thing that could raise goose bumps as travelers whooshed down […]
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Bigfoot, you’re invited to breakfast
A few years before the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, I worked on a timber-cruising crew near that mountain. We stayed in a barn-like lodge and ate at a nearby diner. During breakfast one morning, Harry R. Truman, who owned Harmony Falls Lodge on Spirit Lake, came in. He was wearing an […]
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When you care enough to flush the very best
“Over here,” the salesman said, understanding my wife’s question perfectly, “you can see a top-of-the-line system.” We were in the middle of Remodeling Hell. I had had no idea there were so many decisions that could be made: kitchen cabinets, appliances, countertops, sink, faucets, floors. Wall colors, trim, furniture, accents. Window sizes and trim. Bathroom […]