I live alone on the steep slopes of southern Oregon’s Rogue River canyon, which is a place that can’t decide whether to be California or the Pacific Northwest. I’m here for a solo writing residency, and what that means is that the days are mine to use or waste. My only neighbors are the Bureau […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Having a third child in a world of scarcity
Whenever I approached my husband, I would have to think of the right way to phrase things. Rehearsing in my head, I’d stumble again and again on the word “want.” I might have been saying “I want a new sweater.” Or “I want to have pizza for dinner.” But I was almost 40, and I […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
A Proud Member of PAOBHA
My house is a previous-owner-built oddity with small, random additions, situated on a rural county road along with a line of other houses, most of which are nicely bewildering in their construction and habitation. There are goats in backyards, a donkey that escapes fairly regularly, a mishmash of people who want to live outside of […]
Posted inWotr
A harvest cornucopia hangs on in New Mexico
I hate leaving this party. I go from person to person, a hug here, a kiss on the cheek there. I wave goodbye to Farmer Monte and thank him for all the harvests he has shared this year. October has always been my favorite time of year in New Mexico. Part of it is the […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
In search of greener pastures
Name Laina Corazon Coit Age 55 Vocation Hemp ice cream maker Home Base Near Briggsdale, Colo. Noted for Working to create Colorado’s first green burial grounds, on the eastern prairie She says “I’m for earthworms. We intend to use every possible way to make sure the land remains sacred to the grave sites and the […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
Heard around the West
UTAH AND IDAHO Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Forest Service employees from Utah, that’s who. Two staffers from the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Ogden were working in Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness Sept. 23, when they spotted wolves chasing a bull elk across a meadow. They weren’t frightened by the sight of the running […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico’s Forests
Out of the angry thickets of the past, environmentalists and loggers cut a new path
Posted inWotr
Feeling crowded around here? It is!
One statistic jumped out of the morning paper and jolted my brain. The news was that America’s population will hit 300 million sometime during the third week of October. But it wasn’t that landmark figure that jarred my morning reverie. It was this: The United States population has grown from 200 million to 300 million […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Brave ‘yellowbellies’ served the West well
During World War II, more than 250 American men — mostly Quakers and Mennonites — stood up for their pacifist beliefs, declared themselves conscientious objectors, and volunteered for a different risky service. They became pioneer smokejumpers, parachuting onto the front lines of wildfires in the Rockies. Smokejumping had only been invented in 1939, and it […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Heard around the West
THE BORDER Life in southern Texas can get pretty boring if you’re a 20-something National Guardsman sent to patrol the dusty border with Mexico. Three guardsmen recently found life so dreary that they picked up their weapons, jumped in their vehicle and headed out for a joyride. They failed to find much action until they […]
Posted inWotr
Don’t like the local rag? Start your own
My fingers pounded on the sticky keyboard. It was 2 a.m.; I’d given up drinking coffee a few hours earlier and was now chewing coffee beans chased with chocolate chips. In less than five hours, I’d make the 50-mile drive over two high mountain passes to the printer’s in Durango, in western Colorado, fretting the […]
Posted inWotr
A simple act
No matter what time of day or night the phone rings, the voice that summons me sounds tired and desperate. But that’s not the only reason I go. I’m known there, so I seldom wait long before someone comes for me, leads me into the little room, closes the door, asks to see my ID […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Big yellow taxi — in Duke City
At once meditative and profane, Robert Leonard’s Yellow Cab traces his after-dark odysseys as a University of New Mexico anthropology professor who moonlights behind the wheel of a taxi. Leonard makes us privy to the stream of confessions from the back seat, narrating them in a breezy, urban voice, with the world-weary persona of someone […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
The longevity of place and race
Westerners, in general, live longer than other Americans, according to a recent study by the Harvard University Initiative for Global Health. Northern Plains residents live longest, but 29 of the 50 counties with the highest life expectancy are in the West — 16 in Colorado. Native Americans, however, aren’t as fortunate: Nationally, they have a […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Give us your poor, your uninsured…
Many Westerners live in poverty, but even more lack health insurance. U.S. Percentage below poverty level: 12.6 Percentage without health coverage: 15.7 New Mexico Percentage below poverty level: 17.9 Percentage without health coverage: 21.1 Arizona Percentage below poverty level: 15.2 Percentage without health coverage: 8.1 Montana Percentage below poverty level: 13.8 Percentage without health coverage: […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
A paper with bite
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: The Taos Horse Fly is a 7-year-old monthly whose name says it all: Its stories sometimes leave bite marks. Local media scene: Dominated by the long-lived weekly Taos News, owned by the same company that owns […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
News from the gas fields
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “From the ground up.” The paper: Roughneck is a two-year-old monthly covering oil and gas in Sublette County, Wyo., the top natural gas producing county in the U.S. Local media scene: Two local weeklies, including the Pinedale Roundup, cover community news; Roughneck’s […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Undaunted muckraker
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. How many American journalists can claim that their reporting helped oust two presidents? Navajo Times reporter Marley Shebala can: Her tireless muckraking helped lead to the downfall — and eventual imprisonment — of Navajo Nation Chairman […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Zine Roundup: Sweet simplicity
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “Undaunted muckraker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. Dan Price’s media empire is centered in a kind of hobbit hole in a meadow in Joseph, Ore., where his 2003 Toshiba photocopier prints 200 copies every two months of […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Film: Lens of compassion
Note: This article is one of several feature stories in a special issue about community media in the West. Philomath, Ore., nestled on the Coast Range’s eastern flanks, looks like an average logging town. On a Saturday afternoon, kids pushing BMX bikes scamper across the main street. American flags hang limp in the late summer […]