When I realized a dozen years ago that my state’s license plates were issued chronologically, I felt stirrings of ambition. Here was a tiny yet visible status symbol, and all I had to do was wait. At that time my plate, after the county prefix, was 4786A, meaning that there were over 4,000 vehicles lined […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Hollywood heads east
Western states compete to get a piece of the action
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Heard around the West
UTAH Lake Powell, now at just 52 percent of capacity, might as well be called The Incredible Shrinking Reservoir: Its twice-extended boat launch at Bullfrog “resembles a tilted airport runway — a concrete slab more than a quarter-mile long,” reports The Associated Press. Multiple bathtub rings are visible everywhere along the shore, and when the […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
‘There was just some hard hittin’ going on’
LIND, Washington — In New Mexico, people tend to sort themselves by red and green, based on the kind of chile they prefer to eat. On the wheat farms of eastern Washington, folks divide into red and green camps, too. But here, they do it according to the kinds of combines — the giant machines […]
Posted inWotr
Booming anger
I find myself waving vigorously at faces I recognize these days. I wave hard at people I know like we’re close friends who’ve found ourselves in a big, unfriendly crowd. I’m happy to see them, and often they wave back just as vigorously. I live five miles out of Pinedale, Wyo., this town booming with […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Taking Liberties
The salesmen say ‘yes’ is a vote to stop government from taking your land, but this stealth campaign would do far more than that
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
‘I call (regulations) land stealing …’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking Liberties.” During the campaign pitching Oregon’s Measure 37 to voters in 2004, Dorothy English starred in statewide radio ads. Now a 93-year-old widow living on 20 acres on a hillside overlooking Portland, she has been fighting for three decades for permission to slice […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
The merry — and meditative — farmer
In Blithe Tomato, California farmer Mike Madison writes about whatever strikes his fancy: neighborhood dogs, old tractors, and what it’s like to tangle with the local gophers for control of his tulips and olive trees. (He admits to losing 25 percent of his net income to the pests.) Madison’s collection of short essays makes it […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Dust in the wind
On Sept. 14, 1930, a strange dirt cloud swirled out of Kansas into the Texas Panhandle. Weathermen dismissed it as an oddity, but it marked the beginning of the worst long-term environmental disaster the United States has ever known — the Dust Bowl. That bleak period is chronicled in The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan’s […]
Posted inWotr
Garage sales lead to déjà vu all over again
At a friend’s garage sale several years ago, I saw a copy of Ivan Doig’s book, This House of Sky. I bundled it with my other purchases, but when she went to ring it up, I said, “Jean, I’m not going to pay for this one.” “Why not?” she demanded. I opened the front cover […]
Posted inWotr
A resident responds to a plaintive question from Wolf Creek developer Red McCombs
“All my life, I have always wondered why there is antagonism toward developers,” said billionaire developer B.J. “Red” McCombs recently during a forum on his proposed resort atop remote Wolf Creek Pass, in southwestern Colorado. I can answer Mr. McCombs, but first, some history: At issue is a massive project on an inholding (private land […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Takings campaigns around the West
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking Liberties.” ARIZONA Private Property Rights Protection Act, by the Arizona Home Owners Protection Effort (Arizona HOPE) — Initiative 21 Sources of Major $$ Americans for Limited Government, Chicago area, whose chairman of the board is New York City-based real estate mogul Howie Rich […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
‘Great recreation value … and great economic value…’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking Liberties.” Newberry National Volcanic Monument, near Bend, Ore., boasts of having an active volcano, more than 50,000 acres of “lava flows and spectacular geologic features,” seven campgrounds, and “two sparkling alpine lakes full of trout and salmon.” If Jim Miller prevails in a […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
‘I hope other states don’t do this …’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking Liberties.” Renee Ross and her husband, Bryan, live on 32 acres near Molalla, southeast of Portland. It’s hilly, with woods and pasture, and spring-fed Teasel Creek flows through it. She also thought Measure 37 was a good idea. Now, two of her neighbors […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA What “whiskered blob of blubber” terrorizes swimmers, raids fishing nets and once in a while shoves people off boats? A sea lion is the answer, reports the Los Angeles Times, in its vivid story of a horde of “pit bulls with flippers” muscling their way into Newport Beach for the summer — again. Last […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
Saving open land — a taxing problem
Open-space campaigners look for the winning formula
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
‘I kick myself for being so naive…’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking Liberties.” Ted Schroeder, a doctor, lives on 52 acres in the rural Grande Ronde Valley in northeast Oregon. He voted for Oregon’s Measure 37 and regrets it. A neighboring family, operating as Terra-Magic Inc., has filed a Measure 37 claim, seeking to brush […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
‘It’s clear out of control …’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Taking Liberties.” Bill Rose runs Rose Agriseeds on 2,100 acres in the Willamette Valley, about 20 miles south of Portland. He breeds specialty grasses for golf courses, and grasses that can be watered with sea water, shipping to customers as far away as Maryland. […]
Posted inWotr
Rainbow Gathering lacks one color — green
When we tell folks that we have become the unwitting hosts for the Rainbow Family’s annual gathering, the first response is “the who?” As it turns out, some 20,000 Rainbows have gathered in Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colo., in the Routt National Forest. Their Web site, welcomehome.org, styles them “the largest non-organization […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Nuestra America
In recent months, millions of Latinos have taken to the streets over immigration — more than 50,000 in Denver alone. Hector Tobar’s Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States is a thoughtful and wide-ranging examination of the people who have come from the Americas to a country that calls itself […]