Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Wal-Mart’s Manifest Destiny.” For two years in a row, Fortune Magazine, in a survey of 10,000 business experts, has named Wal-Mart “America’s Most Admired Company.” But if businesspeople love Wal-Mart, many working people loathe it: Wal-Mart now faces at least 30 class-action lawsuits from […]
Communities
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
I’ve tried, but I can’t eat the view
I’ve given up on one of the great American dreams — owning a home of my own. Why? Because it’s becoming impossible to find affordable housing in the West, even in the non-resort towns. It’s easy to tell that Missoula, Mont., is still a working-class town. Just check out the traffic on the tree-shaded lanes, […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
At home on the range with 10-year-old writers and dreamers
During a spring storm, a group of fourth-graders are considering how their lives will change in the future. I’ve asked them to think about anything that might be different for them tomorrow, or even 30 years down the road. A bunch of hands go up, and the first student I call on looks out the […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Heard around the West
MONTANA How do you test a garbage can to find out if it’s tough enough to withstand the long claws and big brain of a ravenous grizzly bear? Just ask a seasoned hand at product-testing — a half-ton grizzly named Sam — to lend his expertise. Sam and seven other bears are “official product inspectors” […]
Posted inWotr
Where you live in a small town is somebody’s recollection
“I’m living on Nutting Street now,” a friend told me last week. “You know where that is?” “Of course not!” I responded. “This is a small town! Nobody remembers the names of streets!” When I lived in the city, I knew the old saw that rural people give directions using landmarks that no longer exist […]
Posted inWotr
At home on the range with 10-year-old writers and dreamers
During a spring storm, a group of fourth-graders are considering how their lives will change. I’ve asked them to think about anything that might be different for them tomorrow, or even 30 years down the road. A bunch of hands go up, and the first student I call on looks out the window and says, […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
In Search of Solidarity
Will hard times renew historic alliances between environmentalists and labor unions?
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Houston Principles of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “In Search of Solidarity.” Preamble On May 19, 1999, environmental and labor leaders confronted CEO Charles Hurwitz in Houston to demand that his Maxxam Corporation, which owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company, be held accountable for its impact on working people, communities and the […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Throwing out the dishwater
Once I lived in a one-room log cabin where I pumped my water from a well and heated it on a wood stove. When I was finished washing my dishes, I carried the dishpan outside and tossed the water on the nearby sagebrush. It seemed natural to me to return the water to the same […]
Posted inMay 24, 2004: In Search of Solidarity
Heard around the West
NORTH DAKOTA Give a cheer for cheeky Fargo, mocked as backward a mere decade ago in the movie Fargo, which featured locals spouting the stereotypical, “Yah, you betcha.” You can call the city “trendy” now, says the Los Angeles Times. Pricey condos have been built downtown, culture has arrived in the form of sushi bars […]
Posted inWotr
A feminist liberal looks back at age 90
What’s it like to look back at 90, over most of a century? Been there, done that, enjoyed most of it. When I was born in 1914, women could not vote. But in my lifetime, a woman named Hillary Clinton may well become president. The year I was born, we were at war. When I […]
Posted inWotr
Nature is not a club to bash people with
As a nature writer, I’m always interested when a columnist or politician claims to speak for “nature.” As a gay Portlander, I’m especially amazed to hear that “nature” has passed judgment against me. A religious activist here in Oregon keeps getting anti-gay initiatives on the ballot, but he hardly seems the paragon of nature. True, […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Jackson can’t agree on growth
A decade after a model planning effort, Jackson’s downtown is stagnant, while its workers are priced out
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA If Arnold Schwarzenegger has his way, gas-powered cars will be terminated in 10-15 years. The media-savvy governor recently drove a hydrogen-powered Toyota to a press conference in Davis, where he championed hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Schwarzenegger, who has played an unstoppable robot from the future, predicted the […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Green investor Hal Brill: Bringing the Money Home
PAONIA, COLORADO — In a house stuffed with green-building books, astrologic calendars and a world-spanning array of wooden drums, a basement office is one of the few signs that Hal Brill’s life has headed squarely into the world of high finance and asset management. “I’m definitely one of the more unlikely candidates to be an […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
The West’s mythmakers are now its newcomers
If you heard about the man who kicked off his campaign for governor by swinging a medieval battle sword on horseback in the middle of downtown Billings, you probably thought, “Only in Montana.” Glenn Schaffer posed at the offices of the local paper in February on a stallion named Big Dog Thunder Horse, and said […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Look for the best — and keep it
This country has been built on the idea of running away, of escaping whatever makes us dissatisfied, uncomfortable or ill-at-ease. It’s a vision of entitlement that began with the founding of the Plymouth Colony four hundred years ago and caused us to spread ourselves resolutely across a continent. But more than a century after the […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Heard around the West
COLORADO Under the headline “Say what?” Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reporter Michael Bender let a legislator’s faux pas wave in the breeze. State Sen. Mark Hillman got so fired up during a debate about a renewable energy bill that would almost certainly put windmills on his turf — the state’s eastern plains — that he […]
Posted inWotr
Maybe a good work ethic requires real jobs
A specter is haunting the mountain resorts of the West, not the specter of a working-class revolt against the owning class, but the specter of no working class at all. In western Colorado in recent years, some restaurants and shops have had to cut business hours due to a lack of workers to fill their […]
Posted inWotr
My 40 acres of Eden and the planner’s dilemma
In the 1980s, when I was a college teacher in Prescott, Ariz., I often took my history students down to Cordes Junction to visit Arcosanti, the architect Paolo Soleri’s urban experiment in the high desert. In class, we were studying the rise of the city and reading Kevin Reilly’s The West and the World, so […]