It’s not easy being buried green, but here’s how I want it to happen: Someone, preferably an old friend, dresses me in my oldest, softest clothes.Let’s see, how about my favorite and virtually threadbare navy blue flannel shirt and my tatty black sweat pants? If shoes seem important, hopefully they’llgo for my sheepskin bedroom slippers. […]
Communities
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Have another pig-brain/beef-blood/chicken-spine hamburger
I ate my final burger the other day. It’s not that I don’t like burgers (my last one was juicy pure delight) and I don’t want to become a vegetarian (the tofu diet isn’t for me), but thanks to some recent discoveries, I no longer believe that my last burger, was, in fact, a burger. […]
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Wanted: queer eye for the rural guy
When the aspens reached their peak color last fall, my friend Diane and I drove from our tiny, western Colorado town into the nearby mountains. We sat at the side of the road to enjoy the snow-dusted peaks, tumbling scree fields and golden-and-peach aspen forests. Soon enough, a truck pulling a camper with Washington state […]
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The ego has landed on the California coast
If you ever want to see the epitome of what we in the West call a “starter castle,” I recommend you visit close to the real thing, the Hearst estate on the California coast. This once-upon-a-time bastion of privilege conquered by the California State Park system sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Close […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Big development gets bought out
California has agreed to buy the site of one of the most controversial housing projects ever proposed in the state — and to preserve the land as open space. Since 1986, a series of home builders has tried to develop the 3,000-acre Ahmanson Ranch, north of Los Angeles on the Ventura County line. But the […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Mormons win Martin’s Cove
Culminating a five-year effort, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has gained control of Martin’s Cove — 940 acres of federal land — where several dozen Mormon immigrants died in a blizzard in 1856. The church considers the site, southwest of Casper, Wyo., sacred and sought to buy it (HCN, 9/30/02: This land […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Whose thousand words?
Print the Legend: Photography and the American West, is not another coffee-table gallery of black-and-white mountain vistas or solemn American Indian portraits. Rather, Martha Sandweiss’ book looks at how the new art of photography shaped the nation’s view of the West in the 19th century. Photos are not the accurate historical records they appear to […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
More than just a city on a river
In New Mexico, history is never an abstraction. Whether you are seeking shelter in a thick-walled adobe home, listening to the lilt of a native New Mexican’s words, tracing the path of acequias or tasting posole, you can sense history there. And there are few writers better able to tell that history than Marc Simmons. […]
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Idaho grows out of its cowboy boots
Idaho politicians love to conduct the nation’s business dressed in cowboy boots. Their boots aren’t just for walkin.’ On the capital’s marble floors they ring out an attitude of cowboy values and ornery independence, of things being different way out West. Loafers they are not. Daandy as they may be, cowboy boots reflect life in […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Being Green in the Land of the Saints
In the heartland of the Mormon Church, a new movement is taking root
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Planning for the new rural Idaho
Recently, an acclaimed young writer and a world-renowned opera singer charmed a packed house in Driggs, Idaho. What were they doing there instead of in a place a hundred times larger? The answer tells us something about the future of rural Idaho. The writer was Ann Patchett, whose most recent novel, Bel Canto, draws its […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
A gift of supreme excellence
It is good to be writing again. The mountains have snow, the air is cold, the sun is shining. It is a good November day, and I have been thinking of this idea of sovereignty, an almost foreign word here in Antonito, Colo., where there is so much poverty, and where most of us, to […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Heard Around the West
CALIFORNIA Remember that New Yorker cartoon, the one where a plump pussycat looks at its behind in a mirror and asks: “Does this collar make my butt look too big?” Well, humans are passing on their overeating habits to pets. Medical researchers warn we’re also bad influences on wildlife: Bears in the Lake Tahoe area […]
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You can’t stuff a stocking with chainsaw fuel, or can you?
It’s in my genes, like birds heeding the instinct to fly south for the winter; a mysterious force possesses me every December, luring me to, where else? The mall. But reject these instincts I must, for no Christmas gift would disgust my environmental extremist husband more than something from J.C. Penney. I love my husband […]
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Succumbing to globalism, one cup at a time
Not long ago and with little fanfare, Montana lost one of its distinctions. It ceased to be one of the last few states without a Starbucks Coffee Shop. Last year, only six states didn’t have a stand-alone store. The offending shop arrived in August in Helena on Prospect Avenue. The greenish copper rotunda of the […]
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The flu comes to visit
Why do people come over, fling themselves on my couch and croak and quack about how sick they are? Really. There is a bad cold here making its rounds through the houses carried by messengers like these I hand them cans of chicken soup with rice and urge them to GO AND TAKE CARE OF […]
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A new rural West is being born in Idaho
Recently, an acclaimed young writer and a world-renowned opera singer charmed a packed house in Driggs, Idaho. What were they doing there instead of a place a hundred times larger? The answer tells us something about the future of rural Idaho. The writer was Ann Patchett, whose most recent novel, Bel Canto, draws its intensity […]
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Colorado needs to break its cigarette habit
To stanch the state’s financial bleeding, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens wants to get a quick hit of $800 million owed by Big Tobacco instead of stretching out annual payments for a total of $2.1 billion. Meanwhile, money for anti-smoking programs remains in limbo. This is, at the least, a curious moral dilemma. Colorado is getting […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Heard around the West
COLORADO With just a few words, Beverly Hoover won third place in the High Country Shopper’s annual contest, “My Favorite Hunting Story.” She and her husband had moved from Pennsylvania to western Colorado in 1992, and soon after their arrival in Montrose, they were invited to a barbecue by new friends. The conversation turned to […]
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Does Wal-Mart really need our tax dollars?
Typical of shopping centers built decades ago, Alameda Square in Denver is a cheap, single-story strip of stores. It’s ugly and rundown. But that does not deter shoppers. Mostly Asian Americans, shoppers come from miles around to patronize more than a dozen Asian-owned businesses, including two grocery stores, two restaurants, a hair salon, a clothing […]