Although it died on the floor of the Oregon Supreme Court last October, Oregon’s controversial property-rights initiative, Measure 7, may live again. The initiative, approved by voters in 2000, would compensate landowners for decreased property value caused by local and state land-use rules. The regulations, conceived in the 1970s, aim to preserve farmlands and forests […]
Communities
Posted inMarch 3, 2003: The Wild Card
Heard Around the West
Who said you’re never safe when a state Legislature is in session? In Idaho, women who choose to breast-feed infants came under attack from lawmakers who find the practice offensive. After Rep. Bonnie Douglas, D-Coeur d’Alene, introduced a bill protecting a woman’s right to breast-feed her baby in public, Rep. Peter Nielsen, R-Mountain Home, was […]
Posted inWotr
A lesson in engagement from Mary Page Stegner
Who do we believe? How do we behave? These are questions I hold as we watch President Bush make his case for war. Our Department of Homeland Security recently placed us on “high alert/code orange,” advised us to buy duct tape and cover our windows with plastic, then in the same breath told us not […]
Posted inWotr
A lesson in aridity from Wallace Stegner
The wisest man and best writer the West has produced was born this week 94 years ago. He died in 1993, but left us a massive inheritance, including Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, Angle of Repose, Wolf Willow and From the Uneasy Chair. You can celebrate his Feb. 18 birthday by reading one of these books […]
Posted inWotr
Of Western myth and jackalopes
“Are there jackalope around here?” the dude from Chicago asked. “Well, up here there’s too much elevation. They’re down on the sagebrush flats.” from Jackalope by Hilda Volk On Jan. 6, 2003, the West lost one of its great mythmakers, 82-year-old Douglas Herrick, of Casper, Wyo. No, Herrick wasn’t a writer, an artist, or a […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
As the dust settles
Asbestos from one of the nation’s worst Superfund sites has killed over 200 in Libby, Mont., and infected hundreds more with lung disease (HCN, 3/13/00: Libby’s dark secret). To outsiders, life in Libby might seem unfathomable. But in the video documentary, Dust to Dust, director Michael Brown shows how residents manage to persevere in the […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Living in harm’s way
Unlike water, denial is in excess supply in California. Half the residents west of the 100th meridian live in that state, and 80 percent of them live in areas that have been rattled by major earthquakes. Northern Californians, for example, straddle 60 miles of the deadly Hayward fault; the late Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Author says we’ll ‘match the scenery’ whether we like it or not
Wallace Stegner citations are a commonplace in High Country News. Stegner, a writer and historian, is our bard (if we have one), and perhaps most familiar to HCN readers for his call to Westerners to create a “society to match the scenery.” Now comes a Colorado writer who quietly turns this idea on its head. […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Living in harm’s way
Unlike water, denial is in excess supply in California. Half the residents west of the 100th meridian live in that state, and 80 percent of them live in areas that have been rattled by major earthquakes. Northern Californians, for example, straddle 60 miles of the deadly Hayward fault; the late Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Villagers rebel against sprawl
Farmers and environmentalists team up along the Rio Grande
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
The life of an energy colony
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Wyoming at a crossroads.” 1869: Wyoming is formed as an official territory for one purpose only: advancing the cause of the Union Pacific Railroad. The railroad wants access to southwest Wyoming’s coal fields on its transcontinental journey to the West Coast. Gov. John Campbell […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
Heard Around The West
President George Bush, reputed to create pet names for just about everybody, has one for environmentalists: They are “green, green lima beans,” according to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. If you’re one of those green beans, you might think twice about getting a divorce. A new study in the journal Nature says splitting the […]
Posted inFebruary 17, 2003: Wyoming at a crossroads
On the road with Cactus Ed
One day early in the 1970s, Ed Abbey and I were cruising along a southern Utah highway in a forest-green Chevy that had rolled off the assembly line some 20 years before. Ed had given a friend $100 for it in the spring and we were both pleased that it was still running now, early […]
Posted inWotr
Why the growth apologists are wrong
There are two arguments defending sprawl in the West that never seem to end, and I hope I can convince you that both are flawed. The first argument is that current residents must not try to “shut the door” on growth because they have no right to deny others what they enjoy. Forget for a […]
Posted inWotr
Dreams for sale in Leadville, Colorado
The latest team of economic-development consultants to visit Leadville, Colo., recently presented its cure for this former mining town’s chronic economic ills. According to these experts, Leadville could create jobs, attract new businesses and people and rebuild its tax base by constructing an industrial park and expanding its local airport to handle 737-type jets. My […]
Posted inWotr
Come in, Krispy Kreme
Idaho may have gained the dubious distinction of leading the West in regressive economic innovations. In the small town of Blackfoot, local police will soon show off the first of their three new police cruisers, all free to the taxpayer. Well, not exactly free. The patrol cars will cost a buck, and there is a […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Light and love in Wyoming
Before I can review Mark Spragg’s new novel, The Fruit of Stone, I need to perform an exorcism — of a New York Times book review by a guy named Jonathan Miles, whose credentials include Books Columnist for Men’s Journal (one of those magazines that show men how to spend an hour in a fitness […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Dummy up and deal
(Card) dealers are reminded many times … that they are on the bottom of the food chain, where they have to feel fortunate to gather up the crumbs that fall off the table. On the other hand, where else can a person without a high school diploma earn forty to a hundred thousand a year […]
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
Project mixes suburbs with nature preserve
Albuquerque’s Mesa del Sol will be the Southwest’s largest ‘green development’
Posted inFebruary 3, 2003: The death of the Super Hopper
The son of immigrants has a change of heart
It is an urban legend, but I believe it. A traveling salesman wrote to a hotel, complaining that he’d been bitten by bedbugs. He got a lengthy letter of apology back, saying that bedbugs had never been seen on the premises or even within blocks of the hotel. Inside the envelope, he also found a […]