The other day my great-uncle Alfred gave me a handful of the year’s green beans, dried and ready for planting next summer. “Give them something high up to grow on,” he told me. “They’ll grow seven feet tall.” Alfred knows. He’s planted this variety in his garden for seven years now, every year saving a […]
Communities
Posted inWotr
Wild times in the human weed patch
I never knew how wild my corner of the West was until my daughter started playing volleyball. It had nothing to do with volleyball or the way it transforms giggling adolescent girls into snarling competitive animals. It had to do with early morning practices. “Builds character,” my daughter’s coach said. The kids’ or the parents’, […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Behind the gate
A look into the fortified rural retreats of the West’s moneyed elite
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Gated communities go in with a bang
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The impacts of rural gated communities go beyond any social insult to the people who live outside. These developments can have very real consequences for the land as well. One place it’s apparent is Montana’s Yellowstone Club, a vacation-home development so exclusive that its […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
Heard Around the West
It all began near Yellowstone National Park with a grizzly bear placidly eating berries close to a road – dozens of people pulled over to gawk. It ended with the bear fleeing and the visitors yelling at each other. There are at least two versions of how the bear jam turned into a bear fracas: […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2002: Behind the gate
It’s more than a house, it’s a fantasy life
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The sales pitch weighs 12 pounds, arriving in a field bag made of beautiful distressed leather that looks well broken-in. Open the bag and there are maps that appear wrinkled and old, a pretend Montana newspaper clipping that looks historic, and four overdesigned books […]
Posted inWotr
Walking in Portland can be dangerous to your health
Last week another vehicle almost nailed me flat as a coffin. I was alone in a crosswalk in the center of Oregon’s most worldly city, Portland. I had been walking uphill and had made it six blocks west of the Willamette River. I get my exercise some days by hiking around downtown and combining errands. […]
Posted inWotr
For 60 years, J. David Love explored the West’s geology
When I was a wet-behind-the-ears field ecologist, my then-husband and I were posted to a Forest Service work center 50 miles southwest of Cody, Wyoming, where the road ends in the remote Absaroka Range. Our only human neighbors were the absentee owners of a nearby ranch, and for a few weeks, a raucous bunch of […]
Posted inWotr
It’s true: You can change the world
You hear this argument from drillers, miners and loggers nowadays: For every tree we don’t cut here, a forest falls in Siberia. For every proposed regulated mine we don’t dig in the West, a river system is poisoned in China. For every oil or gas well we don’t permit here, a rainforest in Africa is […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
An activist who never let up
Norma Smith’s biography, Jeannette Rankin: America’s Conscience, records the inspiring courage, integrity and optimism of the first woman elected to Congress, dramatically recounting Rankin’s struggles and successes as an activist. Smith, a personal friend of Rankin, writes that as a congresswoman, Rankin’s interests shifted from suffrage to pacifism. She often said, “The first vote of […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Popular historian passes on
Historian Stephen Ambrose died Oct. 13 at age 66. Although Ambrose was best-known for his popular histories of World War II, he also wrote about the West. Undaunted Courage, the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and Nothing Like it in the World, about the building of the transcontinental railroad, were both national best-sellers. […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Heard Around the West
Judy Powell says she didn’t think twice about walking onto the plane at Los Angeles International Airport with a doll that she’d bought in Las Vegas for her grandson. Toenail clippers may get taken away and destroyed, she assumed, but never a child’s toy some 12 inches high. Wrong assumption. The doll was GI Joe, […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2002: Shadow Creatures
Small-town determination at 25 percent off
POWELL, Wyo. – To people just passing through this town of 5,500 people, the department store on the main street, near the post office and True Value Hardware, must seem painfully ordinary. Inside, customers browse displays of clothing, shoes and jewelry, picking out what they want to buy. But there’s a lot more to Powell […]
Posted inWotr
Retiring to work
Every day I’d leave high school about noon, take the subway to 23rd Street, run down to the basement cafeteria for a nutritious company meal, and then sort and deliver mail. My favorite route was the 40th to 30th floors, up there with the higher-flying Manhattan pigeons. The job was my transition to the adult […]
Posted inWotr
Peace of mind is a social contract
When it came time for me to buy a house, I purposely chose the Old Town neighborhood in Pocatello, Idaho, where I live and work. The neighborhood can be described as low-to-moderate income housing with many homes built as long as a century ago. I love the eclectic atmosphere of lived-in houses, each one individually […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
What’s in a name? Just ask Dwayne or Trucklene
I was at a country-and-western dance bar. I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Y’all wanna dance?” My suitor was a short man whose eyes failed to focus. His aftershave was a heady mixture of Jack Daniels and Old Spice. He wore his cowboy hat absurdly high, as if he were smuggling eggs under it. […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Conversation with a cowboy conservationist
Kick a sagebrush and you’ll find one jackrabbit and two cowboy poets, or so the saying goes nowadays. In the last 20 years, the rhymes that were once shared around a campfire under a lonesome moon have attracted a national spotlight. There are anthologies of cowboy poetry, coffeehouse performances, and an annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2002: Democrats kick back: The politics of growth
Heard Around the West
Utah has been making financial news, though the news is dismal. According to a report from the American Bankruptcy Institute, a resident of Utah is more likely to go bankrupt than a resident of any other state. About one out of every 35 Utah households filed for bankruptcy last year, says The Associated Press, while […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
A new planning tool takes flight
Have you ever endured an incredibly boring planning meeting at Town Hall? Some developer, standing before a blizzard of maps and charts, drones on about how his subdivision will fit seamlessly into your community. You know that the size and location of the project will forever mar the incredible view over the river to the […]
Posted inSeptember 30, 2002: Delta Blues
Idaho seeks a reputation – and a reality – free of hate
Nothing irritates us more in Idaho than our reputation as a haven for neo-Nazis. Our tolerance of hate-mongers in the past brought us this sorry legacy. These days, we can make a case that Idaho has become a place that stands up for human rights. That case was strengthened this summer, when Boise residents dedicated […]