In 1996, Thomas Michael Power wrote Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies, an economic study of the Interior West, in which everything that happened was for the good. If the West were not the best of all worlds, it was as good as life would get on the coasts. We had half the money, but twice […]
Communities
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Heard around the West
Can drinking milk be considered cool? Former Idaho Dairy Princess Colleen Underwood thought so, if she could just copy some tricks from Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So during her reign as cow-milk royalty two years ago, Underwood leased a vending machine, put photos of the Dixie Chicks guzzling milk on the front, then filled it with […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Cybermapping the West – a new view
Cybermapping is a template of the inside of things, a grand tapestry of our cumulative desires. It’s our shadowmap.
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Church aims to purchase public land
WYOMING A national historic site along the Oregon Trail could end up in the hands of private owners. At the request of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, congressional delegates from Wyoming and Utah are drafting legislation permitting the sale of a several-hundred-acre parcel of land in central Wyoming to the […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Go west, fruit picker
WASHINGTON For years, migrant workers have flocked to eastern Washington to pick apples in the fall (HCN, 12/18/00: Troubled harvest). But with a jump in global competition, apple orchards have streamlined their operations to save costs, eliminating jobs in the process. This season, a late hailstorm wiped out nearly 30 percent of the apple crop […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Friendship in the Sagebrush West
When I think “anthology,” I usually think boring compilation or shallow “Best of” CD. But this year, three Western women have pulled together an anthology of writing that reminds me more of my favorite mix tape. In Woven on the Wind, editors Gaydell Collier, Linda Hasselstrom and Nancy Curtis unleash an outpouring of new writing […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Stargazers defend darkness in Arizona
Flagstaff becomes the first “International Dark-Sky City”
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Powell’s enduring teachings
What remains so astonishing about John Wesley Powell is that someone whose policy recommendations were almost totally ignored while he was alive should continue to command the attention of so many Western observers and decision makers a century after his death. Powell’s career studying the West included expeditions into the Rocky Mountains and, most notably, […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Heard around the West
He had nothing but the best intentions, says a Stanford University surgeon. Then the publicity got out of hand. So Dr. Simon Stertzer reluctantly sold the three Nevada strip clubs he’d bought to finance his medical research. Stertzer tried to explain to the North Las Vegas City Council that owning the all-nude Palomino as well […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Las Vegas: Images in light, images in stone
My brother, Karl, tells me the Las Vegas Strip is the only road in the United States that’s a National Scenic Byway after dark. It is scenic, though people tend to snicker when informed of this designation. We’re outside my brother’s apartment on the west side of the city. Karl points downtown, toward the Strip […]
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
Resort counties push for legal workers
Proposal from Colorado resort towns would expand guest-worker program
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
Heard around the West
Reading a book in these tense times can get you kicked off an airplane – not just once but twice. It happened in Philadelphia to 22-year-old Neil Godfrey. The book was Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, and Godfrey was carrying it when he tried to board a plane to Phoenix. Noticing a security guard staring […]
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
The importance of being nowhere
The day felt like rain and smelled like rain. The sky held the soft gray of a winter storm, the kind of weather Mexicans describe as equipatas, equal steps, to capture that idle way the rain on a December day can slowly drizzle across the land. It was 1957, and I was your basic 12-year-old, […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Curriculum for a desert classroom
Nearly a decade ago, Christine Beekman of the National Park Service stepped outside of the visitor center classroom and into the desert of southeast Utah, leading a boisterous third-grade class into a maze of sandstone formations. She organized a game designed to teach the students about predator-prey relations in ecosystems, dividing the kids into groups […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Welcome to (your name here), Wyoming
If you have hankered all your life to have a town named after you, the opportunity arose last June at the Casper, Wyo., Holiday Inn. A High Plains municipality named Jeffrey City went on the auction block for cheap, complete with water and sewer, pavement, tract houses, apartments, a post office, and beer on tap. […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Heard around the West
Where’s Humpty Dumpty when we need him? The egg on the other side of the looking-glass told Alice that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” The word in question these days is “organic,” whose definition counts a lot in the booming billion-dollar […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Remembering internment in Idaho
For just over three years, between August 1942 and October 1945, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were unwilling residents of the Minidoka War Relocation Authority Center in southern Idaho (HCN, 10/8/01: Lessons of an intolerant past). This fall, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts will host Whispered Silences, a multidisciplinary exploration of internment in […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Good Neighbor Handbook
Has your once-peaceful town been overrun by trophy homes, off-leash dogs and transplanted neighbors that just don’t seem to care? In eastern Washington, the Methow Conservancy is taking steps to prevent these sorts of unintended excesses. They’ve published the Good Neighbor Handbook: A Guide for Landowners in the Methow Valley. Authored by former HCN intern […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Heard around the West
Living with wildlife in the West can be a lot like living with a spouse – annoying. Just when you think you’ve figured out how to make the relationship hum, new quirks appear. And since black bears and coyotes can’t talk about it, we have to be canny enough to figure out what’s going wrong […]