Support for tax levy breaks an Idaho tradition
Communities
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
A seminal sprawl fight ends in compromise
A historic Arizona ranch will become a retirement community
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
A sand-brown world
… and the tourists in the curio shop not knowing what to say for once in their lives, but feeling the ground rolling beneath them, experience something most of them won’t see in a lifetime, up on the shelf the kachina dolls, those little gods of beneficence who’ve stood there so long they’re mad about […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Takings legislation cracks Oregon’s green foundation
Rural landowners say government is regulating them to death
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Heard around the West
James Watt is positively basking in nostalgia these days. For those who don’t recall his bumpy years in Washington, D.C., Watt was the former Interior Department secretary under President Reagan, who pushed for energetic energy development on all public lands. When The Denver Post caught up with Watt recently, he was delighted to talk about […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Finding home
We were all outside watching the sunset from the casita, which had a high view of the city. From there, the “big picture” was not abstract. It was real, tangible, visible – we could just make out the Burger King sign towering beyond the border fence. The sun was blood red, and then the whole […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Heard around the West
Our hearts go out to that beloved icon of the Forest Service, Smokey Bear. Anxiously, perhaps, the big bear awaits his new makeover. Sure, he’ll still be pot-bellied, furry and sport a forest ranger hat. But it’s a safe bet he will no longer deliver the message: “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The spokesbear […]
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Fruita draws the line against sprawl
Rural town takes a page from ritzy mountain enclaves
Posted inMay 7, 2001: Back into the woods
Heard around the West
Somewhat of a ham when it comes to boosting Idaho’s agriculture or timber industry, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig has obligingly posed for photos standing next to a large person peering out from a bulging potato costume. But his Web site, www.senate.gov/~craig/frontpage.htm, recently featured the beaming Republican senator showing off his perky six-month-old West Highland terrier. […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Benigna’s Chimayo: Cuentos from the Old Plaza
And then Grandma sits down on an old wooden wheel, leans on her knees, tucks her skirt between her legs, and begins her favorite of the old stories. I listen, watching the dust motes float in shafts of sunlight … To a young Don Usner, summers in the New Mexican hamlet of Chimayo meant chili […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Fool’s Gold: Telluride’s ‘magical realism’
Rob Schultheis moved to Colorado in 1973, when pop stars began singing about the Rocky Mountains and asking whether you’d ever been “mellow.” His newest book, Fool’s Gold, zooms in on his home turf of Telluride, where “summer is briefer than a butterfly’s dream … autumn an afterthought, and winter rules.” When Schultheis arrived, Telluride […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Monument status could wreck ruins
BLM officials need money to manage masses
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
Heard around the West
“WOW! Did I miss something?” asks Patrice Mason in her letter to the Moab, Utah, Times-Independent. Then she jumped into the fray: “I have a vagina. Half of the people in Moab have vaginas. And let us not forget that each and every one of us passed through one on the way into the world. […]
Posted inApril 23, 2001: The Big Blowup
An environmentalist in the heart of cowboy culture
ELKO, Nev. — It’s not often that the prospect of a humanities lecture stirs protest. But that’s what happened when former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall was invited to give the annual lecture at the 17th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering. The Elko gathering has become the state’s premier folklore event, and it brings about 8,000 people […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
Wild in the city
Too often when we speak of wildness in the West, we only envision vast untracked settings like the Bob Marshall Wilderness, High Unitas or the Owyhee Canyonlands. It is easy to forget that wildness can still be found within our ever-growing urban landscapes. Now, editors Michael Houck and M.J. Cody have released a new book, […]
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
How green is this growth?
Opposition builds against a ‘model’ development in Southern California
Posted inApril 9, 2001: The water empress of Vegas
Heard around the West
How low-flow can you go? In Redmond, Wash., the developer of a “Green Built” resort community touts its toilets as so advanced, they adapt to individual behavior, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Australian-made Caroma toilets require their users to decide how much water to flush with: one button for No. 1 and another for No. […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Time Warp
Shoot, the enviros haven’t won the battle for the West’s public lands after all Back in the 1980s, the West was cut and dried. Ronald Reagan and James Watt were there to protect us from soft-on-Communism redwoods, while environmentalists climbed tripods and lay down on the statehouse steps in protest. There were good guys and […]
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Teach the children well
Corporations, conservationists vie for students’ minds in the unregulated world of environmental education
Posted inMarch 26, 2001: Teach the children well
Luxury looms over Moab
A planned upscale resort has activists fearing “Aspenization”