Hecho a Mano, by James S. Griffith. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Paperback: $17.95. 104 pages. Driving through Tucson, Ariz., a visitor might not register the ornate front-yard fences and low-rider cars along the city’s palm-lined streets. Yet in the book Hecho a Mano, by folklorist Jim Griffith, what’s everyday comes vividly alive. Griffith takes […]
Communities
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Making buffalo pay
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Anyone looking at the buffalo ranching industry over the past decade would see signs of both promise and disappointment. In the early to mid ’90s, so many ranchers wanted in that the price of “herd stock” – or a starter herd – quadrupled. Ranchers […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
A Buffalo Commons bibliography
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bergman, Roger, “Theocentric or Anthropocentric? Catholic Teaching on the Environment: A View from the Great Plains,” pp. 204-228 in Practical Theology: Perspectives from the Plains, Omaha: Creighton University Press, 2000, edited by Michael G. Lawler and Gail S. Risch. Callenbach, Ernest, Bring Back the […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Heard around the West
Cattle have always enjoyed right of way in the West. If the road is suddenly filled with mooing and manuring animals, it’s up to a motorist to slow down and enjoy the passing herd. If you’re unlucky enough to crest a hill and crash into a 2,000-pound cow, the animal is legally innocent; it’s the […]
Posted inJanuary 15, 2001: Plains sense
Plains sense
Frank and Deborah Popper’s ‘Buffalo Commons’ is creeping toward reality
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Mormonism 101: A primer for gentiles
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Being Green in the Land of the Saints.” The Mormon faith began in 1820, when Joseph Smith, then 14 years old, had a vision of God and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees near his home in Palmyra, N.Y. Three years later, the […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Ombudsman could be town’s ticket
MONTANA Victims of a 1996 train derailment that spilled 133,000 pounds of chemicals near Alberton, Mont., may finally get some help. Though Montana Rail Link and the Environmental Protection Agency cleaned up a 30-acre area after the spill, many residents continue to complain of lingering pollution and illness. But neither the company nor the regional […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Little town shows big heart in the face ofgrowth
CALIFORNIA Silicon Valley has pumped $50 million into California open space preservation since 1998. But this fall, on California’s central coast, residents of the small town of Cambria showed that sheer will also goes a long way in the fight against development. Hong Kong investors had plans to put over 250 homes on 417 seaside […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Bring back towns
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream makes the buzzwords “new urbanism” come alive. The authors, who are community planners, have written and designed an easily accessible and smartly illustrated book, which is not surprising, since Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck believe that what works to build […]
Posted inDecember 18, 2000: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?
Heard around the West
Oh, to be a stray in San Francisco, where a software billionaire’s gift has made animal homelessness a Cinderella experience. Once picked up from the streets, cats, for example, move to a loft where they can choose to watch mice run on television or loll on top of a six-foot climbing tree. Piped-in air to […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Tickling the green funny bone
In the increasingly crowded world of Web magazines focused on the environment, it’s getting hard for the green at heart to decide what to bookmark. Which is why the founders of Grist magazine have injected something rare into their coverage of the often depressing retreat of the natural world: humor. “We’ve tried to cut through […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
A botanical El Dorado
A new quarterly journal from the Siskiyou Field Institute in Cave Junction, Ore., devotes itself to “trees, rocks, critters, creeks, humans, snakes” – the list goes on to include little-known but wonderfully named species like “chalcedon checkerspots” and “hooded ladies tresses.” All inhabit a landscape that ecologists call the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. It includes the Pacific […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Backtracking
“Western road maps are full of old trails: the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Oregon Trail, the Sante Fe Trail, the Outlaw Trail, and the Nez Perce Trail. Their vague lines connect the West that was to the West that is. They may even stretch to the West we imagine will be. But underneath them, […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Road Block
A pack of ‘Chicanos, Marines and hippies’ steps into the path of New Mexico’s sprawl machine
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘Start letting mom pack that trunk’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Bob Davey is the president of the Valley Improvement Association: “Horizon’s plan was not a shabby idea. On paper it looked very good. The problem was that they were working in an agricultural area, and the county was not equipped to handle it. This […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘It’s a clash of visions’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Ray Garcia is president of the Historic Tome Adelino Neighborhood Association: “This place is different. It’s special. This is the second oldest community in Valencia County. We’re pretty tough, like those old cottonwoods, no? “We formed a neighborhood association two years ago to fight […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘The bridge is only part of the puzzle’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Alicia Aguilar is a real estate agent and Valencia County commissioner: “When I first came into office, we were one of the fastest growing counties in the state and I didn’t see any planning going on. Bernalillo County had tightened its regulations on mobile […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
‘No one is at the steering wheel’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Lora Lucero is vice president of the New Mexico chapter of the American Planning Association: “Who’s guiding growth right now is no one. No one is at the steering wheel. It’s occurring very haphazardly, it’s occurring incrementally, project by project, application by application, and […]
Posted inDecember 4, 2000: Road Block
Heard around the West
Think about writing an almost minute-by-minute record of your life: documenting the shoes you’re wearing, rating brands of snack food and occasionally taping to your notes samples of recently harvested toenail clippings. Would anyone bother reading or even handling this intimate minutia? Sure they would, said octogenarian Robert Shields in Dayton, Wash., who obsessively noted […]
Posted inNovember 20, 2000: Water pressure
Hear that whistle blowin’
A modern-day railroad baron stakes a claim in an ambivalent town