Calamity JaneBernard Schopen270 pages, softcover:$16.95.Baobab Press, 2013. After two decades of silence, former mystery writer Bernard Schopen is back with Calamity Jane, a new novel that asks serious questions about the West. His protagonist, independent filmmaker Jane Harmon, returns triumphantly from Hollywood to Blue Lake, Nevada, to showcase The Last Roundup, a documentary she’s made […]
Communities
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Duwamish sludge, from source to sink
A little over three miles from the mouth of the Lower Duwamish Waterway (once known as the Duwamish River), there is a small piece of property wreathed with chain-link fence and signs that warn in various languages of various threats to life and limb. This is Terminal 117, or T-117, former home of roofing material […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Summer publishing break
In our 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule, we’ll be skipping the next issue. Look for High Country News in your mailbox again around July 21. You can keep up with Western news and views on our website, hcn.org, for fresh articles, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. June board meetingAt the tail end of May, 10 […]
Posted inJune 23, 2014: River of No Return
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America by Valerie K. Verzuh
Woven Identities: Basketry Art of Western North America Valerie K. Verzuh, 219 pages, hardcover: $34.95, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2013 Few Native American languages have a word for “art.” Basket-weaving is not considered art, in the sense of work made for display; rather, as one Apache elder says, it is the creation of “pieces […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
When a parent dies, do we let the house fall?
Every generation must decide what to do with the lives that preceded theirs.
Posted inWotr
Fighting GMO’s: a passionate bunch of people move mountains
Did this really happen? Did a young organic farmer discover that the multinational agricultural firm Syngenta had secretly planted genetically modified sugar beets (banned in the company’s native Switzerland) near his small fields, and in other leased plots around southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley? Did he then plough under his own crop because of the risk […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Border out of control
National security runs roughshod over the Arizona wild.
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
How mining transforms the West’s ranching communities
Photographs of people and places in flux.
Posted inGoat
Dispatch from Yosemite: Honoring national parks’ black heritage
In the fading light of a late spring evening, gospel singer Sista Monica Parker sat humming on a bench at the Yellow Pines Campground in Yosemite National Park. There she waited patiently for others to gather. Quiet at first, her melodic voice gained strength as she swayed to the rhythm of a hymn perhaps not […]
Posted inWotr
He’s the linchpin of a remote western Colorado town
Take the Western boots off Don Colcord, add more trees to the main street of Nucla, Colorado, and you’d have the movie set for “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with Colcord, a pharmacist, playing Jimmy Stewart’s role as the principled banker of a small New England town. But Colcord lives in arid western Colorado, in a town […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Inexhaustible supply
Regarding “Two-Wheel Revolution” (HCN, 4/28/14), I was amused by your comparison of Gallup to Santa Fe as to the prevalence of “small loan companies.” The problems in Gallup are symptoms of problems in Santa Fe: elite concentrations of wealth and unsustainable consumption. As Voltaire wrote hundreds of years ago: “The wealth of the rich is […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Oil and gas wells hold a place of honor in a Colorado subdivision
Oil and gas infrastructure is common near homes in Weld County, Colorado, which has more than 20,000 active wells. But wells, pumpjacks and tanks seem to hold a place of honor in the Frederick subdivision of Wyndham Hill, in spots where you might expect parks and playgrounds. This article appeared in the print edition of […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Parks deserve robust budgets
Thank you for your article on the national parks and cultural diversity (“Parks For All?” HCN, 5/12/14). However, it contained a critical error about the government shutdown and the Utah national parks. You wrote, “During last fall’s federal shutdown, states like Utah took over some national parks, fueling calls from some locals for permanent control.” […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann by Joe Ashbrook Nickell
Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann Joe Ashbrook Nickell, 140 pages, hardcover: $45. Missoula Art Museum In Tainted Revelations: The Art of Bill Ohrmann, author Joe Ashbrook Nickell provides a glimpse into the psyche of a 95-year-old artist still grappling with his place in the world. Tension is palpable in the oeuvre of this […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
The first college degree in drones, a baby born in Walmart parking lot and more
IDAHOIn the TV studio, the faces of the journalists questioning the four Republican would-be candidates for Idaho governor sometimes registered dismay, other times wonder. They simply could not believe what they were hearing, when Walt Bayes declared his “main loyalty” was to God and against vile affections and wickedness, when motorcyclist Harley Brown boasted that […]
Posted inJune 9, 2014: Border Out of Control
Thumbs up and still breathing
Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on FireJerry D. Mathes II221 pages, softcover: $17.95.Caxton Press, 2013. Jerry D. Mathes’ second nonfiction book, Ahead of the Flaming Front, portrays the day-to-day life of a wildland firefighter. With a poet’s sense of language, Mathes describes his experiences as a rookie, gaining knowledge as he rises through […]
Posted inWotr
Los Angeles needs to leave a rural valley alone
If we’re going to limit the coming climate change impacts, we surely need to harness a lot of solar electricity. But proposals from Los Angeles to spread four square miles of solar panels across rural Owens Valley have local people saying: “Whoa! Doesn’t the sun shine in L.A.?” Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Archaeology’s poisonous past
Most U.S. ethnographic collections are contaminated with toxins. Will new cleaning methods help tribes reclaim artifacts?
Posted inArticles
Will gun control do more harm than good?
As Americans grapple with the best way to stem the tide of mass shootings that have terrorized the country in recent years, one liberal journalist and author is arguing that adding gun control laws could actually do more harm than good in the effort to make Americans safer. In his recent book “Gun Guys: A […]
Posted inMay 26, 2014: The Great Gun Rights Divide
Book Review: The Black Place: Two Seasons
The Black Place: Two Seasonsphotographs by Walter W. Nelson,essay by Douglas Preston108 pages, clothbound: $45. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2014 In the 1930s, while driving through northwest New Mexico, artist Georgia O’Keeffe stumbled upon a remote, uninhabited landscape she dubbed “The Black Place” – tall hills of layered sediment, coated in brown and black […]