Vital Signs Juan Delgado and Thomas McGovern, 128 pages, paperback: $18.95.Heyday and the Inlandia Institute, 2013. San Bernardino, Calif., has a reputation for poverty and crime, but poet Juan Delgado and photographer Thomas McGovern offer a vibrant view of the city’s working-class Latino neighborhoods in their new book, Vital Signs. The people of this urban […]
Communities
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
In defense of bibliopedestrianism
A writer’s love of reading while walking in Nevada’s Great Basin desert.
Posted inGoat
A report aims to change the way we think about Native justice
In 1881, a Brulé Lakota man in South Dakota who shot and killed another member of his tribe was sentenced to death by federal officials who thought the tribal punishment of eight horses, $600 and a blanket was too lenient. The case set a precedent that certain crimes committed on tribal lands are to be […]
Posted inWotr
Note to concessionaires: You don’t own the land
A reminder for private companies that public land use permits don’t make them owners.
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
A review of West Coast: Bering to Baja
West Coast: Bering to Baja Photographs by David Freese, Foreword by Naomi Rosenblum with text by Simon Winchester, 191 pages, hardcover:$60. George F. Thompson Publishing, 2012. “I have always been drawn to transitional places,” writes photographer David Freese in West Coast: Bering to Baja. “For me, there is no more fascinating place on Earth than […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
A tiny town gets a new name and a coyote joins a 5K race
THE WESTAs writer Jeremy Engdahl-Johnson puts it, “There were lots of ways to lose money during the government shutdown that choked off Grand Canyon river trips for 11 days in early October.” There were also unusual trickle-down effects, so to speak. A Flagstaff-based company called River Cans Clean disposes of most of the human waste […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Ed Quillen anthology available now
Last June, regular High Country News contributor, Denver Post columnist and dear friend Ed Quillen died suddenly. Now, his daughter, Abby Quillen, has compiled an eBook anthology, Dispatches from the High Country: Essays on the West from High Country News, available on Amazon Kindle and through Smashwords. She’s also gathered his best Denver Post columns […]
Posted inDecember 9, 2013: The Tree Coroners
Exploring the intersection of animal and human
Survival SkillsJean Ryan197 pages, paperback: $15.95.Ashland Creek, 2013. Early in Jean Ryan’s debut collection of stories, a woman in a wetsuit strokes an octopus’ head while it caresses her face with the tip of one arm. The scene illustrates one of the author’s favorite themes: We’re at our best, we humans, when we allow ourselves […]
Posted inGoat
Sin City’s downtown is on the brink of reinvention
“We must discard the view that environmentalism means living around trees and that urbanites should always fight to preserve a city’s physical past. We must stop idolizing home ownership, which favors suburban tract homes over high-rise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages. We should eschew the simplistic view that better long-distance communication will reduce our […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
California Boomin’
Longtime contributor and former HCN editor Jon Christensen is shaking up the academic world with the latest edition of Boom: A Journal of California. A native Californian and adjunct professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Jon now edits the quarterly that, he says, “strives to bottle that lively mixture of what makes […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
Redrock storyscapes
Escalante. Monticello. Manti-La Sal. Sheiks Flat. Kigalia. Tavaputs. Moroni Slopes. Spoken like mantras, these place names conjure the Utah canyon country’s bastard heritage – Spanish, Navajo, Ute, Anglo and Mormon. Today, they entice dreamers with their visionary topographies. But in earlier days it was the absence of names that drew people eager to fill in […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
The tyranny of standardized tests
My wife and I taught school on the Venetie Indian Reservation in Alaska for eight years (“Cutting Class,” HCN, 10/28/13). Arctic Village and Venetie are several hundred miles from the nearest road above the Arctic Circle. Our Athabaskan students were enthusiastic learners. The school provided a place to learn all the typical school subjects like […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
A redneck hippie in search of common ground
Being a self-proclaimed “redneck hippie” and/or “gun-toting liberal,” I really appreciated Brendan Buzzard’s essay (“The lines that bind us,” HCN, 10/14/13). As Buzzard argues, we do need to remember to be human first and treat each other with the respect that all humans deserve. The judgments that are made based on the vehicle a person […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
“Bear with me,” he said, and meant it
THE NATIONWhat combines the scents of musky dirt, grain and old-fashioned hay barn in a way that appeals to the discerning cow as well as to your typical wannabe cowboy, who imagines himself “with the sun and dust clouds casting a warm light across his weathered skin?” The answer is Farmer’s Cologne, reports Modern Farmer […]
Posted inNovember 25, 2013: Ecosystems 101
Beyond the bright lights
It’s hard to believe but, somehow, whenever I read about Native Americans and casinos in High Country News, I always hear only about the statistics citing the amazing financial boon created by these tributes to modern-day Babylon (“Whose Apache Homelands?” HCN, 10/14/13). Never do I hear but a passing reference to the damage inflicted on individual […]
Posted inWotr
On being away from my primal landscape
It was no secret I didn’t want to leave the West.
Posted inGoat
Regulations for Native American ‘artifacts’ auctions may still be too lax
Two weeks ago, a Lakota sacred object advertised as a “Sioux Beaded and Quilled hide Shirt” was set to be auctioned off in Boston, Mass. and was expected to fetch $150,000-250,000. Minutes before the bidding began on Nov. 9, Skinner auction house pulled the item in response to pressure from attorneys and tribal officials representing […]