Dear Friends

A class act Circulation staffer Kathy Martinez recently traveled to Las Vegas to attend the USPS National Postal Forum; there she learned that HCN is a very small fish in a very large ocean. According to Kathy, “When I told one postal official how much we spend on postage a year, she just turned away […]

Old and Older Aspen Although Aspen has become mythic as a place where great wealth collides with glamour and fame (and occasionally with trees), beneath the hoopla there beats the heart of a small Western town. That town was on display Jan. 31, when Aspen honored its own: environmentalist Joy Caudill, architect Sam Caudill, ski […]

A landmark potluck Three times a year, High Country News holds a board meeting and potluck somewhere in its 1 million square-mile territory. The potlucks especially always have lots of good company and good food. But – and this is no reflection on Socorro or Bozeman or Seattle or Salt Lake City or Cheyenne or […]

Visit from a stalwart Once upon a time, substantial chunks of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado were to be the scene of massive industrial development. Oil shale, aka the “rock that burns,” was to be mined and crushed, with the resulting hydrocarbons liquefied and then refined, freeing the U.S. from servitude to the Middle East. It […]

Reading into 1998 The bad thing about taking a break, which we accomplished by skipping the Jan. 5 issue, is coming back to a towering stack of accumulated papers from Western cities and small towns, as well as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post Weekly. As we troll for story leads, […]

Into the desert HCN staffers Rita Murphy, Jason Lenderman, Sara Phillips and Peter Chilson and about 175 other anti-nuclear protesters walked onto the Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site Nov. 9. Without fuss, security guards escorted everyone right into a barbwire detention pen because it is unlawful to enter the test site without permission. Staffers […]

Thinking out loud Patricia Nelson Limerick, the bane of the Old West’s historians – those (usually) white men who said white folks brought civilization as they rolled over a mostly empty, heathenish continent – came to Grand Junction, Colo., recently. During the afternoon she talked informally with members of the Western Colorado Congress, a coalition […]

The Research Fund The real burden of the Research Fund falls on the “gang of five,” a tenacious crew that is sitting in our central area putting together the letters that will determine HCN’s fate over the next year. It’s an especially tough job because ours is an open office, and so they can’t listen […]

The gardener’s payoff The best thing about the rain that continually pelted the West this summer is that gardens grew to gargantuan size. Now they’re flooding larders with zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, late corn, patty pan squash, calendula blooms to color a salad, dill and much, much more. This is the reward we reap, not by […]

“Depressing … diligent” Last spring we asked you to “give us a piece of your mind” by filling out our ninth annual reader survey. We asked for it and you delivered: 1,820 replies (10 percent of the paper’s readers) telling us what you liked, what you thought stepped over the line, what other newspapers and […]

Corrections Richard Millet, executive vice president of Denver operations at Woodward-Clyde, tells us that Robert (not Bill) Moran was employed as a part-time geochemist at his company, so he was not head geologist, as reported by HCN staffer Heather Abel in her lead story about “mining’s corporate nomads’ June 23. He also says that the […]

The contrary West We won’t regale you with old saws about weather, such as the one that goes, “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait a minute – it’ll change.” But we’d like to, because here and in some places like eastern Idaho, where it’s been so damp there are fears of a […]

Out of the hot Kay Firor and Kent Osterberg, accompanied by their children, Brent and Lissa, all of Cove, Ore., came through town. Kay teaches math at Eastern Oregon University, and Kent swears that he is a metrologist – a specialist in the measuring of things. The Red Robin Bike Tour of Colorado, a benefit […]

A skipped issue Twice a year, the High Country News staff takes pity on its readers and stops the flow of news for a fortnight. This bonus issue, with its four extra pages, will have to take the place of the skipped July 21 issue. Our next issue will be dated August 4, 1997 – […]

Word from Gretchen Circulation manager Gretchen Nicholoff is in the business of increasing HCN’s subscription rolls, so she was horrified to learn that some subscribers thought a letter she wrote threatened to cut them off. It is the Postal Service that is threatening HCN with non-delivery unless we get subscriber addresses right. Gretchen is grateful […]

Please, please, please The circulation department is mailing 700 requests to subscribers, asking this select group for their “official” addresses. These letters will get to you because we’re sending them – gasp! – first class, but your copies of HCN are now running the risk of being marked undeliverable by the post office because our […]