A Beltway correspondent High Country News has just opened a bureau in Washington, D.C. It will be manned by Philip Shabecoff, the creator and publisher of an electronic publication named Green Wire and a 32-year veteran of The New York Times. He spent 1977 to 1991 on the environmental beat out of Washington, D.C. Before […]
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Posted inSeptember 18, 1995: The West's fisheries spin out of control
Dear friends
On to Wyoming As hunters in camouflage toting bows and muzzleloaders converged on western Colorado in early September, the HCN staff worked overtime preparing for the 25th anniversary of the paper, in Lander, Wyo. We’ll have a report in the next issue on the celebration and Western conversation. Meanwhile, to readers that included rancher Jake […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Dear Friends
Suddenly, late summer It turned hot, and then it turned humid in this mountain valley that receives only 9 to 11 inches of rain a year. Although our swamp coolers can’t keep up, we tell ourselves to enjoy this damp and still warm August weather – slant light announces that fall isn’t far away. Lots […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 1995: I came, I saw, I wrote a guidebook
Dear readers
High Country News is put together every two weeks in much the way a Jackson Pollock-type painting is put together. And that is the approach we have taken to the ceremony marking the paper’s 25 years in the West: impromptu, short on formal presentations and long on directness. We’re thinking of Saturday, Sept. 9, as […]
Posted inAugust 21, 1995: HCN's founder fights his last fight, yet again
Dear friends
Thank you, Ray Ring To avoid a fight, we waited on this column until senior editor Ray Ring was out of the office. Not that Ray has been argumentative while here. Far from it. But he is a man who has never heard a compliment he liked. If we were writing this just for Ray, […]
Posted inAugust 7, 1995: Fighting fires, and indignities
Dear friends
A celebration Twenty-five years ago, schoolteacher-rancher-activist Tom Bell of Lander, Wyo., had the nutty, impractical, unsustainable idea of founding a newspaper to cover environmental issues in the rural, inland West. On Saturday, Sept. 9, Bell (who lost his ranch while establishing the paper) and scores of like spirits will gather in Lander, Wyo., to celebrate […]
Posted inJuly 24, 1995: Making a mountain into a starbase
Dear friends
Snowplows in June Summer in this 6,000-foot mountain valley unofficially arrived July 5; up until then snow fell and dusted the West Elk Mountains overnight, and something called rain dripped every other day. The air felt more like October. Finally, 90-degree heat moved in – this was more like it! – though we could still […]
Posted inJune 26, 1995: Colorado's prison slayer
Dear Friends
Skipped issue Librarians especially should note that there will be no July 10 issue. This annual break allows readers to catch up on articles they haven’t read, and to get out into the great outdoors while it is still great. Getting into the higher outdoors is difficult around Paonia. Kebler Pass, which links us to […]
Posted inJune 12, 1995: The Southwest's last real river: Will it flow on?
Dear Friends
It must be spring Wyomingites Geneen Marie Haugen and David Titcomb stopped by on Memorial Day, hoping to get away from the snow and rain. “Fat chance,” they reported. With no television reception or newspaper delivery at their house, they told us they like picking up High Country News for the latest scoop – even […]
Posted inMay 29, 1995: Politics 101
Dear Friends
Ramon in Paonia We’re a little upset with Ramon – an activist against logging clearcuts whose 20 acres of private land is the staging ground for the continuing fight against fragmenting the Cove/Mallard area in central Idaho (HCN, 3/6/95). If we had known the exact day of Ramon’s visit, we would have organized a public […]
Posted inMay 15, 1995: Dog and pony show about salmon and owls
Dear friends
Semi-special Since several recent issues have been labeled “special” because of their long planning time and extra pages, we were loath to call this edition on the Endangered Species Act a special issue too. But as the publication date approached, pages filled with yet more dimensions of the story. So we compromised: no extra pages […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Dear friends
Stacked deck? When Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young decided to leave the Beltway to hear opinions on changing the Endangered Species Act, he set no House (Natural) Resource Committee hearings in what we think of as The West: Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, or South Dakota. Young selected mainly small […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Dear friends
Good-bye and welcome Congratulations to former HCN employee Amy Conley and spouse Robert Hayutin on the birth of their daughter Sabina. Amy was a person of all trades in the office, specializing in direct mail and circulation, until Sabina demanded her attention. We will miss Amy, who remained cheerful even when confronted with thousands of […]
Posted inApril 3, 1995: The Great Basin: America's wasteland seeks a new identity
Dear friends
A special issue Longtime readers will notice that this edition of the paper is fatter than usual by 12 pages and written primarily by one person, Jon Christensen, who covers the vast Great Basin as our regional editor. This special issue has been many months in the making, and Jon joined staff in Paonia for […]
Posted inMarch 20, 1995: The fight for Reclamation
Dear Friends
Spring visitors Two roving college classes each spent several hours at High Country News listening to talks about the West and asking questions about this nonprofit newspaper. They wanted to know how to cover a vast area with no staff, and in particular, more about Glen Canyon Dam, which both groups had just toured. By […]
Posted inMarch 6, 1995: The fires next time
Dear Friends
Odds and ends The Feb. 20, 1995, essay by Jon Margolis – -Waaaaaaaah! The West refuses to be weaned’ – set the telephone to ringing and filled P.O. Box 1090. Rancher Sid Goodloe of Capitan, N.M., argued that it “didn’t have enough class to make the wastebasket beside your desk, much less the back page […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 1995: No more ignoring the obvious: Idaho sucks itself dry
Dear Friends
Now playing at the Cheyenne Opera HCN poetry editor Chip Rawlins recently traveled from his home in the small town of Boulder, Wyo., to the Wyoming Capitol to take a peek at his tax dollars at work. To his amazement, Chip found himself watching an opera he thinks was called The Merchants of Menace. He […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 1995: The wolves are back, big time
Dear friends
Jim Stiak, reporter High Country News was honored last year when The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog chose this newspaper for one of its capsule reviews, calling HCN “the model for eco-media reporting.” The example the catalog chose to represent the paper was Jim Stiak’s lead story on timber theft, a concise exposé of how the […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 1995: What a long strange trip it's been
Dear friends
A special issue Usually, 16 pages every other week is all it takes to report the news from our million-square-mile West, this being the sleepy region it is. But because we skipped an issue, and because writer Ray Ring has a lengthy report on Denver International Airport, and because of what we call the “wolf […]
Posted inDecember 26, 1994: Albuquerque learns it really is a desert town
Dear friends
We break for winter Our little joke is that twice a year, to enable you to catch up with your High Country News reading, we skip an issue. That’s true. But the additional truth is that staff also needs a break every six months or so. As a result of meeting our mutual needs, there […]