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 […]

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 […]

Moving on and up Just as we are about to send yet another batch of interns – Meg, Shara and Chip – out into a cruel and uncaring world, we hear that previous graduates of HCN’s program, despite their experience here, are doing well. Cathy Ciarlo went on to earn her law degree from Northwestern […]

Good news, bad news This column is usually free of the “issues” that permeate the rest of the paper. The “Dear friends” column is HCN’s version of a small-town cafe’s liars’ table. It is here that we gossip, remark on who got married or had a child, and welcome visitors. But this fortnight’s mix of […]

Dead deer come to town Hunting season has begun with a bang, so to speak, in the mountains that surround Paonia. Staffers have had to compete for parking on Grand Avenue with vehicles festooned by dead deer, and out one office window which faces a very busy meat packing plant, we can see a procession […]

Rockin’ and rollin’ The rural inland West is going out of its way to make Californians feel welcome. First we had summer fires that blanketed the area in smog. After the fires came the mud flows, including one that blocked Interstate 70 west of Glenwood Springs, Colo. Then on Sept. 13, moments after midnight, western […]

‘Assault on the Male’ Paonia residents got a sneak preview in the town hall of “Assault on the Male,” a BBC documentary that showed on the Discovery Channel Sept. 4. The preview and talk were courtesy of Theo Colborn, a Paonia resident and former local pharmacist who spends most of her time in Washington, D.C., […]

Energy efficient The U.S. Department of Energy has decided that High Country News walks its talk. HCN is one of seven recipients of the agency’s National Energy Awards. The newspaper was selected because its retrofitted building – once a feed and auto parts store – demonstrated admirable energy efficiency. The building was designed by architect […]

Ray Ring and company High Country News now has an Editor Emeritus, an Editor, an Associate Editor and, as of July 6, a Senior Editor. This last is Ray Ring, who has spent the past 10 years or so writing novels and free-lance newspaper and magazine articles in Tucson, Arizona. Altogether, Ray has lived and […]

Fires on the hillside The town of Paonia, where High Country News has its office, decided not to set off fireworks July 4th – nature was already providing a spectacular display. Lightning without rain had turned tinder-dry juniper hillsides above the town into fast-moving blazes, some spouting flames up to 80 feet tall. Although firefighters […]

Good-bye, for a while High Country News takes its semi-annual vacation, skipping the July 11 issue. It will return with the July 25 issue. The idea is to give readers a chance to catch up on the issues that have been piling up in bathrooms and on espresso tables. Pun-ishing address change There is nothing […]

1984 Redux A decade late, High Country News has caught up to George Orwell’s 1984. With the help of a grant from the Surdna Foundation, a team here has begun to create an electronic index and archive of back issues. Almost certainly we will introduce new errors as we transfer information from print to electrical […]

Good news Congratulations to former HCN intern Zaz Hollander, who was hired recently by the Daily Astorian. Zaz will cover environmental issues on the Oregon coast. Congratulations as well to HCN’s Great Basin editor, Jon Christensen. His lead story in the Aug. 9, 1993, issue of HCN on the Diamond Springs Ranch in Nevada headlined, […]

Odds and ends The Grand Canyon Community Library writes to say: “Our library burned to the ground on March 18. We are in dire need of donations if anyone has books they no longer need.” The library can be reached at P.O. Box 518, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023-0518. Subscribers Rick and Lindsay Silverman and son […]

Odds and ends Diane Sylvain, who sends checks to HCN’s writers, artists and photographers, calls them mystery free-lancers: people whose work we’ve just used, but for whom we no longer have correct addresses. At the moment, we’re trying to reach William L. Payne, Will C. Wright, Roger Holcomb, Alan McKnight, Roxann Moore, Phillip Renault and […]

We want advice If all goes well, subscribers should soon receive the annual High Country News survey. The paper’s surveys don’t ask what kind of car you drive, or your annual income, or where you vacation. But we do ask questions to guide us in putting out the newspaper. And if you haven’t responded to […]