Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, I used to live in the subdivision below Susan Ewing’s in Montana’s Gallatin Valley (HCN, 5/10/99). As a geologist with experience in groundwater consulting, I became involved in our neighborhood’s concerns about the impacts on our wells of yet another proposed subdivision in the area. While Montana’s intermontane valleys host abundant groundwater supplies […]

Dear HCN, Now that you have turned the bulk of an issue over to defending the prairie dog, and presumably you have it out of your system (HCN, 8/16/99), as a subscriber I can only hope that you will get back to the business of journalism and work on issues of true significance to the […]

Dear HCN, Stephen Lyons’ article on the Aryan marchers in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was terribly misleading and distorted against Idaho (HCN, 8/16/99). When I moved to this area in 1977, I had no idea about the Aryans. It wasn’t long before I learned of them firsthand. We would all like Butler and his group to […]

Dear HCN, Regarding Stephen Lyon’s essay “An ugly message marches down an Idaho street” (HCN, 8/16/99): The rise to power of the Nazi Party in 1933 was both surprising and rapid. Few people then anticipated the process or magnitude of events to come. Just shortly before, Germany had been a refuge from the wave of […]

Dear HCN, Steve Lyons rips on the Aryan Nations as a pack of dimwits (HCN, 8/16/99). Fine, I’m with him there, but it seems Lyons is so blinded by his own politically correct views that he didn’t catch himself perpetrating yet more stereotypes. As an expatriate Montanan, I resented the “Ford-with-Montana-plates’ sound bite. Since when […]

Dear HCN, To set the record straight, Tom Chapman is not an owner in TDX nor has he ever been. The TDX real estate brochures advertise private property for sale from one private party to other private parties. The TDX proposed homes are no different from other homes being constructed near Vail. The homes offered […]

Dear HCN, I read with interest and enjoyment your editorial about our former neighbor, Tom Chapman (HCN, 8/2/99). Of course, the problem is that when Congress created the wilderness lands in 1964, it chose to deal with inholdings sometime in the future. The value of those inholdings, like most real estate, has risen significantly since […]

Dear HCN, Jon Margolis’ piece on the taking project (HCN, 8/2/99) is factually incorrect and mischaracterizes FREE’s Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis seminars for federal judges. Margolis accepts verbatim the assertions put forth by Douglas Kendall of the Community Rights Counsel. Margolis never contacted FREE regarding his story. If he had, I would have told […]

Dear HCN, To Jon Marvel, anti-grazing campaigner: You just keep beatin” on “em, Jon, I love the sound of their squeal (HCN, 8/2/99). Fred Parkinson Oakland California This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Go, Jon.

Dear HCN, You owe Jon Marvel an apology (HCN, 8/2/99). It was irresponsible of you to have published an unattributed quotation comparing him to a war criminal. As an editor, I consider it a libelous statement. Jon Marvel is motivated by love of the West – the land and the people, including future generations – […]

Dear HCN, I know Jon Marvel, and he’s no Slobodan Milosevic. While Steve Stuebner’s profile of anti-grazing activist Jon Marvel in the Aug. 2, 1999 issue of HCN revealed a man rightly deserving of the title maverick or gadfly, he certainly is no Slobodan Milosevic. In that article, editor Betsy Marston mistakenly cited an anonymous […]

Dear HCN, Jon Marvel did not adopt his attitude toward ranchers or his extraordinary tactics overnight. As you report, his attitude was formed over the course of 30 years as a neighbor of ranchers and 20-plus years as a resident of Idaho (HCN, 8/2/99). This pattern is repeating itself time after time across the West. […]

Dear HCN, Despite Jon Marvel’s insistence that he is a lover of the land, his objective is not to improve the landscape in the West, but to play a game in which his unwillingness to entertain a holistic view of the issues endlessly entertains him. His agenda apparently dates back to the days he lived […]

Dear HCN, It does no good when environmentalists such as Jon Marvel use billboards. I quote from him: “I loved it … the open spaces, the beautiful mountain vistas …” (HCN, 8/2/99). He hates to see pristine creeks sullied by cattle. How about pristine views? Many make the argument the billboards are already there. My […]

Dear HCN, As a former resident of Boise, Idaho, and having hiked, camped and hunted extensively for many years in the arid areas that are targeted by the Idaho Watersheds Project, in particular, southeast Oregon, southwest Idaho and northern Nevada, I agree 100 percent with their agenda. Get those *#@??*&^ cows OFF the public land! […]

Dear HCN, Before launching into my diatribe, I want to thank you for the recent cover story on the history of the Butte mines (HCN, 6/7/99). It ought to be required reading in history classes in Montana public schools. Now, here’s my response to the letter you printed from Battle Mountain Gold’s corporate consigliere (HCN, […]

Dear HCN, Regarding Randolph F. Edwards’ brutal attack on my “dumb poorly drawn cartoon” of park rangers with deformed heads, Mr. Edwards must realize that I doodle from experience. I was a park ranger at Arches National Park for 10 years and the consensus among field rangers (the ones who actually work in the park, […]

The artful cartoon by Jim Stiles (HCN, 5/24/99) was deeply appreciated by many current and former National Park Service (NPS) rangers who have first-hand knowledge of the extent to which our parks have become increasingly militarized. I worked for the NPS as a seasonal backcountry ranger for six years (1987-92), and consistently received official commendations […]

Dear HCN, My regular economic pen pal, Ed Marston, interprets the economic data in the Claiborne-Ortenberg Foundation’s report Montana: People and the Economy as showing that Montanans live in “poverty,” are “hurting” and “impoverished,” face a “failing” and “weak” economy, and do not live in a “middle-class’ society (HCN, 6/21/99). He concludes that we do […]

Dear HCN, Dan Flores (-In Montana: The view from the ranchette,” HCN, 5/10/99) is technically correct when he writes that A.B. Guthrie Jr. was a Midwesterner. It is misleading, however, to accuse the author of The Big Sky of being just another hypocritical carpetbagger Californicating Montana while criticizing others for doing so. In 1901, his […]