Writers on the Range, redux
In the Dear Friends column for June 18, 2001, we discussed HCN’s op-ed syndicate, Writers on the Range, and the extent to which it should air a variety of views. The heart of the discussion was a column by Frank Carroll, a Potlatch timber company employee. In response, we got a variety of reactions. Bill Croke, who has written three WOTR essays out of Cody, Wyo., wrote, “If HCN serves the cappuccino crowd and no one else, then you are failing at your stated mission. Conservatives also love the West. I am one. So hold on to Frank Carroll (and Steve Lyons and Dan Kemmis when they are touched by sanity), and the West will be better served.”
Allen Best, a frequent contributor to HCN, homed in on the critic of the Carroll column, board member Andy Wiessner: “Andy should be open to the idea of gray nuances. He spent a career after leaving D.C. trying to put together land trades for people with a gazillion dollars. Sometimes these land trades were rejected by the populace simply because they were proposed by people with lots of money – overlooking the possibility that public good and private good could sometimes coincide in unlikely ways.”
Writer Susan Zakin, back in Tucson after a journalism-teaching stint in Madagascar, and who writes for both HCN and WOTR, wrote that she “was heartened to read of board member Andy Wiessner’s challenge to a practice at High Country News that I have long found disturbing.” Diverse views and voices “should be presented in a way that conforms with basic journalistic ethics. This does not include giving free space to an industry flack. This has happened not only in Writers on the Range but also in HCN. This practice is not only politically naive but also unprofessional.”
Tune in
Radio High Country News, which just turned 2, has finally reached the coast – the West Coast. KWMR in West Marin, Calif., is now airing two shows every other Monday 11 a.m. to noon.
Other new stations are: KUNR in northern Nevada and northwestern California, Saturdays 10:00 to 10:30 a.m.; KUGS in Bellingham, Wash., Thursdays 6:00 to 6:30 p.m.; and KSFC in Spokane, Wash., Tuesdays 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. and 4:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Please let the stations know if you appreciate the program. Radio HCN is now on 21 stations in seven states. For a list, visit www.hcn.org/radio/.
If you’d like to hear Radio HCN in your area, send a note to radio@hcn.org or call Adam Burke at 970/527-4898, telling us where you listen, and the call letters of your station.
Thank you, Madison and Wes
Subscriber Madison Brown, a retired social worker who lives in Staunton, Va., had an extra day after climbing several of the Fourteeners that tower over the Arkansas River Valley. What better way to spend his day, he thought, than volunteering for HCN. Little did he know that we’d put him to work cleaning the outside of HCN’s windows, which he did very well. But he balked at cleaning the inside of the windows: “That’s the job of the staffer who sits there.”
Thanks to reader Wes Perrin for telling us that in the “You can contact” box for the June 4, 2001, article on Oregon’s land-use planning, we incorrectly identified state Representative Max Williams as a U.S. congressman.
Visitors
High Country News has a variety of visitors, but none have arrived in such collective style as the 14 members of the International 190 SL Group – people from around the country who drive restored 190 SL Mercedes Benzes. HCN was a stop on a tour that started in Leadville, and included a raft trip on the Arkansas, a visit to the marble-carving symposium at the tiny town of Marble, Colo. (“Lots of electric generators and dust and noise and fun,” said one visitor), and a tour of HCN and a brief talk about the West from staff.
The group came to HCN thanks to Denver subscribers Cheri Ferbrache and Bill Johnson. All the other members were from “back east,” and they loved the scenery and open roads. But Susan Ackerman of Newport News, Va., said the West looks a little “raggedy” compared to her visit of several decades ago. Mark DeGregorio passed through Paonia on his way to join 900 other federal and state agency firefighters for a conference on – what else – firefighting, held in Montrose, Colo. He and Rita Murphy, who works in HCN’s circulation department, but who spent five years battling forest blazes, traded war stories.
It was Utah week in Paonia, as Donna and David Uhlendorf of Park City and Tim Peterson of Salt Lake dropped in. Donna and Dave are touring western Colorado. Tim, a sculptor, had just dropped off some of his work at a gallery in Crested Butte.
Staffer Marion Stewart describes two “local” visitors as “the kind of people you hope will teach your children.” In addition to subscribing to HCN since 1987, Bill Gladbach has been teaching in the 150-student Paonia Middle School for a year. Natalie Gladbach substitute teaches but is hoping for a position in the elementary school.
Marion also happened to be in the office one June Sunday when subscribers Lex Blood and Judith Pressmar of Kalispell, Mont., came by in search of a personal historic moment. Judith is a historian specializing in oral histories. Lex, a mining engineer and a founder of the Glacier Institute in Montana, said, “Coming to see High Country News is kind of like going to the Blarney Stone. I’ve devoured HCN for 30 years, since its Tom Bell days.” Mary Hodkins, a longtime subscriber, dropped in. She just moved to Paonia from Walden, Colo., with her husband, Evan, a spiritual teacher and publisher of The Alchemist. In Walden, she worked as a nature interpreter at the Colorado State Forest, home to 500 moose.
Subscriber “R” Addison, a sculptor and nuclear power activist who lives near Fort Collins, stopped by to say hello.
Travelers Zach “Poolhall” Mider and Nick Jones swept into the office one afternoon, distracting everyone with tales of their adventures since leaving Lopez Island, Wash., where Nick writes for the Pacific Heritage Press. Their best story: spending Memorial Day in Jarbidge, Nev., and dancing into the night with a county commissioner. According to Zach, “It was the highlight of my entire three months in the West.”
Subscribers Dave and Lynette Zook of Hutchinson, Kan., stopped by. He’s a hydrologist and she is a special education teacher. They were visiting relatives.
Chicagoans and schoolteachers Lisa and Tom Valentin stopped by in their camper-truck trip across the West. They left the day after school ended and will get home an hour before Tom’s first administrative meeting of the school year. Tom, who is head of a high school English department, says, “Reading is going to hell, but writing – at least in our district – is getting better.” Joy Goldbaum and Norm Osborne of Las Cruces, N.M., came through as part of a trip celebrating their anniversary.
Randy Webb of Eugene, Ore., who described himself as “just another reader,” is an endangered-species biologist. He filed the petition to list the Gunnison sage grouse, which, he says, is well on its way to extinction. “I see huge changes in Colorado in terms of more sprawl.” Sean Prendiville of San Rafael, Calif., is one of HCN’s dedicated subscribers, foregoing a day of whitewater rafting with his wife and daughter to visit us on a very hot summer day.
New York reader Dick Lemon stopped by for a visit. He was in Collbran, just over the hill, for a wedding. Lemon wrote for The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section (where, he says, “everything got rewritten.”), Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post, and People. “They were all terrific in different ways.” Since retiring in 1996, he has written 12 books. Bob Inlow of Ashland, Ore., visited to pick up a few extra copies of the “Backyard boom” issue on gas exploration (HCN, 9/25/00: Colliding forces) to pass along to friends. Bobby Griswoldof Miles City, Mont., wrote to say that she doesn’t subscribe but is responsible for three subscriptions, including the one to the library of Miles Community College in Miles City.
Skiing may move higher
Former Aspen, Colo., biology teacher and environmentalist Bob Lewis was honored at a July 25 dinner in Old Snowmass, Colo., by the Rivers Council of the Roaring Fork Conservancy. Bob’s achievements include founding the Independence Pass Foundation in 1989 to help restore the road cuts that cause erosion in the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River. He also founded the Wildwood Pre-School, installed the first Braille Trail on Independence Pass in the 1960s, and most recently, with Paul Anderson, David Hiser and Mike Stranahan, published the guidebook East of Aspen.
Bob had a word of caution for those attending the dinner: Keep an eye on the higher mountains in the Rockies. Because of global warming, he expects the ski industry to start moving to higher-elevation mountains, in order to have more dependable skiing.
The Roaring Fork Conservancy is dedicated to the protection of the Roaring Fork Watershed. Its Web site is www.roaringfork.org; or call 970/927-1290.
What to do with the $600 “refund”?
David Witherspoon writes from Salt Lake City to say that he has invested his tax refund in three Utah groups: Save our Canyons, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Glen Canyon Institute. He has also put some of the money into “mutual funds”: The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society, and the Sierra Club. And finally, he sent $50 to Senator James Jeffords of Vermont. He ends his letter asking: “So, what are you going to do with (your) check?”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Dear Friends.
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