Feature

Rural Education 2.0

Tiny Vilas, Colo., thought it was a great idea to open an online school and enroll at-risk students from far-away Denver – but neither the students nor the school district ended up scoring well at report card time

Editor's Note

Offline

President Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy is generally a good thing, but it needs to take into account the growing number of often-inadequate and under-supervised online schools

Dear Friends

Dear friends

Visitors; April Fool’s in Aspen; Jason Fisher meets an old friend; farewell to Joyce Jorgensen; and corrections

Uncommon Westerners

Tripping over T-Rex

Paleontologist Bob Harmon loves nothing better than digging for old bones under the hot Montana sun

Writers on the Range

The case for filet of filly

Americans may be sentimental about their horses, but slaughtering unwanted animals with poison is more cruel and a lot less sensible than using them for horsemeat.

Why the West should copy Swiss transit

The contrast between a Mount Hood traffic jam and a week in a car-free Swiss resort convinces Bill Cook that the West needs to get serious about mass transit.

News

Market cooling

California and the West decide to tackle global warming through the market – by buying and selling carbon

Into thin air?

Global warming spurs calls for new dams in the West – but where will the water come from to fill them?

Educating the economy

Western communities such as Lander, Wyo., are suddenly working hard to lure new colleges to town

Book Reviews

The granddaddy of all collaboration groups

In his beautiful, compact book Working Wilderness, Nathan Sayres tells the story of the Malpai Borderlands Group, “the most hailed example of collaborative place-based resource management in the West.”

A brief, interpretive look at the Indian Wars

Michael Blake’s new nonfiction book, Indian Yell, fails to live up to its ambitious subtitle, “The Heart of an American Insurgency,” with its quick tour of 12 battles between the U.S. Cavalry and American Indians.

Essays

Safe out there

To an aging, mentally ill woman named Jade, the beautiful Colorado day is filled with sinister, frightening demons, and even a well-meaning neighbor can do nothing to drive them away.

Heard Around the West

Heard around the West

Bears on the ski runs; free land in Alaska; DNA cousins; train versus buffalo in South Dakota; good news, bad news about the weather; digging out of the snow near Ouray.

Letters

The stories behind the statistics

Energy's dark side

Company values

"Safety is for wussies"

Risky business

Blame cows, trees and the sun, not just humans

Two Weeks in the West

Two weeks in the West

Western real estate slump hits suburbs, but developers keep on developing; Marijuana McMansions; copper booming; Logan, Utah, rejects dirty power; Tri-State puts off two coal power plants; animals killed by Wildlife Services