High Country News December 10, 2007
Feature
Rebels with a Lost Cause
The fiercely conservative lawyers of the Sagebrush Rebellion continue to fight against environmental regulations, but despite all their sound and fury, very little has changed on the public lands.
Editor's Note
The Sagebrush Rebels ride again -- and again
Despite the rhetoric of the Sagebrush Rebel lawyers, most of today’s Westerners understand that the public land is a national resource that belongs to all of us.
Dear Friends
Dear friends
Visitors from Colorado, California and England; HCN founder Tom Bell fondly remembers Anne Turner, the first intern; corrections.
Uncommon Westerners
Jim Detterline to the rescue
Park Ranger Jim Detterline battles the agency he loves over its insistence that a hearing impairment makes him unfit for his job.
News
Quest for darkness
Chad Moore and the members of the Park Service Night Sky Team keep an eye on the stars in the nation’s parks and monuments.
Toxic legacy
Some activists fear that toxic chemicals in a New Mexico landfill, left over from Cold War-era nuclear weapons research, may be creeping toward the Albuquerque Aquifer.
Book Reviews
A snake in the grass
After a rattlesnake bite nearly kills him, Tucson writing instructor Erec Toso ponders life – and death – at the edge of the desert in his memoir, Zero at the Bone.
The hidden history of a sneeze
Medical historian Gregg Mitman offers a fascinating history of the national allergy boom in Breathing Space: How Our Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscape.
Essays
Wake up to the West, wannabe presidents
Pat Williams says the candidates running for the nation’s highest office need to start paying attention to the people – and the problems – of the Rocky Mountain West.
In Montana, a festival of light
In the depths of a dark Montana winter, Rebecca Stanfel lights the Hanukah candles and rejoices in being Jewish.
Heard Around the West
Heard Around the West
Bicyclists under attack in Seattle; cleaning up oil with human hair; underwater mushrooms; cows flee McDonald’s; Dalton Trumbo gets a statue; Bad Ass Coffee.
Two Weeks in the West
Two weeks in the West
Two weeks in the very arid West means dry ski slopes, destructive wildfires, unending drought and unhappy bears; timber mills are victims of housing collapse; costs of carbon dioxide and its removal.
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