WALKING FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING In mid-July, Blake Chambliss came through Paonia while out on a 800-mile walk around Colorado. The retired architect is trying to raise awareness of the state’s “affordable housing crisis.” Housing is considered affordable if it eats up less than a third of your monthly paycheck, he said. A quarter of Colorado […]
Greg Hanscom
Greg Hanscom is the publisher and executive director for High Country News. Email him at greg.hanscom@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor.
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
A chance for redemption
It was mid-September 2001, and I was sitting on a sandbar, my ears full of the roar of whitewater, watching the stars blink through a slice of cobalt sky. I was deep in Westwater Canyon on the Colorado River in Utah, and as far as I could tell, my pack of friends and I were […]
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
Dear friends
SUMMER BREAK Every year, the editorial staff takes an issue off during midsummer to escape the heat and head for the hills, so this will be the last issue of High Country News you’ll receive for a month. Watch your mailboxes again around July 19. A GREAT MEAL, AND A GOOD QUESTION At the end […]
Posted inJune 7, 2004: Wal-Mart's Manifest Destiny
Dear Friends
The good news The High Country News board of directors came to Paonia in late May, to mull over the finances and plan for the future. The numbers for the first quarter of 2004 look good: Our expenses are below budget, and our income is above budget, thanks largely to a grant from the Hewlett […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Rednecks and hippies unite!
In my town, you’re either a redneck or a hippie. It’s a wildly simplistic view of the world, but for some residents, it’s reality. Rednecks are folks who can claim, “My great-granddad chased the Utes out of this valley” — or who drive pickup trucks, drink Budweiser and vote Republican. Hippies are the folks who […]
Posted inMay 10, 2004: Shooting Spree
Dear Friends
Visitors Spring weather has brought a stream of friends and luminaries to the High Country News office in western Colorado. Lyman Orton spent an afternoon with us. He and his sons own the Vermont Country Store, famous for its old-timey black-and-white catalogs, featuring everything from rubber galoshes to cheddar cheese. The store now puts out […]
Posted inApril 26, 2004: Outsourced
Outsourced
As the Bush administration rushes to put the public lands into the hands of private industry, a model group of Forest Service employees gets canned
Posted inApril 12, 2004: The One-Party West
Dear friends
Heat wave It’s hard to believe that just over three weeks ago we got a call from nearby Telluride, Colo., saying an avalanche had wiped out the town’s power supply. Kelly Hearn, managing editor of The Telluride Watch, told us that the area’s main power line was buried under 20 feet of ice and snow, […]
Posted inMarch 15, 2004: The New Water Czars
Dear friends
Gunning for the big screen Adam Jackaway is a man who likes to make big statements with small tools. Last winter, with war looming in Iraq, he shouldered his snow shovel and tromped out into a Boulder, Colo., park. There, he sculpted a massive peace sign in a blank field, recruiting others to help, and […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Watt turns history on its head
On a snowy evening in early February, three High Country News staffers made the five-hour drive over three mountain passes and through a blizzard, to Boulder, Colo., to see this paper’s former nemesis: one-time Interior Secretary James Watt. Professors Patricia Nelson Limerick and Charles Wilkinson, of the University of Colorado’s Center of the American West, […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2004: The Last Open Range
Dear Friends
Congratulations! The crew at High Country News extends a hearty welcome to the newest member of the clan: Paolo Bacigalupi and his wife, Anjula Jalan, arrived in the world at 3:24 a.m. on Jan. 25 — and has hardly allowed his parents a wink of sleep since. Paolo reports that Arjun set a record a […]
Posted inFebruary 16, 2004: Courting Disaster
Dear friends
Give and Take Inside this issue of High Country News, you’ll find a flier for our newest book, called Give and Take: How the Clinton Administration’s Public Lands Offensive Transformed the American West. It pulls together our best coverage of the national monument spree engineered by Clinton and his Interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, along with […]
Posted inJanuary 19, 2004: Two decades of hard work, plowed under
Dear Friends
MANY THANKS Happy New Year from snowy Paonia, and a huge thanks to all of you who sent cards and treats to the office over the holidays. They certainly lifted our spirits, and, in at least one case, reminded us what this enterprise is all about. Tracy, who gave no last name and identified herself […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
Toppling monoliths in Mormon Country
It’s all too easy to stereotype Mormons as conservative, anti-environment and unquestioning of their leaders. Kudos to those within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are breaking out of that stereotype — those who are proving that there is room within the faith for diversity and debate. As Rosemary Winters writes in […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Save the middle ground: Hug a radical
Here’s a message for all the “radical centrists” out there, those who have decided that the best way to manage the public lands is to sit down at the table with ranchers, off-roaders and everyone in between, to come up with a plan everyone agrees on: The next time you run into a radical, thank […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2003: Riding the middle path
Dear Friends
PARTY TIME The staff of High Country News cordially invites all readers and friends to HCN’s holiday open house at our Paonia, Colo., office (119 Grand Ave.) on Monday, Dec. 15. Knock back a few eggnogs with the entire HCN crew between 5 and 7:30 p.m. Please bring a treat to share. We’ll provide drinks. […]
Posted inNovember 24, 2003: New Mexico goes head-to-head with a nuclear juggernaut
Dear Friends
HCN shows its roots There was a veritable High Country News love-fest in Gunnison, Colo., in early November. Western State journalism professor George Sibley called together several hundred academics, activists, writers, students — and even a rancher or two — to ponder the history of this newspaper, and the state of the West, at the […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2003: San Diego's Habitat Triage
Conservation in an imperfect world
In the three decades since it was signed into law, the Endangered Species Act has had some remarkable successes: Wolves have made a comeback in the Northern Rockies; bald eagles have rebounded. But the ESA is an imperfect tool. The endangered species list is often likened to the hospital emergency room, and the comparison is […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
Dear Friends
CHARGE ON The High Country News board and staff couldn’t have wished for a better weekend — or a better location — for the fall ’03 board meeting. Fifteen board members, eight staffers, and HCN founder Tom Bell all gathered at the Murie Ranch, just inside Grand Teton National Park, near Moose, Wyo., to talk […]