Does anyone else feel like this whole economic crash has somehow tweaked our very perception of time? Just a few months ago, High Country News was writing stories about the unprecedented pace and size of the natural gas boom. In order to provide historical context, the stories often mentioned Black Sunday, the dark day in […]
Jonathan Thompson
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Follow him @LandDesk
Posted inGoat
Oh mining boom, we hardly knew ya…
HCN has been writing a lot lately about how the new mining boom is already going bust. Today, it got worse: global mining giant Rio Tinto announced it is laying off 14,000 employees, sending a clear message that the mining surge that was booming just a year ago has gone belly up. It’s the biggest […]
Posted inGoat
Dirt poor, dirt rich
When I was in high school, my history teacher assigned each member of my class to interview someone who had lived through the Great Depression to better understand how life had changed during that time. I chose to interview my grandmother, who was 20 in 1929 when the stock market crashed. I anticipated tales of […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Desperate measures
With water shortages a constant, Westerners are looking at wacky (and not so wacky) ways to squeeze more water out of the sky and land.
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Peak economy
Just a few months ago, you could walk into the local hangout in any little Western town and hear the hanger-outers talk dramatically about “peak oil,” that long-awaited moment when petroleum production would decline enough to throw the world into turmoil. Someone else might have brought up “peak water,” too, what with global warming and […]
Posted inGoat
Recession in the gasfield?
Last weekend, the family and I drove over to Grand Junction, Colo., about an hour away from here, to run some errands. GJ, as we call it, is the metropolitan and service center of Colorado’s Western Slope. In other words, it’s awash with malls, big boxes, strip malls and fast food chains, not to mention […]
Posted inGoat
Repub rift deepens
Back when he was a Colorado congressman, we thought Republican Scott McInnis was pretty darned conservative. And he was. But it turns out he’s still more moderate than the folks that are taking over his party. He recently said that, had he stayed in the race for Colorado’s open U.S. Senate seat, he could have […]
Posted inGoat
Crypto-Jews real?
I first heard of the concept of Crypto-Jews back when I was a college student in Santa Fe during the late 1980s. New Mexico Hispanos had noticed their supposedly Catholic neighbors and relatives engaging in rituals that, it turned out, resembled Jewish religious practices. Some scholars — most notably Stanley Hordes, who was New Mexico’s […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Religion, politics and culture
Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his G-d … that thelegislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared their Legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free […]
Posted inGoat
Dove Creek Dreams
Fields here are draped over hillsides and wrapped around sandstone canyons like brown and green quilts. Farm machinery rolls along county two-lanes, filling them from shoulder to shoulder. Houses of the hunker-down school of architecture sit here and there, each surrounded by a scruff of thirsty trees. This is Dove Creek, Colorado, the Pinto Bean […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Forget Wall Street, focus on the real issues
We are approaching a crisis that stems in part from irresponsible behavior and is aggravated by our insatiable consumer culture. A lack of government oversight has let the problem grow to catastrophic levels. Now it could devastate entire economies and societies. No, I’m not talking about Wall Street. I’m talking about the crisis we seem […]
Posted inWotr
Republican ticket is just more of the same
One needn’t go far to hear how the gun-slingin’ and moose-eatin’ vice presidential pick of John McCain is going to snowmobile to victory this November on the backs of rural Western voters. She is a member of the National Rifle Association, grew up in the West and likes to fish and hunt. So, a lot […]
Posted inGoat
Lipstick on a Cheney
One needn’t go far to find mention of how the gun-slingin’, moose-eatin’ vice presidential pick of John McCain is going to snowmobile to victory this November on the backs of rural Western voters. Because she’s from the West (Alaska via Idaho), and because she’s been mayor of a small town (a suburb, actually), and because […]
Posted inAugust 25, 2008: Hot Wheels
Fire, fire everywhere
Type “wildfire” into your Google news search box on any given summer day, and you’ll get more than 15,000 news stories to sift through. As I write this, on Aug. 19, a brush fire has just burned 250 acres in Southern California, buildings in Reno have been devoured by wildfire, and a huge fire in […]
Posted inDnc 08
A view of Obama from the West
“It was magical.” That’s how Tillie Herrera Brummell, a diminutive woman with salt and pepper hair and round spectacles, described the closing extravaganza of the Democratic National Convention. Brummell, a native New Mexican who currently lives in Mountainair, sat with her son, Daniel, on a bus taking Convention-goers from the event back into town. She […]
Posted inDnc 08
Stegner at the DNC?
It’s not that often that Wallace Stegner’s words are woven into a political speech before an audience of 75,000 (plus all those folks watching on television). But during the blockbuster, Super Bowl-esque spectacle that closed out the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Rep. Mark Udall — a candidate for Senate here in Colorado — did just […]
Posted inDnc 08
Protest makes waves
There was plenty of hype leading up to the Convention about the potential for big protests. Recreate 68 planned some serious, mischievous action, as did DNC Disruption 08 and other groups. As of Wednesday evening, most of that had fizzled. Protests were generally small and — except for one that snaked down the 16th Street […]
Posted inDnc 08
I fish, I hunt, I vote … Democrat?
The National Wildlife Federation hosted a reception at the posh Curtis hotel in downtown Denver on Wednesday. They called it, I Hunt, I Fish, I Vote Conservation. The whole shindig had a decidedly less liberal feel to it than other DNC events. After all, these were hunters, anglers and the like, who, as Bob Carpenter, […]
Posted inDnc 08
Schweitzer on Bloggers, energy and guns
“I wake up at 4 o’clock every morning and read all the blogs,” said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, surrounded by reporters at the Big Tent Denver on Wednesday morning. “It’s good to see what bloggers look like. And it ain’t a pretty sight.” Though that comment drew a few groans, Schweitzer’s visit to new media […]
Posted inDnc 08
Schweitzer speaks!
The West got a fairly prominent place on the Convention agenda Tuesday when Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer spoke just before Hillary Clinton. The Pepsi Center was packed for the event (in anticipation of Clinton). It was so full that many journalists and other credentialed folks actually had to watch both Schweitzer’s and Clinton’s speeches on […]