Articles

I’ve told this story before. This is the abbreviated version. I’d just moved to a rural mountain community high in California’s Sierra Nevada, a young father with two kids and long hair. It was 1970, the Viet Nam war raged on, and wearing long hair was often enough to provoke some people, who, on occasion, […]

It wasn’t unexpected that Big Oil would run rampant when it first started fracking the Bakken in western North Dakota in 2008.  The region had been steadily losing population and suffering from a stagnant economy since the 1930s, so it was in no position to reject the high-paying jobs that accompanied the boom.  North Dakota’s […]

It’s 5:30, dusk scudding into darkness. A fawn stands on the centerline of Highway 20, gazing with vacant curiosity into my Pathfinder’s grille as the truck’s brake pads challenge the laws of physics having to do with objects at rest and in motion. A car is barreling down at us from the other direction. The […]

The U.S. Senate is set to take up a deeply flawed Nevada wilderness bill in the November lame-duck session. If passed, it would set terrible precedents for all future wilderness bills. The bill, HR 5205, introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., bundles together seven separate Nevada lands bills, and after being amended by the House […]

I’ve usually admired David Brooks, New York Times columnist, and Mark Shields, campaign strategist and analyst, for their smart political opinions on public television. So it was sad recently to see their heads stuck in Alberta’s tar sands over the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which will surely be reintroduced in Congress next year. Pipeline […]

Remember that fourth-grade Thanksgiving pageant, the big feast with Indians providing most of the food? Squanto was there, kindly teaching the Pilgrims how to put a fish in a hole to grow corn and beans and squash. Somehow I don’t remember learning that Squanto — more properly “Tisquantum”— was taken to England and then abducted […]