See end of article for a complete package of refugee stories in this issue. 16 million Number of refugees worldwide in 2008 60,193 Number of refugees who settled in the U.S. that year 19,264 Number who settled in Western states 0 Number who settled in Wyoming and Montana• • •2.6 million Minimum number of refugees […]
Departments
Seeking a vocation in no-man’s land
Iraq to Berkeley
More than English
At a Denver school, refugees learn American ways as well as language
The newest Westerners
See end of story for a complete package of refugee stories in this issue. It was right about the time that my teeth sank into the Basque BLT (marinated pork loin, bacon, the works) that I had my epiphany. OK, maybe the timing wasn’t quite that serendipitous, and maybe it was less an epiphany than […]
A hard-fought immigration victory
Russia to Seattle
Socialism and the West
This region was built on government subsidies and aid
Religulous love and hate
San Tan Valley in the orbit of Phoenix is foreclosure-central these days, with 863 properties on offer. So it’s probably not surprising that a man’s prayer stand along a busy highway is doing a boffo business with commuters. In fact, Matthew Cordell, 38, is so much in demand that he has backed up traffic for […]
Watts of water
Will pumped storage help power the West’s renewable energy boom?
A loophole you can squeeze a feedlot through
Growing up on a dryland wheat farm in eastern Washington, Scott Collin learned at an early age not to waste water. “I got more whippings when I was a boy for running the water well over than anything else,” he says. So Collin took notice last year when Easterday Ranches Inc. proposed a 30,000-head feedlot […]
Death by a thousand wells
Unregulated wells strain short water supplies in Washington’s Yakima Basin and throughout the West
Indians vs. Greens?
“Environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty.” So said Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. in late September, shortly after he joined northern Arizona’s Hopi tribal council in “unwelcoming” environmental groups from those tribes’ lands, which sprawl across portions of three Southwestern states. The national press regurgitated the story with […]
A guide to the past — and the future
A 1930s Montana guidebook contains lessons for today
World’s largest sand trap
Where is a golf-ball-collecting fox when you need one? Although it might take more than one to round up the 3,000 or so golf balls that a 57-year-old man has scattered around Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Since 2007, Douglas Jones has been “just tossing them out of his vehicle,” a park spokesman […]
Water across the Divide
How the failure of an aged ditch got in the way of Wilderness
Foxy golfer
Why would a red fox collect golf balls? Nobody knows, but then again, nobody really knows why grown men walk around with sticks trying to wallop them. The fox in question lives in Steamboat Springs where it has become obsessed by Tom Houk’s backyard putting green. Houk, who likes to practice a few putts every […]
Parties ‘R’ Some Of Us
Even as many Westerners struggle with layoffs, pay cuts, medical bills and other economic troubles, wealthy people in resort towns are whooping it up. That’s the report from the companies that supply banquet tables and chairs, enormous tents, portable dance floors, sound and lighting systems, antler chandeliers, artificial trees, eruptions of flowers and other party-throwing […]
Audubon feathers fly in Arizona
Huge mine proposal deepens schism between state’s green groups
Crowded attic in New York too
If Andrew Sean Greer had ridden the Staten Island Ferry more often — or ever — he’d know that New York City’s sky can be as complex as any in the West (HCN, 9/14/09): limpid blue, thick with rainclouds, striped with vivid sunset cirrus … an approaching squall to starboard, shafts of sunlight jeweling the […]
Finding the middle ground
Comment on Writers on the Range column at hcn.org, “Conservationists wrong to oppose wolf hunt” by Mike Medberry Mike Medberry’s column on reasonable wolf management is a breath of fresh air. I too think there is a lot of middle ground for responsible management. But the states sure haven’t shown that intention, and I suppose […]
‘Leave no trace’ art
AGE 21 HOMETOWN Whittier, Calif. VOCATION Junior; majoring in sculpture at Brigham Young University, Salt Lake City HCN SUBSCRIBER SINCE 2004 Installation artist Levi Jackson prefers to work early in the morning to catch the best light for photographing his ephemeral, site-specific works. On a May morning, Levi drove to a desert plateau outside Caineville, […]
