If you want to understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others at a Tucson Safeway in 2011, look to Arizona’s soulless culture and vitriolic politics. Also, ground truthing Obama’s praise of natural gas, ecosystem services of water-cleaning forests, an environmental warrior still going strong at 95, and more.
Environmental warrior Martin Litton is still fighting at 95
Martin Litton, 95, wastes no time on proprieties. “I’m supposed to be dead, you know,” he growls on a January morning, leading me through a thicket of potted plants into his home in the hills near Palo Alto, Calif. A towering presence with a booming voice, Litton has spent his life battling developers, extractive industries…
How Arizona’s culture helped shape the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
To understand why Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and 18 others 2011, look to Arizona’s vitriolic politics.
I don’t love my dog
There’s a dead fawn outside my front door. The sweet young body is completely covered in tall grass, which means this is a mountain lion kill, which means that the mountain lion responsible is going to come back for the next few mornings and nights to finish eating. I must admit that, although I’m reflexively…
Communities help pay for ecosystem services provided by forests
Strontia Springs Reservoir, 30 miles south of Denver, Colo., looks like water you’d want to scoop up in your dipper. Sunshine and pine reflect off its aqua-blue surface. But 16 years ago, it looked more like a latte clogged with cinnamon bark. In 1996 and 2002, major forest fires scorched the Upper South Platte River…
We need Wilderness Watch
The issues discussed in “The law, the lookout and the logging town” are significant, but the focus is wrong (HCN, 1/23/12). Lookouts are great, but in wilderness areas they straddle the boundary between historic and intrusive. Wilderness is not for people even though we benefit from it. The Wilderness Act of 1964 is clear: Abandoned…
A life measured in cordwood: A review of Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and Men
Into the Heat: My Love Affair with Trees, Fire, Saws and MenCindy Bellinger159 pages, softcover: $14.95.High-Lonesome Books, 2011. What does it mean for one woman to take an active, eventful life and root it ever more deeply in one spot, settling down in the mountain foothills where a nearby pine forest becomes a close companion,…
We the corporate campaign donors?
I remember the billboard controversy in Tucson in the 1980s described in Ray Ring’s story (HCN, 1/23/12, “Billboards vs. Democracy”). As a scientist, I try to look for simple, logical solutions to problems. My take on corporate money in politics is a simple one. We, the voters, elect someone to represent us. If a candidate…
Bucking the stereotypes: A review of West of 98
West of 98: Living and Writing the New American WestEdited by Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland380 pages, softcover: $21.95.University of Texas Press, 2011. Any anthology is a collage, a series of snapshots imperfectly melded into one composition. That’s why we read them: They allow us to look at a topic from a variety of angles,…
Craig Childs is HCN’s latest contributing editor
We’re excited to announce that author Craig Childs has just joined our list of contributing editors. Many of you are already fans of Craig’s work, which appears regularly in these pages and in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, Outside and Orion. His writing focuses on natural sciences, archaeology and his remarkable…
Growing grizzly population conflicts with USDA sheep research station
The recovery of Yellowstone’s grizzly bears has been remarkable. When the species was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were just 136 wandering in and around the national park. Now, there are more than 600. And though a federal court confirmed in November that the population should remain protected, it’s…
Have we learned anything from the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords?
With the flood of news events streaming across our screens these days, little seems truly shocking anymore. We careen from one cataclysm, conflict or scandal to the next, never lingering long on any of them. But sometimes an event is so terrible that it causes all of us to drop whatever we’re doing and reflect.…
Monkey-wrenchers to the rescue
I was surprised and dismayed at the apparent power wielded by billboard companies (HCN, 1/23/12, “Billboards vs. Democracy”), but even more surprised and dismayed at the apparent lack of power that governments at all levels have to prevent their various affronts to our senses. Unlike junk mail, telemarketers, and political advertisements on TV, billboards are…
Obama praises natural gas, but is there enough to satisfy U.S. demand?
Poor President Obama. On Jan. 24, he delivered a State of the Union speech promising “a future where we’re in control of our own energy,” and packed it with something for nearly everyone — more oil, safe natural gas and abundant clean energy. And still almost no one went home happy. Domestic oil production is…
Photojournalist Lisa Hamilton explores rural California
For her project, Real Rural, photojournalist Lisa Hamilton traveled throughout California, interviewing and photographing scores of rural people.
The error of the well-intentioned
Thank you for the billboard and “untrammeled” wilderness articles (HCN, 1/23/12, “The law, the lookout and the logging town” & “Billboard vs. Democracy”). Boycotting Utah and/or monkey-wrenching seem like the only viable options for correcting these corporate billboard crimes. Wilderness Watch, by contrast, is well intentioned, but apparently ignorant of the harm it’s doing. Wilderness…
The shine of the golden saddle
The grazing buyout is sometimes referred to as a “golden saddle” (HCN, 1/23/12, “Detente in the grazing wars?”). I like that. Even though grazing permits are not rights, the buyouts recognize that grazing permits have been treated as such and are of value to the permittee. I like how it is a free market solution,…
The troubling tentacles of Citizens United
I feel really fortunate to live in one of four states that have outright bans on billboards (HCN, 1/23/12, “Billboards vs. Democracy”). Despite an underhanded attempt to gut the Alaska billboard ban a few years ago, the citizens rose up with a resounding no. Call me a worrier, but will the Citizens United case, which…