School is a terrible place to have to spend your days. As any disgruntled student can tell you, the walls are sterile, the teachers suspicious, the curriculum irrelevant, the freedoms nonexistent. And, out of all the places on earth I could be, I have chosen to spend my workdays here. I made this decision, perhaps […]
Children teach tough lessons
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Squandering our kids’ inheritance
“This is our kids’ inheritance.” I saw the bumper sticker the first time on the back of a beat-up old Airstream in a Searchlight, Nev., casino parking lot, and I thought of one of my dad’s favorite sayings: “Enjoy your money and your kids while you’re alive.” He didn’t, and died with that regret. I’m […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Heard around the West
If hunters can hone their target skills on computer games, why can’t anti-hunters? Now they can, thanks to a $20 parody game called “Deer Avenger,” created by a staff writer for TV’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” It stars a buck with a bad attitude and an arsenal to boot, who fights back with a […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Bitter farewell: A Montana valley succumbs to growth fever
We are losing the Bitterroot. The first place settled in Montana may be the first to go. The words stick in the throat. They have the growl of negativity, the un-American taste of failure. What can we do with such an impossible fact? On days when fresh snow sashes the high granite ridges, we ignore […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Another dog done gone
BOULDER, Colo. – Maybe it was the buzz about the arsonist fires on the Vail ski hill; for whatever reason, the scene at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colo., seemed dramatic. More than 250 people gathered for the premiere of Varmints, the latest of Doug Hawes-Davis’ films sponsored by the Missoula, Mont., based Ecology Center. […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Agencies seek quieter public meetings
This winter, hundreds of people filed into school gymnasiums, town halls and hotel conference rooms, working up the gumption to stand in front of a crowd and speak out on the future of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. To their surprise, the stomach butterflies were for nothing. They didn’t find the rows […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
A statesman steps off the stage
When House Interior Committee Chairman Morris K. Udall of Arizona flew north in 1977 to hold hearings on a bill to protect more than 100 million acres in Alaska, locals in the town of Pelican hanged him in effigy. Ten years later, when Udall returned to Alaska to make a speech, an audience of chamber […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Dear Friends
Tony the workhorse This paper depends on its readers and financial supporters, but above all it depends on people who hold down demanding full-time jobs and yet still find time to do little things, like writing huge chunks of High Country News. Over the years, reporter Tony Davis has been first among this group of […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘Let’s get it resolved’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Ron Asta, an environmentalist and Pima County supervisor from 1973 to 1976, is now a zoning consultant to small landowners. “After I lost my seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1976, I was offered a job by KUAT-TV (the local public TV […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Selling sizzle and steak
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ David Taylor is a veteran planner for the city of Tucson. “I got asked at a meeting once, “When did the town peak?” I said, “If you are a rich, old, white lady living in the Catalina Foothills, it peaked in 1940. If […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
The roll call of sprawl
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ People per square mile in metropolitan Tucson in 1953: 5,000 … in 1998: 2,400 Acres of Sonoran Desert land cleared for new homes, offices and commercial buildings each day: 12 Average annual temperature in Tucson in 1900: 67 degrees … in the mid-1990s: […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘People have a voice’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Gayle Hartmann is a longtime environmental activist in Tucson’s growth wars and a former Pima County Planning and Zoning commissioner. “The first time I spoke before the County Planning and Zoning Commission, it was 1971. I was living in the Tucson Mountains (west […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘The party is over’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Doug McVie and his wife, Christina, live on five acres in the heart of the ironwood forest on Tucson’s northwest side. They are active in the environmental group, Desert Watch. “Once you see the surveying tags, the party is over. I called up […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
‘It was God’s country’
Note: This is a sidebar to a feature story headlined ‘Desert sprawl.’ Dee Dee Arnaud is once again a resident of the Catalina Foothills north of Tucson. “My family moved here from the Chicago area in 1946. My sister had respiratory allergies, and the dry air in Tucson took care of it. We lived in […]
Posted inJanuary 18, 1999: Desert sprawl
Desert sprawl
Note: This feature story is accompanied by seven sidebars listed at the end. TUCSON, Arizona Last spring, tens of thousands of people strolled the Street of Dreams subdivision to gaze at a $749,000 mansion. Behind the house, man-made waterfalls flowed past prickly pear and saguaro cacti. Inside, a television set popped up from a nightstand […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Going underground can be beautiful
Dear HCN, I was delighted to read, in “Wildlife crossings cut down on roadkill” (HCN, 11/23/98), that people are beginning to talk about wildlife bridges and underground highways. Just my cup of tea. But the Alberta overpass in your photo is ugly enough to set the movement back 10 years, though at least it is […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
Bag the word “amphibian”
Dear HCN, I regret to inform you that the Turtle and Tortoise Liberation Front takes exception to Mark Matthews’ report on “amphibian underpasses’ being considered for the Flathead Reservation ostensibly to reduce the “hundreds of painted turtles smashed” on Hwy. 93 (HCN, 11/23/98). Turtles, being reptiles, go through no demeaning gill phase, nor do they […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
ROOTS enjoyed shallow support
Dear HCN, As a former intern and longtime friend of the paper, I have often defended HCN’s journalistic integrity, even when your views didn’t happen to support my own. Paul Larmer’s recent article, “Idaho grizzly plan shifts into low gear” (HCN, 11/9/98), leaves me feeling painfully bereft of much defensible. Larmer focuses on the “ROOTS […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
No cheers for violence
Dear HCN, The attitude of the writer of “Three cheers for the arsonists at Vail” (HCN, 11/9/98), that the end justifies the means, is exactly the same as the attitude of those who cheered the death of the gay student in Wyoming, the attitude that led to the murder of the doctor in New York […]
Posted inDecember 21, 1998: Grand Canyon Gridlock
‘Speaking truth to power’ about bears
Dear HCN, Todd Wilkinson’s sad but necessary account of grizzly bear politics (HCN, 11/9/98) is as much an indictment of human nature as it is of organizational and personal conflict. The early Protestants used to talk about “speaking truth to power,” and power burned them at the stake. Times haven’t changed much. Speaking truth to […]