Spring interns The last time Michelle McClellan was in Colorado, she woke up in a pasture near Rocky Mountain National Park to a bellowing herd of cows trying to maneuver around her tent. Her reception in Paonia has been far less hectic, she reports. Michelle grew up in Kirkland, a city of 40,000 close to […]
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Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Tactics first, ideas last
Back when I was a college sophomore, a disillusioned freshman wrote to the campus newspaper: “It seems to me that this college is all about what’s going to be on the test and whether the professor is a hard grader. Where are the ideas and the passion?” He didn’t get ideas, but he did get […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Heard around the West
First, a quiz: The West is a land of wide spaces, deep forests and infinite skies. It’s an easy place to lose track of (a) your way; (b) your mail; (c) billions of dollars in Indian trust funds; (d) 24 million acres of public land; (e) salmon; (f) your career prospects; or (g) all of […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Monoculture meets its match in North Dakota
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Carrington, N.D. – Half of all North Dakotans huddle in the fertile, prosperous Red River Valley, a stone’s throw from Minnesota. But John Gardner happily does his agricultural research in central North […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
‘It’s great to ask geeks for advice’
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, What does the West need to know?, in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Livingston, Mont. – Dana Gleason, an avid skier, thought he knew how to make a great backpack. In 1985 he founded […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Montana’s outback goes on-line
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. A midwife in Wolf Point needs to know the latest practice for treating pregnant women with allergies. A Native American high school senior in Cut Bank wants to know what a laser […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
My God! Healthy trees!
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Cottonwood, Idaho – Sister Carol Ann Wassmuth of St. Gertrude’s Monastery wants to be reincarnated as the monastery porcupine so she can keep an eye on the progress of the 1,000 acres […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Taking a stand for New Mexico’s small farmers
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, What does the West need to know?, in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Edmund Gomez worked for years on the Dulce, Colo., ranch his great-grandfather homesteaded in 1887. When his family sold the ranch […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Helping a busted mining town back to its feet
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Anaconda, Mont. – Rose Nyman is wearing an apron and shuttling back and forth between the kitchen, where she has a lasagna in the oven, and the dining room, where she pours […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Talking ranching through its bleakest hour
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Reno, Nev. – The hall of the University of Nevada’s College of Agriculture is lined with dusty black-and-white photographs of former professors, peering knowingly from below their cowboy hats. Hudson Glimp seems […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
Playing politics or helping the range?
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. Back in 1978, ranchers around the West felt the first tremors of grazing reform. Under legal pressure from environmentalists, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management found much of its rangeland in bad […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
What is cooperative extension?
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, What does the West need to know?, in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. The West’s extension agents cover some ground: They counsel Colorado wheat farmers whose crops are being nibbled by antelope, broadcast advice […]
Posted inMarch 18, 1996: What does the West need to know?
What does the West need to know?
Note: this article in one of several feature stories in a special issue about the West’s land grant universities and their extension programs. In a burst of energy early this century, land-grant universities sent extension agents to America’s rural counties. Their mission: to modernize and civilize those counties by teaching the latest in breeding cows, […]
Posted inMay 13, 1996: Howdy, neighbor!
A wet winter misses the Southwest
Refreshed by last year’s drought-ending weather, most Westerners will wallow in water again this spring. Except in parts of the Southwest, where the fire season has already started, it should be a wet spring. Federal weather forecasters say reservoirs are full across most of the West and snowpacks are extremely high in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Then the barber left
Dear HCN, I am writing to express my appreciation for your excellent article, “Lack of Enchantment,” Feb. 5. I lived in Santa Fe for about five years between 1987 and 1992 and spent a year and a half as Santa Fe county attorney. I saw the decline of the middle class and the forced emigration […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Don’t blame the birds
Dear HCN, William deBuys makes some good points concerning various groups coming to loggerheads in New Mexico, but it should be pointed out that when the Forest Service shut down all tree-cutting in the Southwest it was never appropriate biologically (HCN, 2/5/96). The angry firewood cutters needed piûon-juniper, but this is not an area frequented […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Forests on the edge
Dear HCN, In the William deBuys essay about controversy surrounding northern New Mexico’s forests, he says “We need to create more small forest edges in order to promote species diversity” (HCN, 2/5/96). I am no expert on this matter, but it caught my eye because of research that’s been done in Eastern forests. It shows […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Wrong cactus and not funny
Dear HCN, I was really depressed by the art work done by Greg Siple and cleared by your editors which accompanied the cover article on Santa Fe (HCN, 2/5/96). Even this dumb non-Westerner knows saguaros don’t grow naturally in New Mexico. Maybe it was done for a laugh? OK, ha, ha. I am awfully tired […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Fergus fires back
Dear HCN, The letter from Scott McIntyre Feb. 19 in response to my essay “Hunting: Get Used to It” (HCN, 1/22/96) displays all the prejudice that makes a rational dialogue between hunters and antihunters so difficult. Although McIntyre claims that he is “not for … or against” hunting, his implication that he’s too mature to […]
Posted inMarch 4, 1996: Who owns these bones?
Nuclear waste deal challenged
Idaho’s Republican Governor Phil Batt abused his executive power when he signed a nuclear waste deal with the federal government last October, according to Democratic state Sen. Clint Stennett of Ketchum. In January, Stennett introduced legislation to nullify the deal that will allow over 1,000 shipments of nuclear waste into the state over the next […]