ARIZONA A McDonald’s restaurant in Phoenix learned a valuable lesson recently, but only after an assistant manager ordered a breastfeeding mother — and her 6-month-old baby — to leave. The lesson: Don’t mess with moms! As TV reporters flocked to the restaurant, dozens of nursing mothers converged inside it to protest what they called discrimination, […]
Milk and cookies
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The Second Second City
A native Chicagoan who now lives in Montana discovers New Chicago, Mont.
Posted inGoat
Full frackin’ disclosure
New regulations in Wyoming requiring gas companies to disclose chemicals used in fracking go a long way toward addressing a rising chorus of health and environmental concerns. But, like a wholesome, Wyoming first date, it’s just a start, and they don’t go all the way. Drillers have long contended that the chemical cocktails they use […]
Posted inGoat
More surprises flow from Ruby Pipeline
Last month the HCN magazine ran a story on the furor over a conservation deal meant to keep two environmental groups from suing to stop construction of the Ruby Pipeline, a 675-mile-long natural gas pipe stretching from Opal, Wyo., to Malin, Ore. Western Watersheds Project and the Oregon Natural Desert Association opposed fragmentation and destruction […]
Posted inBlog
Taking action on hunger
Stimulus money might have a chance to stimulate appetites with a series of new grants in New Mexico. New data on poverty and food access suggest, though, it might not be enough to quiet hunger in the West’s most food insecure state or elsewhere in the region. First, the encouraging news. In August, New Mexico […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
What was and what is
Joan Kane’s work aims to bridge the gap between past and present
Posted inRange
Native discovery could save important fish
The scientific discovery of an ancient stress hormone by a tribal member could lead to the survival of the most ancient of the native fish in the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific lamprey, an eel like fish that evolved more than 500 million years ago. David Close, Ph.D. is a Cayuse and a member of the […]
Posted inWotr
Live fee or die
We grumbled, but paid the nearly 50 percent fee increase for registering our motor vehicle in Colorado. And we also paid the registration fee for our camp trailer, which had nearly doubled. I felt as helpless as Jack in the Beanstalk, when he hid under a bucket listening to a giant stomp around shouting, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM.” […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: Guests in the house of fire
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. For once, fire has remained absent from our home landscape this summer. Winter was so long and wet as to have repressed fire season, and it seems strange that our home mountain, valley, and […]
Posted inWotr
Love wilderness? Thank a veteran
Some of the environmental movement’s greatest heroes were also heroes of World War II
Posted inHeard Around the West
Unseemly business
IDAHOFor a long time, a southern Idaho farmer didn’t know it, but there was another crop growing in his cornfields — 300 marijuana plants, valued at $628,000. Azcentral.com says the plants were grown from seed and later transplanted to the farmer’s field, apparently a not uncommon practice. OREGONDon’t even think about selling lemonade in Multnomah […]
Posted inWotr
Some neighbors behave like boors
Every year, they break into hundreds of homes on the northwest shores of Lake Tahoe in California, and once inside, they leave destruction in their wake — not to mention piles of poop. Homeowners, frantic to protect their castles, employ elaborate schemes to thwart these powerful animals. They buy mechanical dogs that bark at anything […]
Posted inWotr
I liked it better when being born here was enough
If the 14th Amendment is repealed, how do we know we’re citizens at all?
Posted inRange
How bad projects get built
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist who recently finished a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley offers an insider’s perspective into water politics and economics. We will be cross-posting occasional posts and content from his blog, Aguanomics, here on the Range. RM sent me the “Review budget for Bay Delta Conservation Plan […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Wait until darkness
The WildingBenjamin Percy272 pages, hardcover: $23.Graywolf Press, October. In his debut novel, The Wilding, award-winning writer Benjamin Percy returns to familiar ground — rural Oregon. After publishing two collections of bold, piercing short stories about the mountain towns and mossy woods of his native state, Percy finds space in The Wilding to fully develop his […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son?
I am always puzzled when HCN‘s feature article (“Young, All-American, Illegal,” 8/16/10) takes up a cause from a humanistic heartfelt perspective while completely ignoring all other perspectives. In doing so, our status as a society dedicated to the rule of law is undermined, ignored and trivialized. As a sensitive and humane person, I am of […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Taking stock
The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison and The Practice of the WildEdited by Paul Ebenkamp160 pages, hardcover/DVD: $28.Counterpoint, October 2010. Bird CloudAnnie Proulx256 pages, hardcover: $26. Scribner, January 2011. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning Western authors have books coming out in the next few months. Both Annie Proulx and Gary Snyder are taking stock these […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Still Cranish After All These Years
Homo sapiens, evolution and becoming a crane
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
Skipped issue
A heads-up: HCN staffers will be taking a much needed two-week publishing break after this issue to catch up on work and R&R. Look for your next issue on Oct. 11. We’re always flattered by how many folks decide to stop by our Paonia office, but Kim and Mark Schultz of Colorado Springs positively made […]
Posted inSeptember 3, 2010: Migration
On the wing
Eerie, whirring calls fill the air on a chilly April morning. Hundreds of sandhill cranes congregate along the edges of Fruitgrowers Reservoir, on the southern flank of western Colorado’s Grand Mesa. Tucked amid cropland and sage-dotted pastures, the reservoir is a crucial rest stop on the birds’ long spring migration from New Mexico north to […]