I recently attended an EPA hearing in Denver. I’m an environmental attorney who left my job to spend a year teaching in Italy, and now that I’m back in the United States, I’m relieved that this country has a rational system of environmental regulation. (Italy has great shoes and amazing cappuccino, but environmental regulation? Fuhgeddaboudit.) […]
EPA hearings can be so, like, high school
Posted inRange
The role of higher education
Recently, the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote “We should be able to….establish a set of concrete understandings about what government should and shouldn’t do. We should be able to have a grounded conversation based on principles 95 percent of Americans support.” Instead, as former congressman (and now Chairman of the National Endowment on […]
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Cows, coyotes and a revelation
Reporting on the West’s public lands and environment can be a gloomy task. The news from four decades of High Country News – battles over massive strip mines, ancient forests decimated by greedy timber companies, the sorry state of public grazing land, gas wells popping up like a pox and recreation enthusiasts trampling the land […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
“Where do you get your questions?”
NEVADAThe last we noticed, elected officials don’t place one hand on the Constitution and solemnly swear to uphold the Bible. But Republican Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite who’s running against Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., sounds as though she’s more than ready to switch books. A former teacher at a religious school and a longtime […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
‘Clean and healthful environment’
Montana’s constitution could stop a huge mine
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Our founder, the man and the myth
Tom Bell still inspires a young Westerner
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
A Hell of an Anniversary
HCN’s founder, Tom Bell, marks our 40th year with a prediction: We’re all doomed
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Visitors with flowers and fire extinguishers
We continue to enjoy a steady stream of visitors to our Paonia, Colo., office. We’re always impressed that so many of you find us, since our little town is more than an hour and a half from the nearest interstate highway. In mid-July, subscribers Lucy Meinhardt and Dave Zumwalt left us a note. “It seems […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Up fur debate
Steel-jaws, conibears, snares: Endangered species and pets in the West have been injured and killed by these “body-gripping” traps, triggering a wave of recent public concern. After six Mexican wolves were hurt in New Mexico, leaving two with leg amputations (including AM871, alpha male of the Middle Fork Pack, captured by a trail cam at […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Righteous gluttony
In the produce section of the grocery store the other day, I saw apricots on sale for 99 cents a pound. They sat in a bin between grapes from Chile and cherries from the Flathead Valley of Montana. I don’t know where the apricots came from. I selected six and put them in the shopping […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Kind words for a much-maligned mammal
The Wolverine WayDouglas Chadwick278 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Patagonia Books, 2010. Wolverines do not have a romantic history. Early trappers and pioneers loathed these carnivores for their elusive, gnarly behavior. Tall tales were told about vicious, crotchety beasts hunting humans in the woods, and by the early part of the 20th century, traps and poisons had ravaged […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Breath by breath
Drowning TucsonAaron Michael Morales330 pages, softcover: $15.95.Coffee House Press, 2010. “He’d felt safer in the desert than he ever had in his life, as if some outside force were protecting him. But now, in the bowels of the city, he was a stationary target.” That’s Tucson in the 1980s, a city of snowbirds, developers and […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
A brush with cowboy culture
On a gray, blustery, spring evening, my family and I drive into the Sky Ute Fairgrounds in Ignacio, Colo., eager to get to the rodeo. My 2-year-old son can’t wait to make his debut in “mutton busting,” an event in which young children cling to the backs of sheep loosed from bucking chutes. As we […]
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The Goliath of beets
By Michelle Venetucci Harvey As of a recent court hearing, a multinational biotech company feels threatened, thousands of farmers in the Pacific Northwest see impeding doom, and half of the US sugar industry is potentially depleted. What could be causing all this ruckus? The sugar beet. This month’s ruling by US District Judge Jeffrey White […]
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A renter’s market?
For the first time in decades it’s cool to be a renter. So why is it so hard to rent a home and still be “green”? This week, as news outlets across the board reported a steep decline in home sales and prices in July, especially in the West, some reported increased preferences for renting, […]
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The Amargosa
The chef at Las Vegas’ Luxor hotel has a special recipe for dates: pit them, stuff the sweet, succulent fruit with cheese, and wrap them in bacon. It’s a recipe that takes skill, planning, and a certain panache. But what’s unique about this hors d’oeuvre isn’t just its sweet and savory flavor, but the fact […]
Posted inAugust 20, 2010: A Hell of an Anniversary
Parting the Redwood Curtain
A one-mile highway project could change an entire region
Posted inRay
Idaho’s Republican dairy farmers embrace socialism
This is a good counterpoint to the rightwing Tea Party accusations that Obama and Congressional Democrats are “socialists” because they increase the government’s role in health care and economic stimulus and so on. Dairy farmers in Idaho — and around the country — want new federal subsidies that would guarantee they make a certain profit […]
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Educational benefits
Some people love to travel, but I am not among them. I have the good fortune to live in a town that’s just the right size. Salida, Colo., is small enough that I can walk to conduct most of my routine errands, and big enough for a supermarket, library, bookstore, pharmacy and the like. America’s […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Murmuration intimidation
WASHINGTON A bank officer who has earned the title “Duck Man” did it again for the third year in a row in Spokane: He saved the day by helping ducks fly away. Joel Armstrong watched a nest outside his office window until he realized that the ducklings were itching to take off. But the little […]