In New Mexico, a natural gas boom pits industrial-grade noise against birds
Sound science
Posted inWotr
An improbable candidate runs in Arizona
Early in May, John Dougherty, the best investigative reporter I’ve ever known, made the eyebrow-raising announcement that he would run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. To think that a writer stood any chance of knocking off John McCain was absurd, vainglorious … and … perfect, as a matter of poetic irony. Back in 1989, […]
Posted inRange
New Mexico gets most back from Washington
Since this is an election year, it’s time to ponder politics. Let’s ignore policy and platforms for the moment, and look at money. Which state’s congressional delegation is best at delivering the dollars? The champion team is in the West. According to statistics compiled by the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., New Mexico’s representatives and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
If the bears don’t get you, the bicyclists will
COLORADOA specter is haunting the streets of Denver, warns businessman Dan Maes, a Tea Party denizen who hopes to become the next governor of Colorado. The threat is “very well disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes promised supporters. And what exactly is it that threatens our freedom? In a word, bicycles — the riding […]
Posted inRange
Rants from the Hill: A thousand-mile walk to home
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert. Three summers ago I blew out a lumbar disc while running a jackhammer in the desert near my house—an accident that was the result of simple bad luck, with the odds perhaps skewed by […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Young, All-American, Illegal
Undocumented kids thrive in the U.S. — until they turn 18 and the law cracks down.
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Welcome back, otter
Kitchi, a male river otter, escaped from Colorado Springs’ Cheyenne Mountain Zoo this past May when he deftly pulled apart the mesh wire on his outdoor enclosure. Zookeepers pursued him through a culvert with a robotic camera, but failed to catch him. He is still on the loose, perhaps living in nearby Fountain Creek. Kitchi’s […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Recognizing unfairness
Young people dressed in graduation caps and gowns protest for immigration reform.
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Caveman of Southeast Alaska
From deep beneath the Tongass, Steve Lewis calls for conservation
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
A flood of visitors
Monsoon season struck Paonia with a vengeance in the muggy final days of July. Beyond window-rattling thunder and heart-stopping lightning, the storms have brought deluges of rain, sending irrigation ditches flooding over their banks and washing out roads and driveways. Our flood of summer visitors through HQ has continued unabated, as well. High Country News […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Truth, lies and poetry
War DancesSherman Alexie209 pages, hardcover, $23.Grove Press, 2009. In the title story of War Dances, a World War II veteran tries — and fails — to glorify the dying moments of a fellow soldier. “I was thinking about making up something as beautiful as I could,” he tells the dead soldier’s grandson. “But I couldn’t […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Tough justice, hard fate
Then Came the EveningBrian Hart272 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury USA, 2010. In Brian Hart’s debut novel, a Vietnam veteran, believing his wife died in the fire that destroyed their cabin, goes crazy with rage and remorse, and commits a crime that makes the reader gasp. Bandy, who’s also half-drunk at the time, ends up in jail, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2010: Young, All-American, Illegal
Ready … or not
Until that Monday, I’d never caused a death. Maybe I still haven’t, but I don’t know for sure, and the vision of it keeps rearing up in my mind. I was bathing tired feet in snowmelt waters after hours of walking in the wildflower havens of the Elk Mountains. The alpine meadows teemed with columbines […]
Posted inArticles
Unwelcome home
Chih Tsung Kao has called Boulder, Colo., home since age four. But the Taiwan native has never had legal status in the U.S. Now 24, Chih, a college graduate, has no feasible path to citizenship. “(I)t’s pretty trying to run into brick walls all the time,” Chih says. “I can’t do anything. I can’t contribute […]
Posted inGoat
Quarry quandary
The limestone that comes from quarries near Durkee, Ore., has more mercury in it than average. As Jeremy Miller reported for HCN last January, when that limestone gets cooked in giant kilns to make cement, the mercury lifts into the air along with other dangerous pollutants like soot, hydrogen chloride, and hydrocarbons. From there, it […]
Posted inBlog
National Parks for the Whole Nation
I’ll admit it. There are some environmental topics I just don’t know much about. For example, I first heard of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir when friends living near Yosemite invited me to visit during my move from Los Angeles to Portland (that January trip was itself my first visit to Yosemite). I saw a sign […]
Posted inArticles
The life and death of Desert Rock
The Navajo Nation’s proposed coal plant always rested on shaky ground. Now, it may collapse entirely.
Posted inWotr
We keep trying to stop the fires
Scorched earth and gnarled oaks lit up like flares. Blackened skies and the whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopters aloft as evacuees huddle in a local school. This quick-cut imagery can mean only one thing in California: The summer fire season has begun. Although the first major fires in the Southern California counties of Kern and Los Angeles […]
Posted inRange
Who is the California Farm Water Coalition?
Editor’s note: David Zetland, a water economist 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. Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition, has often commented (or been quoted) on this blog and […]
Posted inGoat
Telemocracy # 2
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” –Hunter S. Thompson, in Rolling Stone, 1974 Who knew that the home of a gigantic desert lake that is mercilessly full of salt could get even weirder? Utahn politics have begotten some truly magnificent works of campaign art this cycle – let’s get right to it.