No longer flushing, but still flashing, a ceramic toilet fitted with a transmitter signaled its way across the Northwest last fall. Tagged to send its location to nearby cell phone towers, the discarded commode was one of 782 objects donated by 40 Seattle residents in autumn 2009 for Trash Track. This Massachusetts Institute of Technology […]
The incredible journey
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
It’s the population, stupid?
On my desk sits a stack of manila folders. Each one contains an essay that argues, essentially, that all of our problems — especially the environmental ones — are caused by one thing: overpopulation. We get a lot of this sort of thing. Most of it comes from a guy named Frosty Wooldridge, who has […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Chuck Bowden’s border war
Nearly a decade on, a writer’s look at the futility of the war on drugs still matters.
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
‘Rage against the machine’
Thank you for writing about the Mountain View Neighborhood in Bernalillo County, N.M. (HCN, 2/01/10). It is rare that communities suffering from the injustice of disproportionate levels of environmental degradation are given attention in the media. I cringed to read about our deficiencies as activists and community organizers. Nevertheless, you captured the challenges that face […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The myths of Native American identity
Everything You Know About Indians Is WrongPaul Chaat Smith193 pages,hardcover: $21.95.University of Minnesota Press, 2009. We approach the millennium as a people leading often fantastic and surreal lives. The Pequot, a tribe that’s all but extinct, run the most profitable casino in the country, and tribal members become millionaires. But guess who’s still the poorest […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Reporting facts, even when it hurts
I have read your recent feature stories on environmental justice, and as much as I want to appreciate the coverage of the stories that have built this movement and continue to push the fundamental changes necessary to clean up and restore the well-being of our planet and people, I find myself outraged at your portrayal […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Power (and financial) struggle
Despite running head-to-head with President Obama’s State of the Union speech and a talk on campus by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, our Jan. 27 panel discussion on energy, activism and the role of the media on the Navajo and Hopi Nations drew more than 100 Tucsonians. “Power Struggle,” co-hosted by the University of […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
The bald eagle paradox
When the recovery of one species endangers another
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Meditation in stone
Rock art is a unique cultural legacy in our region that deserves attention as we lose sites rapidly to vandalism. Unfortunately, the article “Ancient Conversations” misses this very important point (HCN, 2/01/10). It also left me with many questions about the seemingly Eurocentric interpretations of symbols. Meaningful collaboration with Native Americans is past due, and […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Letter of intent
This comment originally posted on hcn.org. Many environmentalists mischaracterize the intent of the letters that were written to the Group of 10 and other environmental groups (HCN, 2/01/10). They would say that people of color wanted to be included in the environmental movement and be part of their agenda. In fact, that was not the […]
Posted inGoat
The trouble with monuments
Last week, Western conservative congressmen found a great excuse to get all worked up, apoplectic, and downright angry in the gleeful way that Western conservatives seem to have a premium on. President Obama, they said, was ready to make a massive land grab that would turn huge swaths of Western states into federal fiefdoms, off-limits […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Good night, sweet trees
Sudden Aspen Decline is like a Shakespearean tragedy
Posted inGoat
This’ll buoy your day
A bevy of bright-yellow buoys may soon bob off the coast of Reedsport, Oreg. With each rise and fall of an ocean swell, the flotilla of giant, robotic, $4 million duckies will generate electrons to power TVs and industries. The electricity will travel to an underwater substation, then by cable to shore. What impact will […]
Posted inGoat
The Illusory Cowboy Way
It stands to reason that a state that features a cowboy riding a bronco on its license plate would be partial to “the cowboy way.” And the Wyoming legislature is trying to make it official with a code derived from the 2004 book Cowboy Ethics, by James P. Owen. The proposed code […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
How much does that canyon weigh?
ARIZONA If you don’t laugh or gasp with amazement at least once while reading the boatman’s quarterly review, the off-and-on-again magazine published by the nonprofit Grand Canyon River Guides in Flagstaff, Ariz., you’re way too serious. A recent profile of teacher and guide Steve Lonie, 61, included these tidbits: Asked about the craziest question he’d […]
Posted inGoat
Thumbs up for Wyo’s wind tax
Wyoming has some of the world’s best winds for generating power. And wind energy developers salivate over all those big, wide-open, unpeopled spaces. It’s no surprise then that turbines have been sprouting in those spaces at a rapid rate over the past year or so, upping the state’s total wind generating capacity by more than […]
Posted inGoat
Sam Hamilton’s Vision
Sam Hamilton, the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, died last Saturday after suffering chest pains while skiing with friends outside Frisco, Colo. He was just 54. Hamilton had been on the job only five and a half months, but he’d laid out an ambitious new agenda for the agency, pushing it to […]
Posted inGoat
Balancing Nevada
Nevada’s special legislative session, currently in its second day, has been described by many as a dog-and-pony show effort to balance the state budget – most of the real negotiations to extract money from the private sector and cut state spending has been going on behind the scenes in closed-door sessions. But listening to the […]
Posted inMarch 1, 2010: The War Next Door
Down the wormhole
A Colorado cave might hold a key to extraterrestrial life forms
Posted inWotr
Thank you, Utah, for leading the way
Utah’s Legislature has an undeserved reputation for being reactionary. Yet state Sen. Chris Buttars of West Jordan, Utah, was definitely onto something when he proposed dropping 12th grade in order to alleviate the state’s budget crunch and reduce the cost of public education. Buttars’ proposal, combined with the Utah Senate’s recently passed bill to exempt […]