An interview with novelist Andrew Sean Greer
The sky is a crowded attic
Posted inWotr
Building brainpower on the cheap
It is not a nice day. The temperature is in the 50s and it is overcast and sprinkling. Through the ponderosa pines I can see that the mountains to the west are sprinkled with white. It will not be long before the rain turns into snow. If I pass the field exams, it will lead […]
Posted inGoat
Bright sunshiny day
Arizona has more clear, sunny days than any other state in the West. In the summer months, sheets of mirage-casting heat waves pour down across expansive miles of desert. Yet for years this sunny state has lagged in developing its solar industry, relying instead on coal and nuclear power. Recently, though, that’s started to change. […]
Posted inGoat
Lawless future indeed
Our recent story “Lawless future” described the Road Warrior-esque state of some of California’s state parks. The state’s budget problems meant that parks lost nearly $40 million this year. Short on staffing and law enforcement, many parks saw a surge in vandalism and illegal activity; nonetheless, the state is planning to shut down several parks […]
Posted inGoat
“We all blew it”
“I think Van Jones is a big part of the future of environmentalism,” Gus Speth, dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert earlier this year. “He, more than anyone else, is bringing together a concern about the environment and […]
Posted inGoat
The long dark tea time of the split estate
An older couple — freshly retired from jobs on Colorado’s Californicized Front Range — decides it’s time to build a dream home somewhere on the state’s less populous Western Slope. They pick a dry mesa, scrubby with sage and rabbit brush, where the views go on for miles. The neighbors graze cows. The meadowlarks sing. […]
Posted inGoat
‘Tis the season
In the Rocky Mountains, wedged between Summer Tourist Season and Fall Big-Game Hunting Season, is a relatively brief interval of crowded highways known as Aspen Season. It has nothing to do with the Colorado resort town, and everything to do with the tree, whose leaves change color. Technically, the leaves don’t exactly change […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Peril in the parks
Early August: A woman and her young son are stranded for five days in a remote corner of Death Valley National Park in 117 degree-average heat; the boy doesn’t survive. Late August: Two climbers fall in Grand Teton; one is airlifted from a ledge by helicopter. The National Park Service is involved in thousands of […]
Posted inRange
Back to the future: Public Health hospitals
Seattle-based Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer, will move into its new headquarters near Lake Union next year. Then Amazon will leave an old Art Deco building, once known as the U.S. Marine Hospital. What if we took this empty building and turned it into a hospital? What if we staffed it with federal employees? […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Why some men are the way they are
Nine Ten AgainPhil Condon200 pages, softcover: $17.Elixir Press, 2009. Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want ItMaile Meloy240 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Riverhead, 2009. Where The Money WentKevin Canty208 pages, hardcover: $25.Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009. Three recent books of short stories feature complex but credible characters in relationships tingling with tension. Even as they play on […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
The unbearable lightness of baby feet
Michelle Nijhuis’s essay “A Tenderfoot in Taos,” about the mom, the baby and the concerned drunk in the park, made that issue more human (HCN, 7/20/09). Thomas Merton wrote: “I think the chief reason we have so little joy is that we take ourselves too seriously.” People who are really concerned about what happens to […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
The lodgepole hegemony
Hillary Rosner’s article puts undue emphasis on the negative aspects of the pine-bark beetle infestation affecting forests around the West (HCN, 8/17/2009). While it is a difficult adjustment for many of the area’s residents and the cause of a few tragic deaths, this event has many positive aspects as well. In my view, it is […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Pass on gas
I find it unfortunate that Randy Udall has suggested that natural gas, a fossil fuel, can save the world (HCN, 8/17/09). The implication is that the relatively recent discoveries about how to better exploit shale gas will be sufficient to meet a substantial part of our energy needs. The article gives citizens a false sense […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Parks Climate Challenge: North Cascades 2009
High school students learn about climate change
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Our best idea
Dayton Duncan was an impressionable 9-year-old when he made his first journey into the West’s national parks. He had the kind of life-changing experience that many people have enjoyed in the parks. Beginning Sept. 27, it will pay off in 12 hours of evocative public television, exploring how land conservation is often inspired by personal […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Lawsuits of last resort
“Thinking Outside the Timber Box” discussed the Center for Biological Diversity’s efforts to restore northern Arizona’s once-stately ponderosa pine forests (HCN, 7/20/09). Our memo of understanding with Arizona Forest Restoration Products does not waive the Center’s right to appeal or litigate Forest Service decisions. It instead promotes high-quality ecological restoration projects to preclude the need […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
“To feel at home, stay at home.”
“To feel at home, stay at home.”– Clifton Fadiman, writer and radio personality Simple words, but I’ve taken them to heart. So have a lot of Westerners. The crummy economy and the “keep-it-local” movement have kept many of us from roaming as much as we usually do. One friend of mine went so far as […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Confronting life’s essentials
Every so often, I long to relocate to a metropolis far from my sleepy Oregon hometown and my third of an acre of Douglas firs and screech owls. “Oh, Melissa,” chides a friend used to these yearnings. “Just take a vacation and move your couch.” The desire for change entices us. Those who live in […]