Blame By Michelle Huneven 304 pages, hardcover: $25.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Patsy MacLemoore is a hard-partying 28-year-old who managed to earn a Ph.D. from Berkeley but drank herself out of the running for the most prestigious jobs, landing at a middling college in Pasadena, Calif. It’s the spring of 1981 in Michelle Huneven’s latest […]
A life unwound
Posted inRange
Vilsack calls for “change”
In his first major speech on forest policy, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack laid out the Obama Administration’s plans for managing national forests and grasslands that total 193 million acres (an area the size of Texas!) much of it in the West. Vilsack also emphasized wildfire management in an era when the size of wildfires and […]
Posted inRange
Indian Country & health care reform
Will ‘poor old grandma’ redefine this debate? You hear a lot about grandma now that Congress is back to work on health care reform legislation. “Poor old grandma” is a reason opponents say they will fight health care reform. Grandma will lose services, her Medicare will be less than it is, and some bureaucrat far […]
Posted inGoat
The Cheney International Center
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne donated about $3.5 million to the University of Wyoming, and in return UW named a 20,000-square-foot center in Cheney’s honor. The Cheney International Center will house the university’s international programs, which include the study of global economic systems, international culture and social issues, international development and […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Timothy Egan’s Western odyssey
A talk with the author of five books about the West
Posted inRay
Obama enviros now total 34
The Obama administration has now enlisted at least 34 people who have direct ties to environmental groups or clear leanings in that direction. That’s my running count of the enviros nominated or appointed to top jobs in federal agencies and the White House. The latest is Harris Sherman, executive director of the Colorado Department of […]
Posted inGoat
Victorious in Victor
Students and teachers at the Teton Valley Community School in Victor, Idaho, are heading back to school with a new spring in their step. That’s because their design won the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge: Classroom–a competition hosted by Architecture for Humanity, selected from more than 400 qualified entries from over 65 countries, which I blogged […]
Posted inRange
Phenology and the Mojave Desert
Last spring I found myself transfixed by the brilliant crimson petals of a Mojave mound cactus and the seemingly endless procession of bee pollinators that crept into its petals. Flowers and fruit are pleasing to the eye, so it’s no wonder that in the Mojave Desert they attract bees and also many wildflower enthusiasts. But […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Coming home to the cosmos
A wandering meteor-chaser puts down roots
Posted inGoat
Medic!
Picture yourself on the front lines of a massive wildfire — soot smeared into the creases of your face, your clothes stiff and itchy with days-old sweat, your palms blistered from grubbing a fire line through duff and brush with a Pulaski. What dangers might you face? Falling snags? A fire sweeping uphill faster than […]
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
A conversation with Michelle Nijhuis
Photos and an interview with the author of “Township 13 South, Range 92 West, Section 35”
Posted inSeptember 14, 2009: Home
Township 13 South, Range 92 West, Section 35
A home of mysteries and restless souls
Posted inGoat
It Happened in the Shrubbery
Last weekend, as the Station wildfire on the northern edge of urban Los Angeles doubled, and doubled, and then doubled again – it has now grown to 250 square miles in the Angeles National Forest – I sat down to re-read “Fire Management of California Shrubland Landscapes” by Jon E. Keeley of the U.S. Geological […]
Posted inWotr
We can help bees by cleaning up our act
Over the last four years, millions of the West’s workers have vanished. No, they’re not immigrants deported back to Mexico. Rather, they’re honeybees, and no one’s sure where they’ve gone. Scientists have been baffled by the large-scale disappearances, but now there’s finally some good news: Recent research has identified at least three of the major […]
Posted inGoat
Obama’s speech to students
Whipped up by right-wing talk shows, conservatives are criticizing President Obama’s back-to-school speech — which will “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning,” according to the U.S. Department of Education — as “indoctrination.” The Associated Press reports that: Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna requested additional information […]
Posted inArticles
Audio: Where the buffalo roam
Josh Zaffos talks about the Lakota reclaiming their grassland on the Pine Ridge Reservation
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
A new land grab
The Oglala Sioux are on a path to reclaim their territory and their culture
Posted inGoat
“Nuclear whack-a-mole”
Last week, attorneys for the state of Utah joined the fray against nuclear-waste disposal company EnergySolutions by filing an appeal against a ruling that would allow the company to import foreign nuclear waste to the state. EnergySolutions, a Salt Lake City-based company that disposes of low-level radioactive waste from other states, has been in talks to import up […]
Posted inRange
Ray Ring’s “Affirmative actions”
In his recent HCN report “Affirmative Actions” (August 17 edition), Ray Ring makes this statement: Obama’s array of appointees mirrors the percentages of blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans in our society. More than anything, these three controversial appointments highlight the (environmental) movement’s chronic failure to recruit minorities into its top echelon. Over almost 40 years […]
Posted inWotr
Is Obama’s goal of diversity trumping other goals?
Homer Lee Wilkes. Ignacia Moreno. Hilary Tompkins. Each is a member of a racial or ethnic minority, and each has been nominated by Barack Obama, our first black president, to a high position with power over environmental issues in the West. And each has faced skepticism from environmentalists. On May 5, Obama picked Wilkes to […]