NAME Maurice McKinneyAGE 83HOMETOWN Whittier, Calif.OCCUPATION Retired gold miner and gemologist HCN SUBSCRIBER SINCE 2008 (longtime reader) For some time now, we’ve been receiving occasional — and very entertaining — letters from HCN reader Maurice McKinney. The self-described rockhound writes about his love of gems, Mexico and the great outdoors. “All my life I was […]
Romancing the stone
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Ring’s Reid grab
I was dismayed at the meanness and lack of balance displayed in the article entitled “The same old Sen. Reid” (HCN, 8/3/09). If it were not for the hard work of Harry Reid, we would not have the passage by Congress of the Omnibus Bill, Great Basin National Park, removal of lead from the drinking […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Righteous steak, too
Your review of my book Righteous Porkchop had a serious flaw (HCN, 8/3/09). The reviewer suggested that I intentionally avoid criticizing cattle ranching because of my own involvement in it. This fundamentally misses the argument the book is making about modern industrialized food production, namely that today’s confinement poultry, hog, and dairy operations, which keep […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Reid’s water grab
It is good to see Harry Reid’s cover being blown by Ray Ring (HCN, 8/3/09). For people in rural Nevada, Reid’s two-faced BS is common knowledge. Here in Lyon County, Nevada’s largest ag-producing county, Sen. Reid is the power behind the $200 million added to the Farm Bill to purchase the water rights of local […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Collaborative misinformation
Gary Nabhan’s hit piece on Jon Jarvis, Obama’s nominee for Director of the National Park Service, is misinformed, replete with false assertions and does a disservice to dedicated, longtime agency employees (HCN, 8/3/09). Nabhan’s assertion that Jarvis and Point Reyes National Seashore Superintendent Don Neubacher are trying to “phase out” and “evict” oyster farming and […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
As the crow flies
Crow Planet — Essential Wisdom from the Urban WildernessLyanda Lynn Haupt230 pages, hardcover: $23.99. Little, Brown and Company. 2009. Even though crows are unusually smart, make attentive parents, use tools, can learn to speak and are notoriously playful, they can’t seem to shake their bad reputation. They’re far more “loud, large, and conspicuous” than most […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
A wedding, a story
Here in Paonia, Colo., the peaches and tomatoes are finally ripening and High Country News is still welcoming lots of summer visitors. Dale Benjamin and his son, Jordan, of Vancouver, Wash., dropped by the office with Dale’s cousin, Hal Brill, a Paonia local. A USDA consumer safety inspector back home, Dale said he was glad […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Lawless future
Hard times extra hard for state parks
Posted inGoat
Funding to fight domestic violence
In recent weeks, the Obama administration has made safety on Indian reservations a major priority, doling out a slew of grants to tribes all over the West. “The Department of Justice is well aware that Indian Country is struggling with complex law enforcement issues involving violent crime, violence against women and crimes against children, and […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Suspicious habit
Can running from the cops become a lifestyle? That was the explanation in the Kitsap Sun from a 33-year-old man in Bremerton, Wash., who hightailed it to a roof as police searched his neighborhood for a suspect. After police got the man to climb down and asked him why he was hiding, the man explained: […]
Posted inRange
Still Trout Fishing in America
I catch fish with my hands. In the Wyoming Rockies, where I have spent my best summers, the high meadow streams are thick with brookies, cutthroats and rainbows. I hide behind willows and boulders, spying, greedy to catch, kill and eat them. The fish hang suspended in liquid moments then shear off like startled birds, crowding […]
Posted inGoat
Down and out
Joe Griego hasn’t worked in nine months. He hasn’t been able to do much since a bull crushed his ribs and damaged his spinal cord while he was on the clock at a New Mexico dairy. He hasn’t been sitting around milking workers’ compensation checks while he recovers, either. In fact, Griego’s had little help […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Solar salvation?
Timber companies and unemployed workers look to renewable energy for a boost.
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Dairy injuries and deaths 2003-2009
At least 18 people died working in Western dairies between 2003 and 2009; many more were injured. This list of deaths and injuries, compiled from state and federal safety agency reports, is certainly incomplete, thanks to loopholes and differences in state and federal reporting requirements as well as underreporting by workers. When possible, supplementary information […]
Posted inGoat
Milk: It doesn’t always do a body good
If you haven’t read Rebecca Clarren’s excellent HCN cover story on the West’s immigrant dairy workers and the on-the-job dangers they face, do it now! If you have read it and want to learn more, you should check out the story’s hefty (and heavy) sidebar: A comprehensive list of deaths and injuries in the West’s […]
Posted inGoat
Fighting the fire
“A healthy, fit firefighter is a safe firefighter.” This is what Stan Palmer, a member of the Northwest Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Safety and Health Working Team tells me when I ask about firefighter fatalities (See the related infographic on the top five causes of firefighter deaths since 1910). Over the years, firefighters in the West […]
Posted inGoat
Pot season in the parks
High Country News reported this phenomenon four years ago, in a piece by Adam Burke called The Public Lands’ Big Cash Crop. But this year the story is making big headlines around the West as huge gardens of marijuana are discovered and destroyed on public land from California to Colorado. The Denver Post reported today […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
Extinguished
Wildfires have intensified in the last 10 years, says Michelle Ryerson, chair of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Safety and Health Working Team. More extreme fires require more complex methods of firefighting, leading not only to higher costs but a change over time in the risks that firefighters face. In 1987, Ryerson’s team began keeping […]
Posted inWotr
My home on a glacier
I spent the summers of 2007 and 2008 on a glacier in southeast Alaska, with 12 people and 200 huskies. I was working as a dogsled guide, and each morning I’d pull myself from my sleeping bag, slip on my raincoat and boots, and step from my tent into the pale light of the Northern […]
Posted inAugust 31, 2009: The dark side of dairies
The new Third World
People are desperate for medical care in the West’s inner cities and rural areas.