The Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American WestLinda Hussa, photographs by Madeleine Graham Blake272 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of Nevada Press, 2009. The families described in The Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American West are traditional in that they are not “traditional” at all: One mother is single, and […]
Raising cows — and kids — in the West
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
History viewed through gunsights
Famous Firearms of the Old West: From Wild Bill Hickok’s Colt Revolvers to Geronimo’s Winchester, Twelve Guns That Shaped Our HistoryHal Herring189 pages, hardcover: $24.95. TwoDot/Globe Pequot Press, 2008. Chief Joseph was carrying a lever-action Model 1866 Winchester rifle that fired .44 Rimfire cartridges when he led the Nez Perce against the U.S. Cavalry […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
Tarp Nation
Squatter villages arise from the ashes of the West’s booms and busts
Posted inGoat
Paper exercise or real progress?
In words typical of claims by environmental organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) recently trumpeted “a big step forward for polar bear protection” when the Bush Administration agreed to designate critical habitat for the Polar Bear as part of a settlement with the group and its allies (Nature’s Voice, Jan/Feb 2009). Based on my […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
See you in April!
Last summer, we switched to a 22-issue-per-year publishing schedule; that means we skip an issue four times a year. Look for the next HCN to hit your mailbox around April 13 — now you’ll have more spare time to work on your taxes. Water on the BrainFor all of you folks who love to speculate […]
Posted inRay
Enviros suffer first major setback in Obama era
The environmental movement has just fallen short of a major goal, for the first time in the new green-trending era of President Barack Obama and the ramped-up Democrats in Congress. The stakes of this national battle are mostly on Western ground. It’s the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 — the biggest public lands […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
7-Eleven: the Final Frontier
Who was that masked man? Wearing a black mask, a black jacket and jeans, a man wielding what appeared to be a Klingon sword held up two convenience stores in Colorado Springs recently. According to a surveillance camera, the first 7-Eleven clerk handed over some money at 1:50 a.m. A half-hour later, the clerk at […]
Posted inGoat
Restorationists gather in Santa Cruz
Last week I attended the 27th annual conference of the Salmonid Restoration Federation. Restoration scientists, restoration technicians and young people enrolled in the California Conservation Corps gathered in Santa Cruz, California for four days of field trips, plenary addresses and workshops which showcased watershed and salmon restoration programs and projects from throughout California. You can […]
Posted inGoat
The Native health gap
Despite the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, Americans are enjoying longer lifespans, and fewer children are dying in infancy. Unless they’re Native American, that is. The numbers for Washington state, as reported in the Seattle P-I, are shocking: A recent state Department of Health report showed that the march against cancer, heart disease and infant mortality […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Bullets, bomb threats, cowgirls and the blues
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which may soon be mourned as a shuttered daily, attracted top-drawer talent in the mid-’70s, writes Jean Godden in Crosscut.com. Novelist Tom Robbins was on staff, as was legendary science-fiction writer Frank Herbert, creator of the Dune series. During that tumultuous decade, bomb threats became routine and there were regular anti-war demonstrations […]
Posted inWotr
Would you want to live near a wind farm?
If there’s an iconic image of the new push for domestic green energy, it’s the wind turbine photographed against a luminous horizon. Its sleek aerodynamic blades turn silently and steadily, providing happy Americans with clean, dependable energy. But there’s another image that’s becoming increasingly associated with wind power, and that’s its angry next-door neighbors. In […]
Posted inGoat
Fatal Attraction?
The bats of America are in dire straits. In the Eastern U.S., hundreds of thousands of hibernating bats have died from the mysterious fungal affliction known as white nose syndrome. To make matters worse, tree bats are getting whacked by wind turbines. Bats live up to 30 years and have one of the lowest reproductive rates among […]
Posted inGoat
The “tyranny of fleece”
President Obama today named activist and author Van Jones — an African American — as his Special Advisor on Green Jobs. Perhaps no one is more qualified to dole out stimulus funds for green jobs than Jones — especially now, as more and more people are impacted by a deteriorating environment and a failing economy. […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
Tough choices
The Feb. 16 issue manages to spotlight the “I want”/”I don’t want” schizophrenia of many who claim to love the environment. First, the article “Wind setbacks”: How can some of you look in the mirror after expressing rabid support for alternative energy sources like wind, if you insist that the turbines that generate the energy […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
Share the tracks
Our railways are the only transportation systems where both the movable equipment and the track infrastructure are owned by the same company (HCN, 2/02/09). In all other haulage systems, the “tracks” are shared by competing companies. Look at the highways, airways and waterways. Thus, individual railways have an advantage, because they do not have to […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
Scattered to the winds
I am one of the residents of the San Miguel valley in New Mexico where the company Invenergy is looking into locating industrial-size turbines (HCN, 2/16/09). My neighbors and I have been researching the impact of the wind industry, and many of us are concluding that in the push for renewables, it is preferable to […]
Posted inMarch 16, 2009: Innovate
The half-life curse
Hannah Nordhaus’ excellent exposé “The Half-life of Memory” is troubling on many fronts, but none more so than the quote from Jim Kelly given by Wes McKinley (HCN, 2/16/09). As one of the plant engineers at Rocky Flats, Kelly’s statement that “we didn’t need to pollute like that” is an indictment of the whole sordid […]