When I was in high school, my history teacher assigned each member of my class to interview someone who had lived through the Great Depression to better understand how life had changed during that time. I chose to interview my grandmother, who was 20 in 1929 when the stock market crashed. I anticipated tales of […]
Dirt poor, dirt rich
Posted inWotr
A chance to do it right in the West
The 2008 election took the West another big step down the path of political realignment that has been underway since the turn of the century. By 2000, the Rocky Mountain West had become essentially a one-party region. All eight of its governors were Republicans, as were 13 of its 16 senators. In the 2000 election, […]
Posted inWotr
The persistence of bigotry, Western-style
Q: What’s Barack Obama’s new Chinese name?A: Coon Soon Die. Work on it a little bit. You’ll get it. I got it while I was eating eggs over-medium, hashbrowns and bacon at a restaurant in Hotchkiss, a town of less than 2,000 people in western Colorado. The waitress who was pouring coffee asked who we […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Burn it, bit by bit
In recent years, we have watched the lodgepole pines of the Fraser Valley and many other parts of Colorado succumb to the pine beetle’s voracious appetite (HCN, 11/10/08). This has resulted in a tinderbox, just waiting for the right conditions to all go up in flames. I have no faith that timber companies would do […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
The carbon-go-round
I have a hard time believing that industrial logging practices will combat global warming, as Tom Bonnicksen is so fond of advocating (HCN, 11/10/08). In order to seriously and honestly consider such a proposal, one needs to have a full and accurate accounting of the tremendous amount of carbon that is released by the entire […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Awww …
The only reason that cattle and sheep producers can really use to justify their position –– that the only good wolf is a dead one –– is that the wolf and other large predators endanger a traditional way of life in the West (HCN, 11/10/08). The actual contribution of the Rocky Mountain area to national […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Wolves, ranchers and public lands
The recovery of the gray wolf is clearly a political issue, not a biological issue. Given this fact, how can Daniel Glick write nearly 4,000 words on the relationship of Westerners with Canis lupus without mentioning the words “public lands” (HCN, 11/10/08)? The cattle ranchers, sheep ranchers and outfitters highlighted in this article all make […]
Posted inDecember 8, 2008: Out in the cold
Kitsching the West
Regarding the “Weekend Westerner” article, the hyper-romanticized version of the American West’s history by Germans is well known (HCN, 11/24/08). Being Arthur Kruse’s age, I well remember my older brother reading Karl May novels, and playing Indians-and-Cowboys in the mid-’40s. We grew up during the war near Darmstadt, Germany, a city 85 percent destroyed during […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
Outdoor slacking still takes work
Back-of-the-beyond recreation was recently celebrated by a magazine called InsideOutside in its 10-year anniversary issue. The southwestern Colorado publication featured dozens of grassroots writers who shared stories about how they worked as little as possible in order to ski, snowboard, hike, fish, hunt, bike, climb or otherwise hang out. But as Luke Auld-Thomas recalled, living […]
Posted inHeard Around the West
A new definition of pluck
A woman in Prescott, Ariz., deserves a prize for pluck: She ran a mile with a fox firmly fastened to her arm. The fox had run out and bitten the jogger in the foot, reports the Associated Press, and when the woman grabbed it by the neck, it squirmed and bit her arm. Wanting the […]
Posted inWotr
We’re in this together
There is a house in Rawlins, Wyo., that won’t sell. It’s a bargain, too, at $135,000. In fact, there are 43 houses in Rawlins selling for under $150,000. This is a booming energy town with a housing shortage. People in Rawlins have money. Wyoming has, in fact, the fastest growing median household income of any […]
Posted inGoat
Obama and public lands
Even though the West was a key battleground in the 2008 presidential election, our issues — public lands, water, endangered species, etc. — didn’t get a lot of attention from either candidate. And for the past three months, the economy has dominated the news. But our issues do appear in this interesting piece by Les […]
Posted inGoat
Look on the bright side
We have the technology to generate electricity from renewable resources, but most of our machines, from blow driers to conveyor belts, continue to run on coal. That’s because it is easier to create renewable energy than to transport it. Rigging a new power line from, say, a remote Nevada wind farm to a population center […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Desperate measures
With water shortages a constant, Westerners are looking at wacky (and not so wacky) ways to squeeze more water out of the sky and land.
Posted inGoat
Where geography still matters
As president-elect Barack Obama goes about picking a cabinet, we hear a lot about a book of popular history that was published three years ago: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Some parallels seem almost eerie. Abraham Lincoln’s main rival for the Republican nomination in 1860 was William […]
Posted inGoat
Howling Wolf on the West coast
The feature story in the November 10th edition of HCN – Still Howling Wolf – asked: Will Westerners finally learn to live with Canis lupus? The article looks for the answer in the attitudes of a variety of Northern Rockies residents in light of a lawsuit that returned the gray wolf to federal Endangered Species […]
Posted inWotr
The names of things and why they matter
If there is one thing Westerners like, it is naming things. Open up a topographical atlas and take a look: Every creek, butte, ridge, wash and reservoir has a name. We are fond of naming creeks Spring, buttes Pumpkin, ridges Red, washes Dry, reservoirs Cow, lakes Lost. We even re-name places that had already been […]
Posted inGoat
Bush’s last days
Accelerating oil shale development across 2 million acres, okaying an auction for gas drilling by three national parks, weakening endangered species protection, allowing more mining waste in rivers and streams, and exempting factory farms from air pollution reporting…just a few of the 53 “midnight regulations” President George W. Bush has launched in the past three […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Weekend Westerner
Name Arthur KruseAge 69Hometown Munich, GermanyOccupation Consultant to the high-pressure compressor company where he was sales manager for 32 years.Still mourned “Flites Gentleman,” Kruse’s quarter horse, who had to be put down after a bad fall on ice just before Christmas Eve four years ago. Other club members About 50 men and 35 women — […]
Posted inNovember 21, 2008: Ultimate solution?
Ultimate solution?
Desalination may finally be coming of age in a thirsty West. Take it with a grain of salt.