It’s spring, and after a long, cold, dreary winter in New Mexico, I’m ready for it. And even though we’ve had a couple of late snowstorms and the trees are only just now beginning to get leaves, dandelions are already growing in the cracks of the rock wall next to my sidewalk. I call them […]
My love affair with dandelions
Posted inWotr
Native Americans walk the talk across America
Native Americans began their 3,600-mile walk across America at Alcatraz Island Feb. 11, and soon they’ll conclude in Washington, D.C. I’ve accompanied them on the Northern Route, co-hosting a Web radio program as they crossed the freezing Sierra Nevada Range, plodded through a hailstorm in western Utah and walked over the cold Rocky Mountains of […]
Posted inWotr
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Cowgirl meets lawsuit
Jackalope Dreams, Mary Clearman Blew’s fifth book and first novel, depicts the head-on collision of the Old West and the New. There are cattle, and meth labs; ranches lost to real estate developers and young people gone to cities; the end of cowboying as a lifelong verb and the rise of cowboy tourism. Corey Henry, […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
The (non)idiot’s guide to energy
We all know what a carbon footprint is. But for those ready to go beyond Global Warming 101, energy specialist Carol Sue Tombari has condensed our national conversation about energy decisions into a mercifully compact and readable book called Power of the People: America’s New Electricity Choices. Tombari, the manager of stakeholder relations at the […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
‘Shooting ourselves in the head’
The personal right to self-defense is not so broad as to include the intrusion into the safety and well-being of others in order to exercise that right (HCN, 4/28/08). Guns are not only in the homes of the households they are supposed to protect, they are violating our communities. They are in fast-food restaurants, on […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Art with a conscience
I was shocked and saddened to read Childs’ grim report (HCN, 4/28/08). I looked on eBay under “Anasazi” – sure enough, there was all kinds of stuff for sale. Shocking. There’s a way to enjoy this art without robbing graves. I bought a pot at the Acoma Pueblo. It sits in my living room. The […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Buy a t-shirt instead
I have been visiting the backcountry of the Southwest for many years. Craig Childs’ statement in “Pillaging the Past” that 90 percent of archaeological sites have been vandalized seems accurate from what I have witnessed (HCN, 4/28/08). When I first set foot on Cedar Mesa in southeast Utah almost 30 years ago, artifacts such as […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Not so fine a line
I applaud Craig Childs for furthering public awareness about the destruction of archaeological sites, and agree that archaeologists need to be more concerned about whether or not an artifact should be collected, and what happens to it after it is collected(HCN, 4/28/08). . But in his effort to conflate archaeological investigation with pothunting, he makes […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Heard Around the West
ARIZONA For sheer excitement, read the current issue of boatman’s quarterly review, published “more or less quarterly” by that elite group, Grand Canyon River Guides. A special 25-page section revisits the dangerous spring of 1983, when an unusually snowy winter was followed by a May snowstorm and suddenly warming temperatures. Roaring like a freight train, […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
The amphibian heart
The road was covered with toads. Crouched on the two-lane mountain blacktop, posed like speckled sphinxes on the yellow line. I saved as many as I could, leaping from my idling car to scoop up their warm dimpled bodies and deposit them in adjacent Sonoran Desert. But too many were already belly-up or smeared across […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Too many elk and not enough tough love
I took my first sleigh ride around the National Elk Refuge recently, and after observing the artificial-feed buffet for elk, the calf hoof-rot and all the willows nibbled to the nubs, all I could think was: “I have a feeling we’re not in Wyoming anymore.” Isn’t Wyoming supposed to be the state where the federal […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
An activist
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “On Cancer’s Trail.” Scientific research on breast cancer is important, but if lives on the reservation are being saved right now, it’s largely through the efforts of people like Nellie Sandoval, Stefanie Raymond-Whish’s mother. Sandoval, a retired high school guidance counselor, works to ensure […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
A well
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “On Cancer’s Trail.” Between Haystack Rock and Mount Taylor, on an expansive sweep of desert near the eastern edge of the Navajo Reservation, Kerr McGee and Homestake mined uranium ore for decades, hauling it down the road in uncovered trucks. The Homestake Mill is […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
A patient
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “On Cancer’s Trail.” Kathleen Tsosie sits in the waiting room of the San Juan Regional Cancer Center in Farmington. A one-year breast cancer survivor, she has just received devastating news: A new growth has been spotted in her remaining, healthy breast. Dressed in a […]
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Rural West going to the dogs
Feral and free-roaming canines wreak havoc on wildlife and livestock
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Green and mean
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund builds on anti-Pombo election strategy
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Fields of overkill
Conservation, farmers scorched by food safety concerns
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Climate cash-in
Western farmers and ranchers use crops – and cows – to tap into the carbon market
Posted inMay 26, 2008: On Cancer’s Trail
Population’s Paul Revere?
NAME Frosty Wooldridge AGE 61 KNOWN FOR His e-mails, blogs, letters and books about overpopulation, and by extension, immigration. HE SAYS “You can ignore reality, but at some point reality will not ignore you. In the U.S., we’re now on track to add 100 million people in the next 30 years. We can bring about […]