MONTANA Blame YouTube, the Internet source for stupid and hilarious videos, for delaying Montana’s Legislature and governor from finishing a state budget. Negotiations stalled for two days while more than 17,000 people went to YouTube to view a red-faced rant by Republican House Majority Leader Michael Lange. Leaving an unproductive budget meeting with Democratic Gov. […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Longing for a buried past
If you have heard of the Yaak Valley in northwest Montana, and if you know of the threats to its particular wildness, it’s probably because you’ve read a plea for its protection by Rick Bass. Bass’ fierce love for the Yaak has not always been good for his fiction. “It bleeds just like blood throughout […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
A poet’s novel of the San Luis Valley
Entering Colorado poet Aaron Abeyta’s first novel, Rise, Do Not Be Afraid, is like visiting a world that no longer exists — if it ever did. Santa Rita, the mythical Western town that forms the subject of this short, dense novel, is a place reminiscent of Eden, both before and after the Fall. One is […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Working for a serial killer?
Regarding your story “Disposable workers of the oil and gas fields,” I work in the oilfields now; I’m a derrick hand (HCN, 4/2/07). While I respect anyone with 50 years in the fields, I also say “crap” to the perceived value of “safety meetings.” I have to write at least one job description report and […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
You want pommes frites with that?
I am sick to death of the pro-horse-slaughter people decrying the demise of the foreign-owned horse-slaughterhouses that provide horsemeat for human consumption in Europe and other locales (HCN, 4/30/07). The best argument that these people can rally is to point out the prohibitive cost of euthanizing an animal that is no longer useful, or keeping […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Filet of filly–for lions and leopards
I have to agree with Sharon O’Toole for the most part about euthanizing our equines (HCN, 4/30/07). A few years ago, when my old saddle/packhorse needed to be put down, I dreaded not only the process of euthanizing, but also “offering” him to rendering works. Then I found out about donating him to a local […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
The cost of driving ’til you qualify
Although it’s great that you are talking about the housing issue, one sweeping statement — “Don’t blame water or oil for the cul de sac’s decline. Blame creative financing.” — is skirting the fact that, yes, transportation costs (and hence oil) play a key role in many people losing their homes (HCN, 4/30/07). According to […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Fightin’ against the feds
Name: Mike Noel Vocation: Utah state representative (R-Utah District 73) Day Job: Executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District Favorite Foods: “I actually got introduced to sushi with a buddy of mine up at the Legislature. I really like that. I kind of go with all the cooked stuff. I don’t like baby […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Voluntary excess
As budgets shrink, national parks increasingly rely on volunteers instead of paid staff
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
The deer departed
And the ones that will remain while the National Park Service conducts a controversial mammal birth-control experiment at Point Reyes National Seashore
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Two weeks in the West
Just about every dinky diner in the Northwest’s logging country used to have a supplemental menu. Beside the grease-spattered board offering up fried eggs and bacon was another touting items such as spotted owl stew. It was a joke, of course, a jab at the endangered bird that many loggers blamed for the demise of […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Dear friends
WELCOME, HCN SUMMER INTERNS After a degree in zoology from the University of Washington and three years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Morgan Heim wanted a change. It’s not that Morgan, who grew up catching snakes and crabs in Virginia Beach, didn’t love following salmon or studying orcas. But ultimately the relentless single-mindedness […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Of feral dogs, and feral Westerners
Feral dogs are more common in the rural West than bathtub methamphetamine labs or chainsaw carvers. They roam dumps, harass and attack wildlife and livestock, and, I know from painful experience, they lie in wait on two-lane roads to discipline bicyclists. “Rez” dogs may be famous for scavenging in roadside ditches outside Tuba City, Ariz., […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Weathering the academic storm
Dan Donato’s controversial study on salvage logging turned his life upside-down
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
A common problem
It may sound odd to some ears, but it’s accurate to say American Indians are diverse. One small example: Although high-desert reservations are an enduring image in the popular mind, only about one-eighth of Native Americans live on reservations, with roughly two-thirds inhabiting urban areas. Still, some social trends spread widely enough across Native American […]
Posted inMay 28, 2007: Problems In Paradise
Problems in Paradise
A murder near the famed waterfalls of Havasu Canyon reveals the social ills of a tribe that needs help
Posted inArticles
The magnificent obsession of sheep herding
(Click on any photo below to see a larger version.) Border collies by nature are intelligent and moody -– one woman fondly describes hers as a habitual sulker — and as many an owner will attest, they’re notoriously high-maintenance. A collie’s obsessive-compulsive herding instinct means that it will round up not just sheep or cattle, […]
Posted inWotr
Ducks on the walls
“My baby’s got the most deplorable taste/but her biggest mistake is hanging over the fireplace/She’s got ducks, ducks on the wall!” That song by the Kinks rankles: What’s the matter with ducks on the wall? During my 15 years as a Wyomingite, I’ve learned that ducks make especially nice ornaments, winging toward windows or flapping […]
Posted inWotr
Knee-jerking in western Colorado
In 1917, during the height of anti-German propaganda in this country, the essayist H.L. Mencken wrote a history of the bathtub. He said President Millard Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House — a brave act given that medical professionals believed bathtubs to be “certain inviters of phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of […]
Posted inWotr
Fees have become a public-lands shakedown
Scarcely anyone objected in 1996, when Congress authorized the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to charge the public new or increased fees for accessing its own land to fish, hunt, boat, drive, park, camp or walk. After all, it was going to be an experiment […]