Every day a clot of drivers moving at high speed takes on the Gallatin Canyon between Bozeman and Big Sky, Mont. It is the second-busiest commuting corridor in the state, and the most dangerous. Between 5,500 and 7,500 drivers navigate the perilous gantlet of highway 191 on a daily basis, on their way to work […]
Killer commutes in the rural West
Posted inWotr
Why are there still climate-change deniers?
Reading the newspapers lately, you might get the impression that the once strident climate-change deniers, doubters and skeptics are slowly becoming extinct. The New York Times recently called Sen. James Inhofe, the most strident of Al Gore’s critics, “a dinosaur,” and few in the House or Senate even tried to counter Gore’s recent testimony on […]
Posted inWotr
Black Sunday was a day to remember
Is there any more fitting reminder that May 2 marked the 25th anniversary of “Black Sunday” than recent word that ExxonMobil wants to get back into the oil shale business? For all of you newcomers to the West — and to those of us who’ve spent 25 years trying to forget it — May 2, […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Heard around the West
COLORADO A ski instructor at Powderhorn Ski Resort near Grand Junction, Colo., was riding a lift some 30 feet above the Red Eye trail when he looked down and saw a wide-awake black bear. It was standing at the mouth of a cave no longer blocked by snow. Rick Rodd took a quick photo, but […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Safe out there
When Jade shuffles down the abandoned railroad track that leads from her junked-up house to the rambling farmhouse I grew up in, the dogs go crazy, barking and snarling. I run out of the house to admonish them, embarrassed that these peace-loving dogs are tormenting the insane with their own insane behavior — behavior they […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
A brief, interpretive look at the Indian Wars
Author Michael Blake is best known for his fictional accounts of the often-violent cultural misunderstandings between Euro-Americans and Native Americans; his novel Dances with Wolves was made into a film and won several Academy Awards. But in his latest book, Indian Yell, Blake shifts his focus from historical fiction to historical fact. Chronicling 12 of […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
The granddaddy of all collaboration groups
One thing you quickly learn in the rural West is that ranchers come in all shapes and sizes. There are the fourth-generation ranchers hanging on by their toenails with overextended credit and the eternal hope that cattle prices will rebound, the drought will break, and most of their cows will be found on the mountain […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Why the West should copy Swiss transit
This winter, my family discovered that Oregon’s Mount Hood is known for more than dramatic mountain rescues. Would you believe it could also be home to the mother of all traffic jams? Taillights for as far as the eye can see, gridlock for nearly an hour: That’s what the highway through the Mount Hood National […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Blame cows, trees and the sun, not just humans
Jonathan Thompson says in your March 5 issue that “thanks to humans, the earth is warming up, sea levels will rise, and pestilence and severe weather events will follow” (HCN, 3/5/07). Approximately 40 percent of our warming is due to solar activity. Cows contribute methane gas and even our forests give off carbon dioxide. Sea […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Risky business
I worked in the oil fields in the mid-1950s, so I have some direct knowledge of what that work and the workers were like — 15 years before OSHA was born. I’m sure that all the facts in the article are true (and I hate what all those rigs are doing to the land) but […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
“Safety is for wussies”
I can’t tell you how much I admire your “Death in the Energy Fields” project (HCN, 4/2/07). It’s been a long time coming. As I read it, I couldn’t help recalling my days as a young reporter in Sidney, Mont., in the heart of the Williston Basin. I covered the death of a 34-year-old oilfield […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Company values
Great package (HCN, 4/2/07). It reminds me of stories my mom told me about growing up in Sopris, Colo. She said when there were cave-ins at the coal mines, the mine bosses would get the mules out and leave the dead miners inside. The mules were valuable, she said. The dead miners weren’t. Lori Ozzello […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Energy’s dark side
This great piece of journalism makes me want to weep (HCN, 4/2/07). How can our lawmakers be so careless as to allow this crap to continue? We need state and federal OSHA enforcement and reform! Thanks, Mr. Ring and HCN, for exposing a side of our energy consumption that few of us consider. Joshua Moro […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
The stories behind the statistics
Ray Ring’s painstaking assembly of the human stories hidden behind the conflicting statistics of industrial accidents in oil and gas was magnificent work (HCN, 4/2/07). I have been reading the U.S. Department of Labor’s Daily News Summaries for six months now, and this is the finest piece they have ever reprinted. Congratulations to the author […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Tripping over T-Rex
Name: Bob Harmon Hometown: Bozeman, Montana Vocation: Chief preparator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies and crew chief Known For: Finding the first dinosaur bones with soft tissue Bob Harmon is not an excitable man. His face isn’t animated as he points out the sauropod leg he is building out of fossils and […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Educating the economy
Western towns court colleges to boost the economy and culture
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Into thin air?
Global warming has spawned a call for new dams — but there may not be any water to fill them.
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Market cooling
Will California and the West knock down global warming by buying and selling carbon?
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Two weeks in the West
Doomsayers think suburbia will be slaughtered by rising oil prices, or drought. But for now, gas is relatively cheap, the grass is still green, and the population keeps on growing. Suburbs continue to gobble up the Western landscape. Don’t be fooled, though: Suburbia is suffering. But don’t blame water or oil for the cul de […]
Posted inApril 30, 2007: Rural Education 2.0
Offline
Because of the Bush administration’s poor environmental performance, and because High Country News reports regularly on the environment, we are occasionally accused of having it in for the president. That’s not true, of course; the Bush environmental record just isn’t very pretty. It’s darn difficult to put a positive gloss on, for example, a Clear […]