Thank you so much for your terrific story on the evils of the proposed takings initiatives on the November ballot. I believe your story played a great part in the defeat of California’s Proposition 90. Your eye-opening article got me writing letters to newspapers and telling my friends about it, who told their friends. … […]
The evils of takings
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Conspiring with caddisflies
“He hath ribbons of all the colours i’ the rainbow; inkles, caddisses, cambrics and lawns.” —from The Winter’s Tale, by William Shakespeare Name Ferg (no first name, no last name, just Ferg) Vocation Father of two, a Renaissance man who draws, paints, sculpts, composes poetry, plays music, and makes jewelry from beetle carcasses. Age 40 […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Fed up with paying to play
One woman’s dissent could help cripple federal fee program
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Two weeks in the West
“What are you going to do? They dumped millions on my head.” —Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., on election night, as he realized he would get voted out of office. Democrat Jerry McNerney upset Pombo with the help of an infusion of cash from various environmental groups. Indian Country thaw. The Hopi and Navajo tribes this […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Doing something about ‘anything’
As Democrats rode a multidimensional wave of voter anger to congressional dominance last week, I began to worry. After all, I was the new guy in the editor’s chair; I’d barely had time to find my computer, much less write any of the nuanced election analysis you expect from High Country News. Then I relaxed, […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Heard around the West
COLORADO As the Rocky Mountain News put it, “Naked frivolity heats up the night.” Their heads inside pumpkins and their clothes nowhere in sight, hundreds braved cold weather on Halloween to streak past the costumed pedestrians thronging Boulder’s outdoor mall. “With the pumpkin on the head, it’s anonymous,” said Jazzmin Jenkins, 21. “What could be […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Election Roundup
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The West: A New Center of Power.” ARIZONA After taking office in 2003, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed more than 110 bills passed by the Republican Legislature. Voters seem to like her stands. She won re-election by roughly 2-to-1 over archconservative Republican Len Munsil. […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Destruction and discovery walk hand in hand
Energy boom fuels archaeology
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Dear friends
HCN Holiday Open House If you’re in the Paonia area on Wednesday, Dec. 6, please join us for our holiday open house. From 5 to 7:30 p.m., you can meet HCN staff and other readers and enjoy refreshments. Our office is located at 119 Grand Ave. ANOTHER HCN WIN HCN Contributing Editor Michelle Nijhuis has […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
The West: A New Center of Power
Moderation in the pursuit of office is no vice, and nine other lessons to take away from the midterm elections
Posted inWotr
A little advice for environmentalists
Savvy environmentalists work both sides of the political street, rather than buying into any particular political party or ideology. I’ve concluded this after watching a dispute play out here in Oregon. The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation have proposed building a gambling casino in Cascade Locks, a small town smack in the middle […]
Posted inWotr
How I did my civic duty
I am as civic-minded as the next person. I hold my nose and vote for the least objectionable candidate. On ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments in particular, I vote no if it is very long and not written in understandable English. I vote no a lot. This year, mortally tired of the attack ads, I […]
Posted inWotr
How bizarre: Wild horses have become sacred cows
Our national obsession with keeping “wild1” horses and burros on public lands that are incapable of supporting them has always struck me as bizarre, especially since it’s the result of our alleged love for them. Ask most any wild horse advocacy group and you’ll be told that wild horses are native wildlife and anyone who […]
Posted inWotr
Having a third child in a world of scarcity
Whenever I approached my husband, I would have to think of the right way to phrase things. Rehearsing in my head, I’d stumble again and again on the word “want.” I might have been saying “I want a new sweater.” Or “I want to have pizza for dinner.” But I was almost 40, and I […]
Posted inWotr
Alone with a radio phone
I live alone on the steep slopes of southern Oregon’s Rogue River canyon, which is a place that can’t decide whether to be California or the Pacific Northwest. I’m here for a solo writing residency, and what that means is that the days are mine to use or waste. My only neighbors are the Bureau […]
Posted inWotr
Western Republicans have a few things to crow about
Here’s some solace for Rocky Mountain Republicans suffering the post-election glooms: It could have been worse. You could be New England Republicans, the few, the forlorn, the forgotten, in a six-state region with more than 14 million people, soon to have exactly one Republican member of the House of Representatives. Or you could be in […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA It may sound like a weird thing to have to face at work first thing in the morning, but inside California’s EPA building in Sacramento, squirming worms share space with employees. The live animals, housed in 60-some bins, are such a part of cubicle culture that staffers compete for the prize of “most productive” […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Four decades of the Sierra Club
It is not enough to be outraged at industry’s abuse of our soil, water and air, writes Mike McCloskey in his autobiography, In the Thick of It: My Life in the Sierra Club. We have to harness our rage and wage savvy campaigns in the courtroom and Congress. McCloskey joined the Sierra Club in 1960 […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Elementary, my dear cowpuncher
In his new historical mystery, Holmes on the Range, Steve Hockensmith slyly tips his hat to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose 1887 novella, A Study in Scarlet, introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Both books feature a Western theme. In Doyle’s melodramatic tale, a murder in London is linked to the history of Mormon Utah. […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
A whole lot of shaking
Simon Winchester’s latest book, A Crack in the Edge of the World, takes a comprehensive look at the country’s worst earthquake: San Francisco, 1906. The quake, he writes, “came thundering in on what looked like huge undulating waves … the whole street and all its great buildings rose and fell, rose and fell, on what […]