A recent issue of HCN included a letter from Ms. Kathy Crooks suggesting that the sole appropriate topic for the paper is environmental news of the West (HCN, 8/22/05: Leave sociology coverage to National Geographic). Thought I’d let you know that this subscriber at least considers your brief to be “the West.” Not just the […]
If it affects the West, it belongs in HCN
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
A quantum leap
The Aug. 8 issue is, in my opinion, a quantum leap for you guys, and not just graphically. The brighter newsprint and the full-color pix are super, but the “Gangs of Zion” story is world-class. Tim Sullivan is to be congratulated for solid reporting; HCN is to be congratulated for running an exceptional and unusual […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Don’t ‘dumb and numb’ readers
I’m responding to your request to let you know what I think about color photos (HCN, 8/8/05: Dear Friends). I appreciate HCN for in-depth journalism on natural environmental issues in the West. I think you’re spending money unwisely on color photos when it could be better spent on content. Black-and-white photos illustrate people, tattoos and […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Boulder gets the gas-drilling blues
Energy companies are drilling holes straight through efforts to preserve open space on Colorado’s Front Range. Boulder County has saved about 76,000 acres from development by buying property and creating conservation easements. However, the county doesn’t always control the mineral rights underneath that land — which leaves the surface property open to drilling. Previous landowners […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
The Latest Bounce
During President Bush’s 2000 election campaign, he promised that any decision about whether to store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be based on “sound science.” Now, his administration seems to be junking science altogether. In August, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it will cut the U.S. Geological Survey’s budget […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Heard Around the West
WASHINGTON A duck named Gooey has brought Diane Erdmann, a manager for Northwest Territorial Mint, a whole lot of attention, along with a possible charge of illegally harboring wildlife. The mallard had been attacked by a crow, and Erdmann took over its care from a friend, nursing the bird back to health and consulting a […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Be a patriot — get your hands dirty
While foraging through my backyard garden the other day for cucumbers, peppers and hot-to-touch chiles, a slogan occurred to me: “Support Our Troops — Plant a Garden.” Gardening was as distant from my life as Afghanistan until I bought a house seven years ago. My newly acquired yard had bluegrass in the middle and a […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
What’s at stake in the evolution debate
On my desk is the fragment of a tooth from an ancient camel that roamed the area around Fossil, Ore., 40 million years ago. My kids and I unearthed it on a summer camping trip, and today I found myself fingering it as I read yet another story about the evolution “debate.” This controversy pits […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Anasazi: What’s in a name?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Out of the Four Corners.” A thousand years ago, when their civilization arose in the Southwest, the people who built these great stone structures did not call themselves Anasazi. The word did not even exist: It was created, centuries later, by Navajo workers who […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Contaminated water can’t stop California sprawl
Rocket fuel ingredient and other pollutants now commonplace in groundwater
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Strange bedfellows make a grazing deal in Idaho
And influential Sen. Larry Craig is odd man out
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Methamphetamine fuels the West’s oil and gas boom
Long the drug of choice for rural down-and-out youth, crank becomes commonplace among drill-rig roughnecks.
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
A smart-growth bulldog
Albuquerque city councilman goes head-to-head with the incumbent mayor, and the developers who have long ruled here
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Dear friends
HELP! SEND BOOKS! Our hearts go out to all those suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. We’ve recently learned about an unusual — and imaginative — way to assist the hard-hit region: Former New Orleans resident and author Janis Owens has created Books for Folks to send books to relief centers, libraries and schools […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Exodus
Imagine that, aside from a few wanderers and pilgrims, no one ever returned to New Orleans. Imagine that the thousands of people who fled the French Quarter, the Ninth Ward and other neighborhoods in the face of Hurricane Katrina turned their backs on their homes, on the shops and the bars, and let them sink […]
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Out of the Four Corners
A young archaeologist searches for clues to what drove a mass exodus from southwestern Colorado more than 700 years ago
Posted inWotr
Lessons from the mountains to the stormy seas
Ten months ago, I was in the Indian Himalayas, cut off from the media connections most Americans take for granted. On Christmas Day, a young neighbor from the village, who taught math and spoke limited English, stopped by to ask if I’d heard the news: A huge wave had slammed many parts of Southeast Asia, […]
Posted inWotr
One man’s grisly encounter with a grizzly
It’s easy to come away from the new Werner Herzog documentary, Grizzly Man, persuaded that its subject was a delusional crackpot who deserved his fate: to be killed and eaten by a bear. That certainly is the popular impression of Timothy Treadwell, who died in Alaska nearly two years ago at the claws and fangs […]
Posted inWotr
Lions and cheetahs and elephants, yippee
In a recentNature magazine article, scientists suggest that threatened African wildlife can be saved by moving the animals to the American Great Plains. What a great way to restore our faith in cowboys! Many have forgotten that cowboys with broken bones regularly compete in bronc and bull riding, and all have survived lousy prices and […]
Posted inWotr
Fear in the fields
Farmworker Olivia Tamayo’s fingers are crooked from over 30 years of picking and weeding vegetables in California’s hot sun. Sitting in her home in this cramped farming town of Huron, she talks in low tones about the reality of farmwork for many female migrants. In 1975, Tamayo arrived in California’s Central Valley from Mexico, newly […]