Los Angeles is nearly built out. The last empty bits of the metropolis are already being fitted into a titanic grid of neighborhoods that extends 60 miles from south to north and from the Pacific Ocean deep into the desert. The closing of the suburban frontier in Los Angeles ends a 100-year experiment in place-making […]
In the suburbs of Los Angeles, your future awaits
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
She builds new words in an ancient tongue
Name: Reba Teran Vocation: Language coordinator, Shoshone Cultural Center in Fort Washakie, Wyoming Age: 50 Known for: Compiling a 9,000-word audio dictionary of the Shoshone language She says: “We’re trying to save our culture without a language. But you can’t have a whole culture without language.” It’s not easy to translate a modern word like […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
The Great Salt Lake’s dirty little secret
High mercury levels may have a surprising source
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Industry embeds its own in the BLM
Mining and energy companies fund workers at land-management offices
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Dear friends
SURPRISE! The West, as we like to say around here, is more than just a pretty picture. It is a growing, changing, contentious and often uncomfortable place where society’s decisions, for better or worse, are writ large on the landscape. We pride ourselves on finding the stories behind the scenery and telling them well through […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
The theology of growth
The West has long been shaped by human migrations, and the inevitable melding — and clashing — of cultures. That’s no less true today than it was in the days of tribal warfare or gold panning. In fact, it is probably more so. Americans have flocked to the Interior West in recent years to escape […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
The Gangs of Zion
In Mormon Country, young Polynesians search for identity — and for escape from a seemingly unstoppable cycle of violence
Posted inWotr
Topsy turvy weather may be a sign of worse to come
We roll into camp at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California around 4 p.m., tumble from the car eager to stretch our legs, and are soon scrambling to dig winter clothing out of the heap of gear and garb that swamped the back seat somewhere in Oregon. The weather ought to be at least warm, […]
Posted inWotr
Who will call the shots in Sandy, Utah?
After battling city officials all the way to the Utah Supreme Court over whether enough petition signatures had been collected to force a referendum, the residents of Sandy, Utah, will decide the fate of “big box” retail development at the ballot box. In a state where controlling growth often is equated with communism, the court […]
Posted inWotr
Nuclear energy isn’t clean or a solution
Uravan, in southern Colorado, was once a bustling uranium mill town in the remote West End of my home county. There, employees transformed uranium ore into green sludge, not knowing that it would be used in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, Uravan is a deserted cleanup site, too hazardous for anyone […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
As Washington waffles, Western states go green
Legislatures boost wildlife and clean energy, while bucking the nuclear and oil industries
Posted inWotr
Why I pedal past the pump
This summer, it’s been hard for me to react to all the fuss about high gasoline prices. I never have sticker shock at a gas pump because I haven’t owned a car for 30 years, and far from being a liability, my life has been all the richer for it. It has certainly enriched my […]
Posted inWotr
In a small town, the police blotter can be big news
The biggest deterrent to crime in a small rural town may be the newspaper’s police blotter. With so little crime news, every infraction makes it into print. Worse, since everybody knows everybody, even your tiniest speeding ticket goes into a gigantic Gossip Database, to be recalled by little old ladies at the least appropriate moments. […]
Posted inWotr
Stubborn people appreciate the ‘barren’ Great Plains
When people who don’t live here write about the Great Plains, they usually use the words “bleak,” “empty” and “wasteland” to describe it. The writer often suggests that our economy and people are “depressed” because their “lifestyles” are “vanishing.” Photographs show sky and clouds above miles of windblown, rolling — not flat — grass. Prairie […]
Posted inWotr
A lesson from the old ones at Mesa Verde
A green-tailed towhee is down in the canyon, hidden amid the green leafy oaks, singing his heart out as all male towhees do. I am in Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park, gazing at the spectacle of Cliff Palace. Just then, a ranger appears announcing some spare tickets to Cliff Palace; someone, it seems, has reconsidered […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Complete History of New Mexico
Complete History of New Mexico Kevin McIlvoy, 174 pages, paperback $15: Graywolf Press, 2004. This collection of short stories from a Las Cruces-based writer is published by the independent Graywolf Press. Kevin McIlvoy’s stories are written from a variety of perspectives — from 11-year-old Chum telling the history of the state as he sees it, […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Pueblo Indian Agriculture
Pueblo Indian Agriculture James A. Vlasich, 384 pages, hardcover $34.95: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. James Vlasich explores the American Indian farms along New Mexico’s Rio Grande. The 19 pueblos there have endured — despite Spanish conquistadors, land and water disputes with Anglo settlers, and the vagaries of U.S. Indian policy. Now, the Body […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures Lester R. Brown, 272 pages, hardcover $27.95, paperback $15.95: W.W. Norton, 2005. Lester Brown, the environmental world’s leading prophet of doom, brings us his latest nonfiction disaster thriller. As world populations boom, farmers reach deeper and deeper underground […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Head games in the hot, hot desert
No matter how well-mapped the world seems to be, explorers remain intrepid. In The Way Out, Colorado writer Craig Childs writes about how he and his traveling companion, Dirk Vaughan, found their way through a desert on the Navajo Indian Reservation in southern Utah. Both Childs and Vaughan seem to crave the harsh truths of […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Tales of Colorado’s high-elevation tailings
In 1983, an anonymous caller warned Doc Smith that “his river would turn red.” Sure enough, the next day, the rancher and veterinarian watched toxic mining metals surge through the Arkansas River as it crossed his property. This wasn’t the first time: His grandfather had fought the effects of mining on his ranchlands and livestock […]