One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich 447 pages, hardcover $27 Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2004. This husband-and-wife team at Stanford University lays out the ways in which the human race is jeopardizing its place on earth. Looking at everything from consumption and birthrates to “sustainable governance” and […]
One with Ninevah: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
A Place to Stand
A Place to Stand Jimmy Santiago Baca 264 pages, hardcover $24. Grove Press, 2004. If you think your own busy life offers challenges, open Baca’s latest book and be very grateful. Baca is not only New Mexico’s finest poet and homegrown writer, but an ex-con whose memoir will stun those of us who think we […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Civil Disobedience: Poetics and Politics in Action
Civil Disobedience: Poetics and Politics in Action Edited by Anne Waldman and Lisa Birman 469 pages, softcover $18. Coffee House Press, 2004. This anthology contains 40 essays, lectures and interviews with notables such as Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger and Bobbie Louise Hawkins. In need of some raucous poetry, fiery speeches and a few good reasons […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Capturing a Chediskai childhood
Eva Tulene Watt was born in 1913 on the Fort Apache Reservation, just north of the Salt River in southeastern Arizona. She’s traveled far during her long life, living and working in Spokane, Wash., Stillwell, Okla., and San Francisco, Calif., among other places. But her home has always been in and around the small reservation […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Seeing through red vs. blue
In the article “Election Day Surprises in the Schizophrenic West,” HCN has done something that none of the national news sources has done (HCN, 11/22/04: Election Day Surprises in the Schizophrenic West). You have gone beyond the red/blue label for states and given an excellent summary of the November election results. It is rather sad […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Good riddance to land-use rules
The essay by Rebecca Clarren on Measure 37 strikes a particular chord with me, because I am an offspring of one of those rural Oregonians that have sacrificed a lot to allow those fine “enlightened” city folk from the Willamette Valley to experience the beauty and serenity of Oregon’s unspoiled countryside (HCN, 9/22/04: In Oregon, […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Let’s march!
Just a note to say “Thanks” for the thoughtful suggestion to rally folks around environmental issues (HCN, 12/6/04: Taking the West Forward). My entire professional life, and now my time in retirement, has been focused on restoring and protecting the environment. I’ve never been as discouraged as I am now about where our country is […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
‘Healthy forests’ is a scam
I would gladly learn to love the Healthy Forests Restoration Act if it were truly designed to promote healthy forests. Instead, the act provides cover for logging the remaining large trees in our national forests in the name of fuels reduction. What’s next — HCN endorsement of the president’s Clear Skies Initiative? David Edelson, Sierra […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Enviros are out of touch
The editors of HCN claim the Bush administration (and therefore everyone who voted for him) are out of touch with “Westerners” on environmental issues. I would argue that the environmental community is out of touch with Western values. A small crack formed between environmental interests and the rest of America in 1994 when the Republican […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Be careful with water transfers
Your article “Taking the West Forward” nailed a key issue that typically escapes public notice: the system of water rights in the West that gives priority to the oldest users of water and typically requires water to be taken out of streams to be protected as a valid use (HCN, 12/6/04: Taking the West Forward). […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Water made simple — much too simple
I was both astounded and disappointed by your simplistic analysis of water issues in the article, “Taking the West Forward” (HCN, 12/6/04: Taking the West Forward). HCN states matter-of-factly that additional freshwater needs to be moved to meet the evolving needs of the West’s urban areas, and offers an unqualified endorsement of lining rural earthen […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Graves halt a highway project
A recent decision in Washington state protects the largest prehistoric village ever discovered in the state, but puts a $284 million highway construction project on hold. To repair the 40-year-old Hood Canal Bridge, which connects the cities of the northern Olympic Peninsula with the Seattle area, the Washington State Department of Transportation needed to build […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Seattle’s rural neighbors rise up
Emboldened by a recently passed ballot initiative requiring Oregon’s state and local governments to pay for land-use regulations, residents in Seattle’s King County are whipping up a property-rights revolt of their own (HCN, 11/22/04: Election Day Surprises in the Schizophrenic West). In October, the Democrat-led county council adopted new land-use ordinances meant to protect “critical […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Follow-up
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided not to protect the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act (HCN, 12/20/04: Rulings keep the West open for business). In early January, the agency announced that even though there are only 100,000 to 500,000 of the birds left in 11 Western states and two Canadian […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Heard around the West
NEW MEXICO How embarrassing for the Los Alamos National Laboratory! Despite being a hush-hush facility for nuclear weapons research, the lab harbored a squatter who lived in a furnished cave on the premises for approximately four years. Roy Michael Moore, 56, didn’t exactly live rough. The Albuquerque Journal reports that he’d equipped his pied-á-terre at […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
The wind eternal
I’m often asked by relatives and friends back East how I stand the winters in northwestern Wyoming. I put on a stoic facade and tell them: It’s tough, but we Cody folks can suck it up. What I don’t mention is that an average of 300 days of sunshine annually isn’t hard to take, nor […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
It’s the West’s turn to call the shots
I was recently invited to a seminar at a university whose thesis might be considered insulting. The American West, said the invitation, “lacks an intellectual, cultural or social presence within either the country or the continent. Eastern publishers, Eastern intellectual centers and agencies, public and private, based in Washington, D.C., still provide the authoritative voices […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Glaciers offer a glimpse of the distant past
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Written in the Rings.” Inside one particular warehouse in suburban Denver, it feels like Antarctica. In a sense, it is. Within the cavernous walls of polystyrene foam lies an 80,000-cubic-foot deep freeze, filled with columns of ice: a few from Wyoming’s Wind River Range, […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Tree rings reveal a fiery past — and future
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Written in the Rings.” Tom Swetnam, the director of the Arizona tree-ring lab, grew up with wildfire. His father was a forest ranger in northern New Mexico, and after Swetnam graduated from college in the late 1970s, he spent two years as a seasonal […]
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
So, you want to be a dendrochronologist?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Written in the Rings.” Sure, counting tree rings might sound like a cushy job. But before you set out into the bristlecone pines, make sure you know what you’re in for. A few of the basic requirements: Strong legs. Since the clearest records of […]