The other night, we were channel-surfing and hit upon the Miss America pageant. The contestants were being asked questions, and the one on the screen was “What year did women get the vote in the United States?” The answer, according to the pageant judges, was 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was […]
In presidential politics, the West is a forgotten time zone
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
As the town hollows out, one Aspen neighborhood thrives
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Part-Time Paradise.” A few years ago, it was a Superfund site. Now the Smuggler Mobile Home Park is a vibrant neighborhood, whose residents have a wide range of incomes — from police officers and ski instructors to doctors and real estate brokers — in […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Can Vail find room for its workers?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Part-Time Paradise.” When suspicious fires swept through a mountaintop restaurant and several chairlifts in October 1998, the resort village of Vail realized it had problems — and not just with the “ecoterrorists” of the Earth Liberation Front, who claimed responsibility for the blazes (HCN, […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Former Enron CEO took his money and ran
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Part-Time Paradise.” Former Enron CEO Ken Lay made out like a bandit, in a manner of speaking, when he sold his three Aspen houses and a land parcel in the wake of the energy giant’s bankruptcy. Lay sold a six-bedroom, six-bath house on more […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Second homes, by the numbers
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Part-Time Paradise.” Percentage that Summit County’s population has grown since 1990: 98 Percentage of Summit County homes that are second homes: 67 Percentage of second homes in five Colorado mountain counties occupied from April to June: 12 Percentage of second-home owners in Pitkin County […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
BLM’s crown jewels go begging
National Landscape Conservation System remains underfunded even as visitors increase
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Californians take a stand on GE crops
Farmers fear a ballot initiative may takedown a tried-and-true rice variety
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Dems stumble in Arizona race
One of the environment’s dirty dozen leads in congressional ‘fair fight’
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Election-year environmentalism
The Bush administration throws enviros and hunters some bones
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Dear friends
A lesson the First Amendment Writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams came to western Colorado in early October for the 24th annual meeting of the Western Colorado Congress. She spoke to a packed auditorium about the “open space of democracy.” Williams, who just published a book by the same name, talked about the differences that […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Don’t expect Washington to lead the West
It’s election season, and President Bush is using the West as a political game piece. He’s promising to up the timber cut on the national forests and increase oil and gas development, all in the name of jobs and national security. In reality, of course, he’s earning points with his industry supporters, but doing little […]
Posted inOctober 25, 2004: Window Shopping: Part-Time Paradise
Part-Time Paradise
Mountain towns echo with construction activity, but the resulting homes lie silent much of the year
Posted inWotr
The ghost of Richard Butler surfaces in Arizona
It would be foolish to believe that the death of Aryan Nations’ leader Richard Butler means the death of hate in the West. Butler, who sowed ill will for decades in the region, passed away at the age of 86 Sept. 8 in Hayden, Idaho. He died a broken man, his empire of knuckle-draggers that […]
Posted inWotr
The West has to count on itself
If you care about the environment, and you survived the presidential debates without running out into the backyard to scream at the heavens, you’re a bigger person than I. For those of you who missed them, the three debates included just one question on that “fringe issue” of what’s in the air we breathe and […]
Posted inWotr
American — and proud of it
Until I traveled to Holland recently, I didn’t know how irreversibly American I am, perhaps not precisely a patriot — the word comes from the Latin for father — but certainly one deeply identified with my native land. In Amsterdam, people eyed me with pity, suspicion or loathing as soon as I opened my mouth […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
The conservation hall of fame is too small
Just as sports fans have their legends of the game — their Babe Ruths, Michael Jordans and Jack Nicklauses — so, too, do conservationists. Our legends aren’t household names; my daughter had never heard of Aldo Leopold until her high school science teacher put A Sand County Almanac on her optional reading list last week. […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
The Coyote Caucus Takes the West to Washington
Their fathers were Western conservation giants. Can the younger Udalls bridge today’s social and political divides and leave their own legacy?
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Udall patriarch laments startling changes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Coyote Caucus Takes the West to Washington.” Stewart Udall lives in a comfortable adobe house near downtown Santa Fe, N.M. Now 84 years old, he’s earned the distinguished looks of a Western sage, with his beaked nose, strong face, long hair. Each evening […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
The Udall bloodline is consistent
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Coyote Caucus Takes the West to Washington.” Throw a stick around the West’s public offices and institutions, and the odds are decent you’ll hit a member of the extended Udall clan. Joining Mark Udall and Tom Udall in Congress is their second cousin, […]
Posted inWotr
Nostalgia for Colorado’s past isn’t what it used to be
A wave of yearning for “Colorado as it used to be” has been sweeping the state and I suspect much of the West. It’s almost enough to make you wish for a time machine. If only the past were as wonderful as we think it was. This nostalgic, backward-looking pose is particularly evident in the […]