It wasn’t long ago that I got one of those flyers about rates that comes with my bill from Xcel Energy, formerly Public Service Co. and now one of the country’s largest utilities, serving much of Colorado and several other Western states. I knew that Xcel was planning on building a huge and expensive coal-fired […]
Western utilities beware: Coal is a risky business
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
The living, breathing natives who made Lewis and Clark
The most widely held and deeply ingrained popular image of Lewis and Clark also happens to be the most serious misconception of their expedition. In that image, they cross North America on their own at the start of the 19th century, somehow finding their way through an uninhabited wilderness and blazing a trail where no […]
Posted inWotr
At least life on the frontier wasn’t boring
I began thinking about the phenomenon we call boredom while watching public-television reruns of a provocative series called Frontier House. Its creators took three American families and placed them in the Montana wilderness for five months, from late spring to early fall. Then the families pretended it was 1883. They built log cabins and corrals, […]
Posted inWotr
Who took the ‘farm’ out of the Farm Bureau?
It’s an organization “preying upon the very people it claimed to help,” said Frances Ohmstede, 40 years ago, about the American Farm Bureau Federation. “Its policies lead rural America further and further into debt and poverty,” said her husband, Bryce. “It’s a financial empire built for their own benefit,” added Alfred Schutte, the Ohmstedes’ friend […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Careful with your covers
I have been a subscriber and very vocal supporter of HCN for most of a decade. A few years ago, through stories about water in the El Paso/Juárez metropolitan area and the Sierra forest plan, I got my VERY conservative father to admit that your coverage of the issues was comprehensive. So I bought him […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Hmmmmmmmm…
Is it funny or sad that where one person sees “Bush-bashing” another sees “reporting the facts?” Please keep “reporting the facts.” Agustin Goba Snowmass Village, Colorado This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Hmmmmmmmm….
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
No room for compromise
So Russell H. Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Republican presidents Nixon and Ford, has said that Bush’s environmental record is so dismal that he would vote for Kerry? (“Polluter protection” is how he characterizes it.) And some readers are howling at HCN for Bush-bashing? Gimme a break! Frankly, I’m sick of the […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Objectivity is a moving target
Don’t lose any sleep over charges that HCN lacks objectivity. Middle-of-the-road pragmatists did not coax us out of the caves, launch the industrial revolution, or give birth to the idea that nature is more than a supporting cast of extras. All that and more, the good and the bad, was the work of advocates — […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Every newspaper has a slant
It seems some people who wrote you letters in the July 19 issue are under the impression that High Country News is supposed to be a “just the facts” newspaper with no slant. I was never aware that HCN ever claimed to be purely “objective,” “balanced” or not “ideological.” I’ve been a subscriber off and […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Racetrack
California tribes are standing tall against the Terminator. The California Nations Indian Gaming Association is endorsing Proposition 70, an initiative opposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R. Proposition 70 would allow the state to grant tribes renewable 99-year contracts to exceed the current limit of 2,000 slot machines and allow roulette and craps in return for […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Follow-up
Tired of hearing about the 33,000 salmon and steelhead that died in the Klamath River two summers ago? According to the California Department of Fish and Game, those numbers were off: Based on a two-year study of the fish kill, which was believed to be the largest in the Pacific Northwest, the agency has found […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Heard around the West
ARIZONA Maybe it was amazement and disbelief that caused a motorist to call the cops: The white car ahead of her had the words “U.S. Forest Service” emblazoned on its side, but the driver was throwing lighted cigarette butts out the window in the middle of a hectic fire season. The driver turned out to […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
‘Conservation’ strategy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing
One of our nation’s more dubious political practices is the tendency to cloak questionable — even harmful — environmental policies in the rhetoric of conservation. Consider the debatable environmental merits of the current administration’s “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forest” initiatives, two policies that many argue weaken existing protections for air, water and forests. This month, […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
We are the story, this time
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The living, breathing natives who made Lewis and Clark.” I was barefoot, wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, as I walked to the hotel lobby to buy a candy bar. I thought my work as a journalist was done, and I was looking forward […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Bicentennial bash is more than a party for tribes
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The living, breathing natives who made Lewis and Clark.” Four years ago, the late historian Steven Ambrose took his rawhide-tassel jacket on a lecture swing through the Western states, warning of “crowds beyond any of our imagining” when the bicentennial of the 1804 Lewis […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Lewis and Clark: Just another cog in the wheel of history
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The living, breathing natives who made Lewis and Clark.” If American history west of the Mississippi “begins” with Lewis and Clark, then Indian history and, by extension, the history of the United States seems pretty simple: “Indians owned the West, and then they lost […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Taking the load off the environment
BASALT, Colorado — Jonathan Fox-Rubin wants to start a revolution in car manufacturing. In his sunlit office in western Colorado he explains his approach to the weighty question of how to make cars easier on the environment: He goes straight to the body of the car. If the skeletal system of automobiles can be made […]
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Tribes turn out to vote
Indians could decide tight races in key Western states
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Court says Yucca Mountain design unsafe
The site’s 10,000-year safety standard is ruled arbitrary, but the Energy Department is undeterred
Posted inAugust 16, 2004: Journey of Rediscovery
Truce holds on the Platte River
Environmentalists and farmers take a leap of faith for the sake of staying out of the courtroom