WINTER BOARD MEETING High Country News board members and staff traveled to Berkeley in late January to do some work, enjoy a little sunshine, and — with help from some old friends — put on a show for our Bay Area readers, present and future. Our idea of a show is, of course, fairly serious: […]
Colorado
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Fill ‘er up with moonshine
Name Chris Myles Age 51 Vocation A chronic volunteer, he’s studying to become a paramedic and makes homemade classic guitars. Known for Attempting to distill homebrewed ethanol On what brought him to Silverton “The blue skies here are like nothing I’d ever seen before. You get clear days in the Midwest but there is always […]
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Man Camp
Energy companies turn to portable dormitories during housing crunch
Posted inJanuary 22, 2007: Salmon Justice
Dear Friends
FOUR MONTHS OF INDENTURED SERVITUDE This winter, Erin Halcomb is trading in her chain saw for an HCN intern’s computer. Erin, a Colorado native, spent the past five winters in Oregon, thinning trees and teaching environmental education. During the summers, she worked as a fire lookout. Erin first came to Oregon in 2001, when she […]
Posted inDecember 25, 2006: Confessions of a Methane Floozy
Dear friends
HCN TAKES A HOLIDAY Thanks to all of our readers and friends who attended our annual holiday open house on Dec. 6. As we always do this time of year, HCN staffers are taking a two-week break to sing carols, swill wassail and celebrate the holiday with family and friends. The next issue of HCN […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Have knives and hooks, will travel
Name The Mobile Matanza Hometown Taos, New Mexico Measurements 36 feet long by 13 feet, 6 inches tall Items on her wish list Gloves, hook-eye sharpener, meat band saw blades, meat grinder plates, three-way oilstone, platters, long butchering aprons, butchering supplies and knives, brushes and scrapers. She’s sleek, full-figured and gleaming white, though not […]
Posted inDecember 11, 2006: Old but Faithful
Dear friends
CONGRATULATIONS, RICK CRAIG Former HCN intern Rick Craig (Summer ’91) of Missoula, Mont., recently won top prize in the Chicago Tribune’s 24th annual Nelson Algren Awards. The awards honor previously unpublished short fiction works by American writers, amateur or professional. Nelson Algren, “the voice of America’s dispossessed,” is best known for his novels The Man […]
Posted inNovember 27, 2006: The West: A New Center of Power
Dear friends
HCN Holiday Open House If you’re in the Paonia area on Wednesday, Dec. 6, please join us for our holiday open house. From 5 to 7:30 p.m., you can meet HCN staff and other readers and enjoy refreshments. Our office is located at 119 Grand Ave. ANOTHER HCN WIN HCN Contributing Editor Michelle Nijhuis has […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Dear friends
CHANGING OF THE GUARD High Country News is bidding goodbye to editor Greg Hanscom and welcoming new editor John Mecklin. Mecklin got his start in journalism in 1978 as a reporter for the twice-a-week Williamson County Sun in rural Texas. Later, as a reporter for the Houston Post, he traveled to Saudi Arabia and Iraq […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
Dear friends
HCN BOARD MEETING The fall meeting of the High Country News Board of Directors, held in Missoula, Mont., focused on the rapidly changing world of publishing, especially the growing prominence of the Internet as a news source. Web master Paolo Bacigalupi walked board members through our Web site, hcn.org, and explained our strategy for turning […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
Dear friends
MONGOL STOPOVER Seventeen Mongolians, including environmentalists, politicians, journalists and representatives of the mining industry, showed up on HCN’s doorstep in late September as part of a tour around Colorado. The tour, organized by the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation, was intended to “establish a foundation for trust and relationship-building between participants” in order to yield “viable […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
From the ground up
A staff walks out; a grassroots newspaper is born
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Dear friends
HCN NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT It’s that time of year again, when we come to you on bended knee, asking for help keeping High Country News going. Unless you’ve given recently to our Research Fund, you should be receiving a letter soon. For comments from writer Jane Braxton Little about the importance of the Research Fund, […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
The wet Net
Note: This article is a sidebar to one of this issue’s feature stories, “The myth trafficker,” in a special issue about community media in the West. John Orr created the “Coyote Gulch” blog in 2002 to follow Denver-area politics, but the following November, that topic converged with his other love — Colorado water. Voters were […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
Dear friends
WELCOME, EVAN AND FLETCHER New HCN intern Fletcher Jacobs arrived in town only to find that the “off-the-grid” solar-powered house he’ll be living in for the next few months was recently struck by lightning. Until the home’s electrical system can be repaired, it’s back to flashlights and candles. Fletcher spent the last two years in […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
The memory of mountains
A long time ago, I climbed a mountain with my mother. It was back in the early ’80s, when she was only slightly older than I am now — hard for me to believe, even though I’ve done the math and know it’s true. The mountain was Pikes Peak in Colorado. We climbed it from […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Dear friends
BIKERS, FILMMAKERS, ENGINEERS, CHEESEMAKERS Billie Stanton, editorial writer for the Tucson Citizen, left a business card in our door on a recent weekend: “I was here; you were gone. But keep up the good work.” Sorry we missed you, Billie. Filmmaker Dave Gardner and his daughter, Stephanie, of Colorado Springs, Colo., stopped by as part […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
The Fourth Wave
Can the West’s uranium towns rise once more?
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Dear friends
CONGRATS, MATT AND PAOLO HCN staffers recently took home two more writing awards. West Coast correspondent Matt Jenkins received the 2006 James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism for his story “Squeezing Water from a Stone” (HCN, 9/19/05: Squeezing Water from a Stone). Judges had high praise for Matt’s story about the implications of Las […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
Safety first
NAME Steve Ficklin VOCATION Petroleum Engineering Technician AGE 54 HOME BASE Silt, Colorado KNOWN FOR Keeping drill rigs from blowing up HOBBIES Working brainteaser math problems, fishing, hunting, camping. HE SAYS “Each hole is different. No two wells are identical.” Steve Ficklin doesn’t talk a lot. As he drives along a dirt road outside the […]