Our small town has just suffered a profound loss: the departure of our treasured UPS deliveryman. Like Santa Claus, Tony always brought us treasures. The regular mail might bring bills or junk, but Tony’s brown truck always meant a package. Along with telephone, television and Internet, Tony was our link to the outside world. But […]
Communities
Posted inAugust 22, 2005: A Military Town Fights for its Life
Leavin’ on a Jet Plane
As the Air Force prepares to fly away from New Mexico’s Cannon Air Force Base, the town it helped to build won’t let go
Posted inAugust 22, 2005: A Military Town Fights for its Life
Cano’s Vision
Just outside the small town of Antonito, in southern Colorado’s sparsely populated San Luis Valley, a highway sign points to the state’s oldest church, a twin-towered sanctuary built of brick and local dark volcanic rock. A bit farther on, the towers of a very different sanctuary rise over a dusty neighborhood on the other side […]
Posted inAugust 22, 2005: A Military Town Fights for its Life
Heard around the West
OREGON Joseph, Ore., population 1,100, doesn’t often get rowdy, so local police quickly followed up on a complaint June 9, regarding some noisy teens. A youth group had apparently massed on the sidewalk in front of their church, where they practiced singing. Here’s the sweet denouement, as reported by the town policeman in the Wallowa […]
Posted inWotr
Our mini-farm is probably someone else’s real thing
Our neighbor spent the past few years living near Seattle, where sprawl has made it impossible to see where the city stops. He feels lucky to have moved next to us, because in his mind, our little place on an acre and a half is a farm, and that adds to the out-in-the-country atmosphere he […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Horn hunters face hard times
For centuries, Asian men have consumed powdered antlers to try to boost their sexual performance, a tradition that’s helped fuel today’s demand for deer and elk antlers. Recently, though, the rising popularity of Viagra has “just about finished off” the Asian market, says Mike Aldrich, of Pinedale, Wyo., who buys and sells antlers. But more […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
A refreshing take on Wal-Mart vs. The World
“Unless you’ve been residing in a national wildlife refuge, you probably hear a lot about Wal-Mart,” begins The United States of Wal-Mart, by Denver writer John Dicker. Being anti-Wal-Mart is so popular these days, it can be hard to separate the good criticism from the bad. But Dicker’s book clearly qualifies as good. It is […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
High Country
High Country by Willard Wyman, 160 Pages, hardcover $24.95: University of Oklahoma Press, September 2005. If by now you’ve tired of the summer-reading crop of spy thrillers and cheesy romances, try this Depression-era novel about a boy, Ty Hardin, who leaves the family ranch in Montana to become a mulepacker. After being wounded in World […]
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 inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
In the suburbs of Los Angeles, your future awaits
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 […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Heard around the West
WESTERN COLORADO The Gladstone Kibosh, a lively newspaper published 114 years ago in the then-booming mining town of Silverton, Colo., was surely edited by a Western wag. Here’s an excerpt from 1891, reprinted in the modern weekly, the Silverton Standard, which itself celebrated its 130th year of publication this summer: “Advertise in the Kibosh. It […]
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 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
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 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 […]
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
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
Heard around the West
IDAHO “It’s the ultimate in recycling,” says Victor Bruha. He and a friend, Daniel Hidalgo, have begun turning large mounds of bison poop into high-quality art paper. The idea isn’t really new: An Australian company sells kangaroo-dung paper, and in Thailand, elephants supply the needed material in super-sized quantities. But it took months for Hidalgo […]
Posted inWotr
Why we need the ranch
I recently attended a benefit for an organic farm in Missoula, Mont., a town known for its leftist politics, environmental activism and outdoors culture. Missoula can be described as part Portland, part Telluride, a “New West” city by any measure. So I found it strange that both the performers that evening kept referring to their […]
Posted inWotr
Lewis and Clark trout at 200
One June evening exactly 200 years ago, a young private in the U.S. Army baited a hook tied to a willow stick and tossed it into one of the largest waterfalls on earth. The line went taut under the strength of a 2-pound flash of living silver. The soldier took in the line, hand over […]