Joy Belsky, a Portland, Ore., range ecologist who rose to national prominence while crusading to boot cattle off public lands in the West, died Dec. 15 of breast cancer. She was 56. Belsky took on ranchers who, she argued, were letting their cattle trample native plants and wildlife, public agencies that she believed discriminated against […]
Dear Friends
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Dear Friends
Winter break It’s time for our traditional winter break, when we give staffers time to shovel their driveways and readers time to catch up on back issues of HCN.Our next issue should reach your mailboxes around Jan. 21. Covering the bases Writing and editing a cover story can take months, but even with all that […]
Posted inDecember 17, 2001: Bad moon rising
Tommie Bell: Supporter and sustainer
A woman with a vital connection to High Country News died on Nov. 19. Though her name did not often appear in the paper, Muriel “Tommie” Wilcox Bell helped sustain the publication during its formative years. The story began when Tommie bought her husband, Tom, a subscription to a Wyoming-based tabloid called Camping News Weekly. […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Dear Friends
From the inside out There may be no more powerful agent for change in any agency than someone who has worked on the inside. During the 1980s, a Forest Service timber marker from Oregon named Jeff DeBonis became sick of his role in overcutting the public lands. He founded an organization for his fellow Forest […]
Posted inNovember 19, 2001: Bringing back the bosque
Dear Friends
Balmy weather It’s been an unusual fall here on Colorado’s West Slope. Unseasonably warm days and nights not only prolonged the vivid display of blazing aspens in the high country, but also kept the equally resplendent river-bottom color alive all the way into early November. The balmy air seemed to ripen leaves like fruit: Foliage […]
Posted inNovember 5, 2001: Wyoming's powder keg
Dear Friends
Never say never For decades, High Country News has monitored the rise and fall of extractive industries in the West. In recent years, we’ve joined a growing number of scholars and pundits in asserting that the West has turned a corner: Logging, mining and grazing are on their way out, even as a new amenity-based […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Dear Friends
Sympathy from all over It appears that it’s the rare town, city or school that didn’t come up with a creative way to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Penny drives have been popular in the West, and displays of letters from kids to police and firefighters were shared […]
Posted inOctober 22, 2001: Healing the Gila
Remembering Mike
One of the country’s statesmen died Oct. 5, 2001, at the age of 98. Mike Mansfield grew up in Great Falls, Mont., and worked in the copper mines of Butte before launching one of the longest and most distinguished political careers in history. It was punctuated by his staunch opposition to the Vietnam War. Below […]
Posted inOctober 8, 2001: Whoa! Canada!
Dear Friends
Mountain-grown tomatoes This has been a great summer for tomato plants in Paonia. They grew husky. And the law of the garden jungle was repealed for 2001: The hated, voracious green tomato worms never appeared. Moreover, the plants bore lots of fruit: large, dark-green, rock-hard fruit. In a pre-cholesterol world, that would have been fine. […]
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
Dear Friends
Award-winning intern Congratulations to former Daily Astorian reporters Karen Mockler and Mike Stark. The pair will share the 4th annual Dolly Connelly Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award for their three-part series on the Columbia River Estuary, titled “Life on the Brink.” The $1,000 annual award was created by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly to honor […]
Posted inSeptember 24, 2001: River of dreams
Far from out of it
The HCN offices on the morning of Sept. 11 were the same as any other place in the nation, and perhaps in the world: People quietly huddled around radios, trying to figure out what the events would mean for themselves and the future. Circulation manager Gretchen Nicholoff sweated out the hours until mid-day, when she […]
Posted inSeptember 10, 2001: The rise and fall of a desert stream
Dear Friends
In wolf’s clothing Because HCN does not cover religion, we generally do not take positions on reincarnation. However, if there is reincarnation, we expect Michael Robinson to come back as a wolf. Michael, now a staffer with the Center for Biological Diversity in Pinos Altos, N.M., and a former HCN intern, cares more about wolves […]
Posted inAugust 27, 2001: Restoring the range of light
Dear Friends
About this issue Writers for this special issue about the Forest Service’s Framework for the Sierra Nevada’s 11 national forests researched and wrote their stories while taking a course in environmental journalism with Ed and Betsy Marston, the publisher and then-editor of High Country News. The couple taught the course at the Graduate School of […]
Posted inAugust 13, 2001: No refuge in the Klamath Basin
Dear Friends
Writers on the Range, redux In the Dear Friends column for June 18, 2001, we discussed HCN’s op-ed syndicate, Writers on the Range, and the extent to which it should air a variety of views. The heart of the discussion was a column by Frank Carroll, a Potlatch timber company employee. In response, we got […]
Posted inJuly 30, 2001: Not in our back yard
Dear Friends
Babies in the family Congratulations to Florence and Jamie Williams of Helena, Mont., on the birth of Benjamin Chesnut Williams on Thursday, July 12. Ben’s stats are 8 pounds and a shade over 20 inches long. Florence is a former HCN staffer and intern who freelances out of Helena. Her most recent HCN article was […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
Dear Friends
Summer break Don’t search your mailbox for a July 16 issue of the paper – it won’t be there. Each summer HCNskips an issue to give our readers and staffers a small break. We’ll be back on July 30. The changing of the guard For the first time in 17 years, High Country News has […]
Posted inJuly 2, 2001: Can Nevada bury Yucca Mountain?
An activist to the end
As a writer in San Francisco in the 1970s, Tary Mocabee was one of the first to explain the inner workings of automatic teller machines, a technological advancement that she jokingly equated with psychoanalysis: Both involve pressing crucial buttons. Ironically, Mocabee pushed a lot of political buttons over the past 20 years as a Montana […]
Posted inJune 18, 2001: Transforming powers
Dear Friends
The board comes to Paonia Meetings of the board of the High Country Foundation are always interesting. But the June 3 meeting in Paonia was almost too interesting. It opened with longtime board member Andy Wiessner objecting to a column High Country News distributed through its Writers on the Range syndication service in early May. […]
Posted inJune 4, 2001: Tribal links
Dear Friends
Back from Berkeley They stayed for graduation and one last sushi dinner, but then Ed and Betsy Marston, publisher and editor of this paper, high-tailed it east from Berkeley, Calif., to Paonia, Colo., and the rural life. But while their four-month teaching stint at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, […]
Posted inMay 21, 2001: Quenching the big thirst
Dear Friends
A-potlucking we go The far-flung board of directors of High Country News will soon gather in Paonia, Colo., for its second meeting of the year. Following an all-day session with staff on Saturday, June 2, the board will host an evening potluck in Paonia’s shady town park on Fourth Street and North Fork Avenue. All […]