The Mormon Church engages in overt political activism, and as such it deserves the same muckraking scrutiny as any other advocacy organization (HCN, 10/27/08). Its claim to foster moral leadership shouldn’t exempt it from critique. Ray Ring’s revelations about the “underbelly” of Rexburg are relevant to the investigation of a politico-religious institution that clearly aims […]
Letter to the editor
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
River giveaway, too
“The great giveaway” did a great job of bringing attention to the Utah BLM’s mad rush to finalize plans that manage 11 million acres in Utah (HCN, 10/13/08). Unfortunately, the article and most other news coverage of this issue overlooked what these plans mean for Utah’s rivers. These plans make recommendations on which rivers should […]
Posted inNovember 10, 2008: Still Howling Wolf
Guns and God
Kudos to Jonathan Thompson, who will surely get plenty of negative responses to his editor’s note in Volume 40, Number 19, from numerous fundamentalists whose understanding of the First Amendment is nearly nonexistent (HCN, 10/27/08). I’m happy to have a Constitution that, at least on paper, allows everyone to worship whatever deity or higher power […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Future carnage
The toll that humans take on the rest of the planet has bothered me for quite some time (hcn, 10/13/08). I am 50 years old and remember an article in my weekly reader in about third grade (circa 1967) about the population explosion. It troubled me enough then and since that i decided not to […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Watery shell game
Regarding “a river runs near it,” we really shouldn’t call this water development (hcn, 9/15/08). It really is just water reallocation. No new water is being developed. Every time we reallocate water in substantial quantities, we do so crudely. This is probably just a little less crude than in the past, but we really don’t […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Who’s left behind?
In regards to the writers on the range piece, “a macabre measure of the human footprint,” most everybody’s working with the idea of too many of us, except for those who believe there can never be too many of us because god’s taking care of that (hcn, 10/13/08). For the rest, it leads directly to […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
An eye on the agencies
Regarding your recent story “the great giveaway,” i retired as national recreation director for the bureau of land management in 2003, because i saw the bush administration consistently subvert the overall mission of the blm through the appointment of politicos willing to overrule professional judgment and substitute white house imperatives (hcn, 10/13/08). I retired earlier […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
Out stealing water
Oh, really? Theft of the property of others is now called “water harvesting” (hcn, 10/13/08). So … Even if you are a government agency or municipality, by all means necessary, just take what doesn’t belong to you. It has become the way of solving situations, where someone has recently arrived on the scene, knowing full […]
Posted inOctober 27, 2008: Prophets and politics
The great barbecue, revisited
Paul Vandevelder’s article was right about the end of western welfare, in my opinion (hcn, 10/13/08). Large government deficits and the recent unraveling of our credit-based economy will likely have lasting effects on the west. While we may not be able to depend any longer on government largesse to fund bridges, dams, and other pet […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Biodiversity? Not so much
Your article “McCain: T.R. or W?” contains this statement: “The San Pedro hosts the second-most biologically diverse array of mammals in the world, second only to the Costa Rican cloud forests” (HCN, 9/1/08). As far as I know, no scientists have ever claimed that the San Pedro River had biodiversity second only to Costa Rica. […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
“1,000 messy facts”
Riparian systems are varied and dynamic; riparian models are human constructs particular to individuals. Cleo Woelfe-Erskine’s article, “Riparian Repair,” failed to capture a fundamental of reclamation and even restoration: We practitioners don’t deliver a perfect facsimile of nature full-blown at the inception but rather advance the recovery process, which continues if we have been successful […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Unnatural selection
In his letter, Neil Snyder asserts that “it’s time stop intervening on behalf of the spotted owl and let nature take its course, whatever that will be” (HCN, 9/15 & 29/08). If we had allowed nature to take its course, old-growth forests would still blanket the Pacific Northwest. Spotted owls would occupy their traditional niche, […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Taking your life in your feet
Having lived in different parts of Arizona for many years, I would say that it is not just Phoenix that is unfriendly to pedestrians. It is the whole state. Arizona drivers think they own the road and have an inalienable right to speed. In many places, both big cities and small towns, roads have narrow […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Greenwashing, literally
In last issue’s “Two Weeks in the West” article concerning “clean” coal promotion at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, you misattributed the purveyors of “green coal” (coal painted green) to coal company “henchmen” at the DNC (HCN, 9/15 & 29/08). In reality, what was witnessed was an act of political theater by environmentally minded […]
Posted inOctober 13, 2008: Back to the future
Readers weigh in on HCN’s redesign
Bravo. The latest issue looks terrific. HCN is always a great read, and your efforts to improve its look over the years are applauded. Peter CarrelsAberdeen, South Dakota *** I really appreciate the changes you have made to the “magazine.” As a former publisher myself, I know it is always a balance between cost and […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Crying Fowl
After reading “Conservation Quandary,” your feature on owls, I flipped to the cover page to see if I was reading the April Fools’ edition (HCN, 8/18/08). When I realized this wasn’t a joke, my first reaction was anger that we are wasting tax money to save spotted owls from other owls. After re-reading the article, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Keep ’em down on the farm
Comprehensive land-use planning such as we have in Oregon prevents the kind of problem that your recent story “Death, and taxes” addresses (HCN, 8/18/08). Agricultural and timber land is just that, and where it is located does not affect its property tax value. Having farmland adjacent to urban areas does not have to result in […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Wet dreams
In Jonathan Thompson’s recent column, he writes of grand new resorts that “depend entirely on the wealthy buying into them” (HCN, 8/18/08). Well, maybe not entirely. I was reminded of Leslie Marmon Silko’s highly praised 1991 novel Almanac of the Dead. One of the major plot lines is about an architect who feverishly envisions “Venice, […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Don’t eat the rich, tax them
Christopher Solomon’s article “An Unlikely Shangri-la” is a classic example of what HCN does that no one else seems to do: An otherwise obscure not-quite-news story that, when treated with careful and exhaustive reporting, provides insights of profound importance to the future of the West (HCN, 8/18/08). There are a number of significant inferences one […]
Posted inSeptember 9, 2008: Reclaiming the low country
Population conversation
Paul Larmer states that solutions to the West’s tough problems won’t be easy (HCN, 6/9/08). True, but we’d do well to focus on one problem whose solution would do so much to alleviate all the others: population growth, mentioned so often in passing, but concentrated on and acted on so rarely. We remain bemused and […]