Marty Durlin

Online Editor

There are more than 800 geographic landforms in the U.S. with the word “squaw” in them, according to a piece by Hadley Robinson for Gelf. Native Americans in 1999 asked the U.S. Board of Geographic Names (BGN) to change all of them. In 1963, the BGN changed all place names with “nigger” to “negro” (143 of them), and in 1974, all “Jap” names to “Japanese.” But in the case of squaw, although some say the term is a perversion of the French word for “vagina,” or a shortened form for the same term from the Mohawk word “ojiskwa” — others say it means simply “woman,” and there’s no consensus on what word to exchange.

Squaw Peak near Phoenix (2600 feet), once known as Squaw Tit Peak, was renamed after Lori Piestewa in 2003 by the Arizona Board of Geographic and Historic Names. The board waived its five-year waiting period at the request of Gov. Janet Napolitano to honor Piestewa, a Hopi who was the first woman in the U.S. armed forces killed in the Iraq war and the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving with the U.S. military.

With no national mandate from the BNG to change “squaw” names in a wholesale manner, local governments and state name boards have the decision-making responsibility. (In protest of state legislation in Minnesota to change all “squaw” names, officials of Lake County offered to change Squaw Creek to Politically Correct Creek.)

The BGN will decide April 10 whether to officially change Phoenix’s Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak.

Ed Quillen

Arizona Sen. John McCain may have sewn up the Republican nomination, but he still has many critics in his own GOP who accuse him of infidelity to the party on issues that range from immigration to campaign finance reform. Further, they complain, he gets kid-glove treatment from the fawning Biased Liberal Media, because he is portrayed as a “maverick Republican” rather than, say, as a “renegade Republican.”

Both “maverick” and “renegade” denote someone who doesn’t go with the flow, but their connotations are certainly different. “Maverick” implies independence, whereas “renegade” suggests betrayal.

The words we choose do matter, especially in a political season. That’s why the campaigns employ “spin” specialists — to apply favorable phrasing to a given event. Thus the recent actions of the Federal Reserve can be described as either “a bailout for billionaires” or an effort “to maintain the viability of our capital markets.”

(Read on …)

Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Have you ever stood on the edge of a strip mine, stared into the kelly-green waste water pooled at the bottom, the bright mineral colors of eroding earth and tailings, and thought to yourself: “God, that’s beautiful”? Then there are the lit towers — strange gothic cities — of coal mines and refineries at night; the eery, soundless sweep of oil derricks pumping in a greening field; the twisting arcs of sprawling suburb streets seen from the air.

If you’re like me, you find yourself struck dumb by such scenes. There is something of the sublime in them. They have the power to entice and repel, and challenge us with the idea that development, industry, even poison, have their own strange, terrible loveliness.

(Read on …)

Rebecca Clarren

Outside the trees bloom pink, yellow daffodils cluster near the sidewalk and my lawn has suddenly sprouted into a large bushy rug that has prompted chilly looks from my neighbors. To my untrained eye, spring has arrived in its usual showy fashion, but I’m missing something. We all are.

New data by bee biologists indicate steep declines of three common bumble bees species, including the Western Bumble Bee, found from the Rocky Mountains and California up into Alaska. These native populations of bees are important pollinators of wild flowering plants and crops. Though there are a number of plausible reasons for these shrinking populations, such as climate change, habitat loss and pesticides, Dr Robbin Thorp, an entomologist at U.C. Davis, suspects a more acute cause.
(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you’re starting to see the impacts of a climate out of whack. Around here the past few years, in the Colorado mountains at nearly 6,000 feet, we’ve seen heavy rain in January and February, when by all rights it should be snowing. And butterflies, hatched weeks too early, flapping over barely-budded plants in a vain search for flowers. And premature blossoms on fruit trees, fooled into bloom by an oddly-warm March, only to be zapped by freezes into May.

Now researchers have confirmed that global warming is whacking Westerners especially hard. Over the past five years, we’ve had an increase in average temperature that’s 70 percent greater than the increase experienced by the rest of the planet.

For “Warming in the West,” the report released today by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) and the Natural Resources Defense Council, RMCO analyzed new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature data for 11 Western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007, the average regional temperature was 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th-century average, compared to the overall global rise of 1 degree. Both Washington and Oregon saw temperatures 40 percent higher than the worldwide figure.

The report’s next-to-last chapter, “Immediate Action Can Curb Global Warming,” holds out the hope of salvation — if we’ll get off our collective asses and make meaningful policy changes. Now.

But stopping the climatic train wreck is going to be much, much harder than we can even imagine, writes HCN contributing editor Matt Jenkins in a story for Miller-McCune. Read Matt’s grim — but realistic — assessment in A Really Inconvenient Truth. And check out our earlier story, Save Our Snow. On second thought, a cave might be a great place to be.

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Are we so jaded, dulled and/or distracted that there’s no no uproar about VP Dick Cheney’s latest arrogant dismissal of American citizens? In a March 19 interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, in response to a reminder that two-thirds of the American public oppose the war in Iraq, Cheney replied, “So?”

So? So? So 4000 U.S. soldiers have died, 97 percent of them since President George W. Bush declared major combat ended. Wyoming, Cheney’s home, has had 12 deaths, the fewest of any state — but Wyoming ranks fourth in deaths per capita, tying with Montana at 2.3. California’s dead number 429, the most of any state.

The official count of the wounded U.S. soldiers is 29,000 but it’s probably more, and over 1.2 million Iraqis have lost their lives.

As a fallen U.S. soldier put it a few months before he was killed by an IED, “Why are we in this hell over here? why? i cant stop askin why? the more i think the more i cry. why? ” (Ryan Hill, Myspace blog, Nov. 1, 2006)

(Read on …)

Evelyn Schlatter

I was talking a few weeks ago to Robyn McCulloch, the state mining engineer of Montana, and something he said stuck with me. Since the 1980s, when “mining essentially tanked in this country,” he said, programs to learn it as a trade disappeared as well. There’s been a brain drain. In other words, most people working in mining these days are in their 40s or older because mining just doesn’t attract younger people and the ones it does attract tend to come from rural areas. They’re used to the whole idea of mining. But the problem there, McCulloch said, is that rural wages haven’t increased much over the years, so families can’t afford to send their kids to college or tech schools where they’d learn mining.

I thought about that and about changing values and expectations across different industries, and also about how new technologies are affecting industries like mining, in which fewer workers are needed to do the work. I don’t really see that many young people (read: 30 and younger) in trades like construction, plumbing, electrical work, or manufacturing. Unless you’re watching Home and Garden TV, which does feature a few beautiful, hip, young people doing things like carpentry, drywall installation, and bathroom upgrades. (See? Building things can be SEXY!) For the most part, however, what we’re talking about here is the “graying” of U.S. skilled trades. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if there aren’t any younger people coming up through the ranks, that means no one’s replacing retiring workers. Immigrant labor notwithstanding (and that’s a whole other discussion).

(Read on …)

Francisco Tharp

The War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and now, the War on Endangered Species. That’s right, it’s official once again: as far as endangered wildlife is concerned, the Bush administration is as scary as Dick Cheney with a shotgun. According to a Washington Post report printed Sunday, a whole heap of memos and documents indicate that Bush administration officials in the Fish and Wildlife Service (under the Department of Interior) have gone out of their way in recent years to make listing a species as endangered very hard.

You’ll have to read down the article a ways, but the juicy stuff is in there. For example, the Post reports that one memo read: Employees “can use info from files that refutes petitions but not anything that supports, per Doug” (That’s Douglas Krofta, head of the Endangered Species Program’s listing branch).

Additionally, agency officials “regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists’ recommendations to list new species,” the Post writes.

Fish and Wildlife is so behind on listing endangered species that WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit conservation group, filed a lawsuit on March 19 against Fish and Wildlife seeking the immediate protection of 681 plant and animal species. A WildEarth spokesperson called the Endangered Species Act “our nation’s ark,” and said that the Bush administration had essentially locked the door to it.

Compared to his father’s administration as well as President Clinton’s, George W. Bush and company have done remarkably little in terms of endangered species protection, according to the Post report. Since 2001, the big W has listed 59 species, compared to Clinton’s 521 and his Daddy’s 231. Of the current administration’s 59 listed species, not a single listing was requested by the administration. About 4 percent of the two previous administrations’ listings were initiated in-house. (Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

A report by the National Association of County and City Health Officials on big cities in the U.S., published in November, shows that Las Vegas leads urban areas in suicides with 35 per 100,000, followed by Colorado Springs with 26. Tucson is third with 25 per 100,000.

The West as a region leads the nation in suicides. Only California has a rate less than the national average of 11 per 100,000. Montana is first with 22 per 100,000, followed by Nevada with 19.9, New Mexico and Wyoming with 17.7, Colorado with 17.1, Idaho with 16.0 and Arizona with 15.9. These statistics are from 2004, but the West has led in this sad race for years.

Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S., at nearly twice the rate of homicide. It is the third leading cause for people younger than 24. White males are more likely to kill themselves than any other demographic, and firearms are the most common method.

The March 31 issue of High Country News features a story by award-winning writer Ray Ring on suicide in the West. An essay by Diane Sylvain on the same topic is online.

Felice Pace

Ed Quillen’s Writers on the Range essay in the March 3rd HCN - “We’re in the land of Lincoln” - is not only erudite and well written, it is also a public service.

Americans are notoriously ahistorical in outlook. Westerners are often even worse - many of us believe outrageous myths about our past which function to hide not only past injustices but also current inequities and the likely consequences of current decisions. So anyone who provides a truly historical perspective is worthy of praise. LET’S SEE MORE ESSAYS WHICH PROVIDE WESTERN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES!

There is one problem with Quillen’s essay, however. He fails to sufficiently identify one of Lincoln’s most questionable western legacies - the railroad grants. During the 1860s Lincoln and the Republicans provided the big railroad corporations with generous land grants. The seminal law was the Pacific Railway Act signed into law by Lincoln on July 1, 1862.

(Read on …)

Felice Pace

I confess that my favorite part of HCN is often the letters. Now I may be a wee bit biased since I have been known to write a letter or two to HCN and, occasionally, see one published. Nevertheless I do believe that HCN has the good fortune of excellent letter writers.

This does not mean that I always or even usually agree with the letter writers. It is just that, even when I don’t agree (or even violently disagree) the letters are so often well written and well reasoned.

Take the March 3rd edition for example.

Alexander Evans of the Forest Guild offered a thoughtful letter about the key role “working landscapes” can play in addressing the impact of climate change on species and ecosystems.

Now I hate that term “working landscapes”. What does it really mean anyway? If we really have “working landscapes” do we then also have “idle landscapes”? Are wilderness areas and national parks “idle landscapes” and are they therefore lazy and dissolute?

(Read on …)

Ernie Atencio

“Free at last,” says the first line of an article on the front page of yesterday’s Taos News (3/20/08). No, this is not about the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. Not about the release of some unjustly imprisoned activist or Guantanamo enemy combatants.

Taos Ski Valley has opened its slopes to snowboarders.

For some people around here this is earthshaking, the beginning of a new age, a tectonic social shift in the land of gravity-driven recreation. I guess we all need something to feel passionate about, but in a world and a region grappling with some serious issues I’m having a hard time with all the fuss. A couple of friends have looked shocked to hear me say, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a ski area.” I’ve drawn some uncomfortable responses on the ski lift when I suggest that it’s public land and it doesn’t seem right that it’s restricted, much less that it’s obscenely expensive.

(Read on …)

Ed Quillen

Fraser, Colo., is no longer “The Icebox of the Nation.” Don’t blame global warming — blame International Falls, Minn.

International Falls sits just south of the Canadian border; Fraser is a couple of miles down U.S. 40 from the Winter Park Ski Area. For years, the two towns have battled in court for the trademark to the phrase.

The rivalry between the two cold towns started back in the 1950s, and the legal disputes revolve around which one first described itself as the nation’s icebox. In 1986, International Falls got a trademark, and Fraser accepted $2,000 to drop its claim. About a year ago, though, Fraser discovered that International Falls had apparently let its trademark registration lapse, and filed for it.

But in February of this year, International Falls received a federal trademark, and so it is officially “The Icebox of the Nation.” Fraser has lost its motto.

(Read on …)