Innholdsfortegnelse for June Vol. 55, No. 06 i High Country News

IF YOU’VE BEEN READING High Country News for a while — or for any time at all — you likely know at least part of our story. We were founded in Lander, Wyoming, in 1970, then migrated south to western Colorado in 1983, eventually opening an office in a former feedstore in the small town of Paonia. Though our staff now lives and works all over the West and beyond, Paonia remains our mailing address. It’s also where this publication — and more than a few of its past and present staffers — did a lot of growing up. Paonia and the surrounding North Fork Valley taught many of us, including me, not to romanticize the West: Though I still consider the North Fork the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived,…

EIGHT MILES NORTH OF CORVALLIS, OREGON, a wedge of open prairie known as Soap Creek Valley tucks up against the eastern foot of the Coast Range. A sweep of grassland rimmed in forested hills, the valley is both vast and sheltered at once. Here, in 1845, Letitia Carson concluded a more than 2,000-mile journey from Missouri. Though she’d survived the expedition’s many dangers — including the birth of a daughter along the way — her arrival in the fabled Willamette Valley would have offered little comfort: Letitia was a Black woman entering a region that had, among its first acts of governance, barred Black people from residing within its borders or claiming land. Born into slavery in Kentucky, Letitia came to Oregon with a white man named David Carson, their…

EAST OF LOS ANGELES, in San Gabriel Valley, Asian Americans make up more than half of the population. The casino buses aren’t hard to find here; they run back and forth from Las Vegas and Southern California’s many gambling houses, picking up passengers in the parking lots of Asian supermarket chains like 99 Ranch. They’re run by companies with nondescript names like Da Zhen and QH Express. The buses are often unmarked and hard to find on the web, because their older clientele doesn’t often speak English and therefore doesn’t use the internet. The companies are frequently resented by city councils and residents alike, because the buses clog up traffic, and the crowds of gamblers are regarded as a nuisance. Safety is also an issue; as reported in The San…

Trent Davis Bailey is a photographer born and based in Colorado whose work pulls from personal resonances of loss, trauma, family and geography, particularly as they relate to ecology, place, memory and time. Instagram: @trentdavisbailey Leland Cheuk is an award-winning author of three books of fiction, most recently No Good Very Bad Asian. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR and Salon, among other outlets. Miles W. Griffis is a journalist and essayist based in Southern California. Karen Holmberg’s award-winning poetry collections are The Perseids and Axis Mundi. Her young adult novel The Collagist is forthcoming from Fitzroy/Regal House in 2024. She teaches at Oregon State University. Maya L. Kapoor writes about climate change, biodiversity and environmental justice. Previously, she was an…

Two by two in the ark of / the ache of it—Denise Levertov, “The Ache of Marriage” i. Game Maji’s rare gem.Gaia’s aim. I’m game.Marriage gigs me,a gar. Rigsa marge-merge. Grammar agrees:are > am. I am a Mr.’s.A Mrs.An eager aerie. Egg era, air rare,ere marriage’s agargags me, rearsa gamey germ. ii. Arms Marriage armsa grim regime. A MIG aims,maims me; gammarams me. REMMIA, I rage. Ire miresears’ gears. Marriage’srager ages me: I’m a meme’s meager gram.Air’s ream.Age’s mare. Mirage’s émigré. iii. Reimage I err.Mar me. I rear a rag. A rim rearms.I reimage memega, magma. Mea, amie.mere rare me. WEB EXTRA Listen to Karen Holmberg recite her poem at hcn.org/mirage-marriage…

If you would like to make a tax-deductible contribution, please scan the QR code to the right, visit hcn.org/give2hcn, call 800-905-1155 or mail a check to: P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE ($5,000-$9,999) In memory of Gary Lindstrom | Salt Lake City, UT PHILANTHROPIST ($2,500-$4,999) Peter Schoenburg & Jane McGrath | Albuquerque, NM STEWARD ($1,000-$2,499) Anonymous (2) Campizondo Foundation | Indianapolis, IN Paul & Julie Cleary | Tulsa, OK Robert E. Ordal | Ketchum, ID Aaron Schapper | Elkhorn, NE Frances Stevenson | Bend, OR Jerry Welsh | Eugene, OR GUARANTOR ($500-$999) Anonymous In memory of Steve Yeamans | Los Alamos, NM Phillip & Brenda Taylor | Marysville, WA Rich Charrier | Nampa, ID Ronda S. Connaway | Gunnison, CO Paul & Linnea Dayton | Solana Beach, CA…

A column that explores the queer natural and cultural histories of the American Southwest. IN MANY MAJOR U.S. and European cities in the 1930s, a surge of queer underground parties sprouted like pansies from the soil. Queer and transgender performers sang proud songs about waving buttercups and daisies. The revelry attracted thousands, but after only a few years, homophobia and Nazism trampled this short-lived superbloom, which historians call “The Pansy Craze.” When I was growing up near conservative Colorado Springs, Colorado, my classmates called me a “pansy” so often that I began to embrace the wild pansies in my backyard as part of my identity. I didn’t see the bright yellow-and-purple flower as weak; it could bench-press heavy mats of ponderosa pine needles. Derogatory terms like “daisy,” “evening botanist” and…

High Country News is dedicated to independent journalism, informed debate and discourse in the public interest. We welcome letters through digital media and the post. Send us a letter, find us on social media, or email us at editor@hcn.org. THE ‘DELUSION’ OF DISCOVERY “The illusion of discovery” (May 2023) — Michelle Nijhuis’ editor’s note — has haunted me since I read it. The “Doctrine of Discovery” brings it all into perspective of what emboldened individuals to violate and completely disregard Indigenous rights. This article opened up how this got started, and now I can see more clearly how we got to where we are. Thanks to the Doctrine of Discovery, we have a shameful blot on our history and a daunting task to work through and remedy actions that unfortunately…

IN 1892, THE PEOPLE of Boise, Idaho, came up with an idea for staying warm without burning the usual coal or wood: They piped water from nearby hot springs into their own homes to heat them, as well as into the local Natatorium, an indoor swimming pool and spa. Indigenous peoples had been using hot springs’ natural warmth for millennia, but Boise was probably the nation’s first settler-colonial city to pipe this energy directly into its homes. Today, Boise’s municipal utility employs a similar method to heat its downtown buildings. Boise is harnessing a simple, lower-temperature form of geothermal energy found relatively close to the Earth’s surface. It’s tapped elsewhere in the West, warming swimming pools and sidewalk snow-melting systems — even an alligator farm in Colorado — as well…

NEW MEXICO It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a flapping, feathery, fluttering … drone? If you happen to have a surplus of dead birds on hand, take heart: Those wings and feathers can be repurposed into useful airborne science experiments. The Washington Post reports that Mostafa Hassanalian, an engineering professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, has taken upcycling to new heights, literally: Hassanalian researches the kinetics of bird drones during flight, with the goal of optimizing aviation technology. And that’s where all the taxidermied birds come in: He attaches their wings, feathers and heads to something he calls ornithopters — which are not the long-lost cousins of velociraptors, but rather “small machines with mechanical wings that flap like those of birds and insects.”…