Essay: In The New West magazine
The Family Farm, Version 2.0
I spread my sleeping bag on the floor and crumpled my coat for a pillow. I put the bag where my bed used to be.
The room still smelled the same. Aside from the echo, there was something homey, something warm, the smell of a vanilla candle still lingering in the empty walls. My brother and I were at the now vacant house for the night. It was Thanksgiving, and we wanted to stay somewhere familiar. The land had sold, but the house hadn’t yet, so we would stay the night on the floor in my old bedroom.
Facing me, in the wall, was a small hole about the size of a heel. My brother and I had been fighting about something teenagers fight about and, in a tantrum, my foot connected with the wall. My brother had laughed. I was 16 at the time.
I had forgotten about the hole, hidden by a dresser long ago. As I ran my fingers over it one more time, my brother walked in, shaking his head. He always told me I was too sentimental about this place. It’s just a house, just a farm. They’re just walls. It’s just dirt.
He didn’t believe it either.
[more]
Featured Photo from New West Images
"Almond Blossom" photographed by Karl Eschenbach.
See more photos on the New West Images photoblog.
guest column
Building a New and Sustainable Residential Model
About a year ago, a client of mine came to me and asked me to design a house that would have no energy bill -- a "Net Zero House," producing as much energy as it used. During the same year, I found that my energy bill for my own house was beginning to become much more of a burden on our family budget. These two events led me to research energy costs and how those costs are impacting the average American household. It was immediately clear from the research that energy prices are outpacing income and our current way of building houses will create energy bills that will not be sustainable for the average household. [more]
Boulder Becomes 'Smart Grid City'
The Grid Gets a Brain
If all goes as planned Boulder will become the world’s first “fully integrated Smart Grid City,” says regional utility Xcel Energy. Envisioned as the first true innovation in electricity distribution in close to a century, the Smart Grid movement is essentially developing ways to bring digital Internet-based technology to power lines, giving utilities and business and residential customers greater control and efficiency in the flow of electricity.
Ultimately, once the Smart Grid takes over a significant chunk of the existing power distribution infrastructure, utilities and governments will be able to use the power of the Web to better manipulate how electricity is generated and delivered.
In other energy news: Democrats ready populist energy legislation; Colorado eyes fine print on electricity bills; and O&G executives foresee oil-price downturn by the end of the year.
[more]
New West Book Review
Rigged: Alexandra Fuller’s “The Legend of Colton H. Bryant”
The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
By Alexandra Fuller
The Penguin Press
202 pages, $23.95
In her extraordinary new book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Alexandra Fuller does a cruel thing. She makes readers fall in love with a Wyoming boy in the space of a few pages, carries us through his life, which leads inevitably to a dangerous job on an oil rig, and makes us stand as witnesses to his end, however much we wish we could turn our heads away. I still feel heartsick a few weeks after finishing it. Fuller writes with simple grace and a cowboy twang, taking a rather unconventional approach for nonfiction by composing the book of the private conversations and intimate scenes that are the turning points of Bryant's short life, and though she must have spent months with his family and friends, the author stays offstage, disappearing into a bracing, honest voice that is motherly in its tenderness toward her subject.
Fuller will discuss her book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) in Denver on Monday, May 12 (7:30 p.m.), at Borders in Portland on May 13 (7 p.m.), and in Evanston, WY at the Uinta Library on May 16 (5 p.m.)
[more]
timberlands and real estate
Missoula County Asks Mark Rey to Halt Plum Creek Talks
Wednesday the Missoula County Commissioners sent a letter to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey asking him to drop consideration of the forest road easement amendment until the documents proposed for amendment have been identified and made available to the public.
The commissioners wrote: "...the failure to identify, review, and properly reference the easements to be amended will make the proposed Easement Amendment legally void, and the process leading up to your expected approval fatally flawed."
Rey, overseer of the Forest Service, said during a meeting last week with officials from western Montana that he would not make the paperwork available and invited a lawsuit, which appears imminent.
[more]
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From the Flathead Beacon Blog
Obama’s Lead on Clinton May End Montana’s Swan Song
The chances of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton returning to Montana took a hit Tuesday night. After Obama’s crushing victory in North Carolina and Clinton’s narrow win in Indiana, the majority of pundits have declared the race all but over. I hope not. The state press has been blanketed with high-profile attention from each campaign over the last few weeks and it would be a shame to find out that the media was simply used for political gain.
Since Obama and Clinton visited Montana last month, and subsequently opened campaign field offices across the state, the local press has been constantly updated on why each candidate is absolutely great and has the state’s best interests in mind. You see, we’re passed a deluge of daily notes, many with personal touches.
[more]
In The New West magazine
Real Ranch Living: Not Everyone is Selling Out
It's 2:30 a.m., and Bud Boyce, 75, fumbles in the dim light of the pickup cab for the controls of the mounted spotlight.
Outside, the beam cuts the blackness, illuminating clouds of warm breath and glassy eyes as it pans from left to right, then back again across a herd of more than 250 Angus-Hereford cows, all pregnant and ready to give birth.
The cattle huddle in dark masses. Bud plays the light across them, carefully watching for a cow in labor or a newborn calf. With no signs of a delivery-in-progress and no new calves since the last check three hours ago, he wheels his pickup back toward the house and lurches down the frozen drive. In three hours, he'll do it again. Then, ranch hand Mike Horst will take over.
It's a grueling schedule, part of what makes ranching a lifestyle, not a job.
[more]
LET'S GET OUR WORDS STRAIGHT
Wilderness is Multiple Use
Have you ever heard somebody say they prefer "multiple use" over Wilderness? I have what seems like a thousand times, and every time I hear it, I say to myself, wrong!
So, it seems like a good time to say it out loud because the words, "multiple use" have been lost in the Wilderness.
[more]
New West News Brief
TERRA Video Series Explores Bison Issue
As the controversy over the Yellowstone National Park’s population of bison continues, Bozeman-based TERRA shares a three-part video series on the “free-ranging” population’s scenerio and the hazing that is occurring. (Click video above for a preview of the series.)
As there are passionate people on both sides of the debate, this series tries to understand all sides of this issue.
[more]
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The handling of the raid of the Yearning for Zion Ranch polygamous compound in Eldorado, Texas, and the subsequent detainment of the entire community continues to draw strong reactions here in Utah. Connor Boyack, a website designer in Lehi, Utah circulated a petition calling for the release from custody or foster care of all Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) women and children gathered up in the raid, and an apology from the State of Texas. The petition received 2000 signatures before he forwarded it to Texas Governor Rick Perry, along with a letter noting, [more]
