Columns

Alternatives to bigger jails aren’t a partisan issue

If you know someone is a Republican or Democrat, then you might assume you know exactly where they stand on…

A Japanese-American internment camp has much to teach us

“While other children were sent to daycare, when I was 3 years old I was sent to a Japanese-American prison,”…

If you see racism, call it out

Black Americans get a lot of messages about who matters and who does not in this country, and the question…

Dixie National Forest

It all began with pizza

In the mid-1960s, my dad served on the school board in Cortez, in rural southern Colorado.  He recalled that at…

Photograph by Helena Lopez, courtesy of Unsplash

An isolated area gets the vaccine job done

“The two small counties, including the indigenous community of the Southern Ute Nation, were ready when 4,000 of those doses—10% of the state’s total—arrived.”

Photograph by Fadil Fauzi, courtesy of Unsplash

An Idaho congressman aims to dump dams

Rep. Mike Simpson is a conservative Republican from Idaho whose concept of wildness in the 1990s was going into the…

Photograph courtesy of Rocky Barker

It’s Time to Come to the Aid of Wildland Firefighters

“..many of the men and women who fight those fires on our behalf are suffering from burnout”

Image of Harrison Raine setting a backfire to stop wildfire from spreading

A Mixed-up-Family Becomes an American Family

““How’s being black?” wrote a classmate in my grandson’s yearbook. “

Photograph by Omar Lopez, courtesy of Unsplash

The Complexity of Color in the Environmental Movement

 This summer was a time of reckoning about race in every sector of American life, and many of us are…

Fanning the Flames of Hate in Oregon

“The present we are now enduring is the climate-change future that we have been warned about for decades.”

Photograph by Alex Radelich, Courtesy of Unsplash

The wall with Mexico will come tumbling down

But one needs to read only a bit of world history to realize that walls can come down as a quickly as they were put up.

Photograph by Greg Bulla, Courtesy of Unsplash

We Either Lie About Them or Omit Them

And, according to Indian friends, there are strong tribal memories of the devastating 1918 flu

Photograph by Taylor Ruecker, courtesy of Unsplash