Western Life

Getting graded

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Column by George Sibley

Western Life – June 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

A State of the Rockies Report Card?

We aren’t talking about the baseball team here; we’re talking about the Rocky Mountains — all the way out to the edge of California. The report card is a county-by-county annual report on key regional challenges, including demographic growth and decay, natural resource extraction, tourism and recreation, cultural resources, environmental conditions, and a host of other indicators that define the Rocky Mountain region.

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Home, home on the ranchito

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Column by Hal Walter

Western life – January 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

WHITHER THE RANCHER, that gnarled and stoic figure of Western lore? And what do the words “ranch” and “rancher” mean in the New West? Probably no word conjures up the Western mythology more than “ranch,” a notion visually propped by The Big Valley, Bonanza, and The High Chaparral, and more recently Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall, and All the Pretty Horses.

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The persistent power of myth

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Essay by Martha Quillen

Western Life – July 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

RECENTLY, I READ A “Writers on the Range” syndicate piece about destructive weeds by Paul Larmer, executive director of High Country News. Paul is always a clear and interesting writer, but since we included plenty about plants in our May issue, I chose another “Range” piece.

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Heard around the West

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Brief by Betsy Marston

Western Life – July 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

CALIFORNIA

If you protest acts of violence, does that make you a violent person? The answer is yes, according to the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center. The center warned Oakland police that an anti-war protest planned for the city’s port might turn violent, even though there was no evidence that demonstrators intended to do anything but demonstrate, reports the Oakland Tribune.

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Heard around the West

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Brief by Betsy Marston

Western Life – January 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine

Nude Dude

Quick, cover your eyes, that statue is naked! To avoid offending the sensibilities of some 2,500 parents and their home-school children, the Convention Center of Sacramento, Calif., agreed to dress its 7-foot-tall statue of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea. The replica of an ancient work usually attracts little attention; it has stood outside the center since Greece gave it to Sacramento in 1972. But responding to parents who found the art too nude and too crude, officials at the center scurried around to find appropriate clothes — sized, we’d imagine — XXXL.

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Heard Around the West

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Brief by Betsy Marston

Western Life – July 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Bouncing Bambi

Boing, boing, boing … Ridgway, Colo., sculptor Clifton Barr looked up from work in his metal and wood studio and saw a large, antlered deer “jumping like a bucking horse” in the neighbor’s yard, reports the Ouray County Plaindealer. Barr did a double take and took off his glasses just to make sure, but when he walked outside the deer was still bouncing. On a trampoline. “He gave me one look and with a leap” — this one off the trampoline — “he was off and running.”

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Ich bin ein ‘Neonative’

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Essay by John Clayton

Western Life – December 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

“Stop waving at everyone,” said my friend visiting from California. He felt like he was in a caricature of small-town life. He figured I couldn’t really know all these people, and was just greeting them for the effect it had on him.

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Cottonwood Pass Pentimento

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Letter from K. Wills Donithorne

Western Life – November 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

Over the Sierras, returning from an artists for peace — Vietnam — demonstration in Los Angeles by way of San Francisco to get home to Boulder in time for fall semester with husband Tom and our still in arms daughter, we picked up the fist single male hitchhiker we encountered to help with running starts.

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The Real Code of the West?

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Essay by Ed Quillen

Western Life – December 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE CODE OF THE WEST is one of those phrases that has popped up frequently in recent years. In early November, it was the theme of the annual Headwaters Conference at Western State College in Gunnison. A couple of years ago, several Colorado counties adopted a statement of policy about rural life that they called “The Code of the West,” and we even published one that Montrose County didn’t adopt. At the moment, the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado in Boulder is collecting information for a handbook that might explain “The Code of the West” to new arrivals when it is published next year.

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It’s a Good Day to be Indigenous

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Essay by Stephen Lyons

Western Life – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

It’s a good day to be indigenous

by Stephen Lyons

FROM THIS MOMENT ON kindly refer to my family as “indigenous.” Or, if you prefer, “First Peoples.” With the discovery of what could be my long-lost European relative — Kennewick Man — it’s time to respect my elders.

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A Role for WSC: Somebody needs to fight these growths

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Essay by Laura Mccall

Western Life – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN THE 1970s, Gunnison’s only franchise was A & W — an old and somewhat quaint chain that employed car-hops in the summer months. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Subway, and Taco Bell did not exist. In 1987, a company named ALCO came to town and built their cinder block discount store, the site of the present-day Wal-Mart, over a pasture where the largest and most-magnificent bulls used to graze.

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Heard Around the West

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Brief by Betsy Marston

Western Life – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

Business Bad For Prisons

Not so long ago, comedians joked that by the year 2000, everyone in the United States would either be a prison guard or an inmate considering the astounding rate of jail construction. But what if you built a jail and no one came?

That’s the problem Santa Fé, N.M., faces after spending $27 million for an “adult correctional facility.” Private operators of the 648-bed facility have found few takers from other states for the hundreds of extra beds.

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Does anybody remember the Cowboy Code

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Essay by Penelope Reedy

Western Life – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

Does Anyone Remember the Cowboy Code?

by Penelope Reedy

“In the moonlight he could see Harley’s body hanging from the fence, where they had tangled it upright between strands of barbed wire. Harley’s brown skin had gone as pale as the cloudy sandstone in the moonlight, and Tayo could see blood shining on his thighs and his fingertips.”

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Heard Around the West

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Brief by Betsy Marston

Western Life – November 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine

Happy Birthday

A construction worker on his way to work in Roseburg, Ore., spotted a dead deer by the side of the road and then spotted something else a leg kicking out of the pregnant doe. So Melvin Spencer pulled over and went to work, delicately pulling the animal from its mother’s broken body, reports AP. The fawn was alive, “its little legs only about as big as an ink pen.” Spencer tore the umbilical cord with his fingers, wiped out the baby’s nose and found an old shirt to keep the faun warm. The fawn, now named Chiquita, is an endangered Columbian white-tailed deer, a species that lives a little less than five years. Chiquita was fed around the clock for the first few days by Peggy Cheatam, who works with the nonprofit Umpqua Wildlife Rescue. Cheatam says Chiquita was “the youngest (orphan) I’ve ever had,” coming into her care at three hours old. The deer will eventually be released to the wild.

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