I learned to shoot on the family ranch, as ranch kids are wont to do. My gun education was furthered at a Catholic summer camp, and I still have my paper target proving my marksmanship. Hunter safety classes, and calm, clear-eyed common sense. This was the rural approach to guns I grew up with.
Ideas about men and manhood have been evolving for more than 50 years, but Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has not gotten the message. Like so many others working to protect white male supremacy (e.g. Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy), he’s driving a gas-guzzling Cadillac on a road increasingly filled with electric vehicles.
Some would argue that spring is the most wonderful time of the year in Washington. Throughout our state fruit trees blossom, vibrant tulip fields bloom, and colorful lentils carpeted the fields on the Palouse. It is when photographers and sightseers have a field day.
Shortly after World War II, California fish managers had a brainstorm: They loaded juvenile trout into airplanes and saturation-bombed naturally fishless lakes in the High Sierra Mountains of California. Some of the fish hit rocks and ice, but most hit water.
In 2017, the public lost 1,470 acres of wilderness-quality land at the base of Mount Sopris near Aspen, Colorado.
Although I’ve lived in a small Western town for 30 years now, I have never known much about one of its fundamental institutions, the service club. Many small-town residents still center their lives on Lions, Elks, Rotary or similar organizations.
In the race to “electrify everything” there are glitches which may derail the plan over the next 20 years. One is a shortage of skilled electrical workers needed to rewire homes, make grid modifications, and install new electrical capacity.
The odds are against us. That is the bottom line in the latest IPCC report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global warming, the most comprehensive scientific report to date. Once again we are told that 2030 is the year of living dangerously — when humanity must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half, and then proceed to stop them altogether by 2050.
The return of wolves to the West has always been contentious, and the deaths last fall of more than 40 cattle in western Colorado really alarmed ranchers. But here’s the true story: Wolves did not kill those cattle found dead near Meeker.
Every year since 2015, East County Fire & Rescue (ECFR)’s board chair has submitted this column as a special outreach to our citizens, as well as those in the areas we provide mutual aid (Camas, Washougal, Skamania County, Vancouver, etc.) This year is one to start out with the following warning: “Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!”
