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Opinion

December 12, 2024
Chuck Manning and Pete Kitts enter Northwest Lookout Tower. (Photo courtesy of Zeke Lloyd)

Fire lookout towers find renewed purpose

There’s a small wooden cabin at the top of Northwest Peak, a few miles from Montana’s borders with Idaho and Canada, and Chuck Manning, 79, believes lookouts like this one deserve a second chance at being useful.

December 5, 2024

Let’s scrap stigma of mental illness

Even though one in five Americans is estimated to suffer from mental health illness, talk about mental health in the rural West remains muted. I’d like to talk about it this Thanksgiving because I’m grateful I got the help I needed after a long-fought problem: I’m bipolar and I’m being treated for it.

December 5, 2024

Imagine a river more exciting than football

Imagine a best-selling, 900-page novel using “a sad, bewildered nothing of a river” as its centerpiece, connecting the earth’s geologic origin and dinosaur age to 1970s rural Colorado.

November 29, 2024

The best gifts come from the littlest boxes

Whether you love it or dread it, the “holiday shopping season” is upon us and Americans are expected to spend upwards of $125 billion on holiday gifts this weekend as they hunt for Black Friday deals, Small Business Saturday savings and Cyber Monday blowouts.

November 29, 2024

Public land protectors ready for a fight

President-elect Donald Trump’s first term was a disaster for America’s public lands. While the prospects for his second term are even more bleak, Westerners across the political spectrum — even those who voted for Trump — stand ready to oppose attempts to sell off America’s public lands to the highest bidder.

November 21, 2024

We need to address Trump’s tariff fantasies

Donald Trump thinks the world of tariffs. “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump said in September at a town hall event in Michigan. On another occasion he said “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the English language. Hmm. And he really has had a love affair with tariffs. After all, they mark his entry into national politics. Back in the mid-1980s, his one big gripe was the trade deficit with Japan. Then China became the target, and while president, Trump kept raising tariffs with China in the belief China would bend a knee and surrender. It didn’t, and Biden has been stuck in a tariff war ever since.