Columns

Over many decades, generations of people who value wildlands worked tirelessly advocating for the complete and permanent protection of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

Many of those dedicated voices are still waiting. Sadly, others have been lost over time. But as happens in life, new voices have picked up that clarion call to help protect “the last best place.” There was a time when we spoke as one for the protection of the Gallatin Range, the only unprotected mountain range extending outward from Yellowstone National Park. This too seems to have changed.  

It doesn’t get easier 6,000 miles away.

“Don’t you like your president?” asks a man who is a strong supporter of Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu and our Donald Trump. 

I try to explain it’s not a matter of liking. I respect Israel’s right to choose Netanyahu, a man who I do not agree with, just as we Americans have the right to elect as our president a pathological liar and manipulator who can never admit a mistake.

Consider, for example, today’s Trump headlines. 

Some scandals reported as shocking are shocking for reasons other than those implied in the coverage. One would be the online scam that bilked millions from businesses, the elderly and women looking for romance. 

WASHINGTON — Nestled on the Front Range of the Rockies, the city of Crystal was a largely upper-middle-class paradise, chock full of health-conscious and socially conscious — meaning, of course, impeccably progressive — Coloradans. Then in slithered a serpent in the form of a proposal for a new school, to be called “Crystal Academy,” for “accelerated and exceptional learners.” Suddenly it was paradise lost.