Nonfiction
By Cal Freeman
On winter days like this, I think of visiting my Aunt Nancy in Northville Psychiatric Hospital. Seeing Northville at 14 was like being at a circus freak show. The ladies in her ward were not bearded, but many of them had that dim five o’clock shadow that comes with experimental psychotropics. There was general excitement in the ward over the carton of cigarettes my mother carried.
INDIGENOUS NATIONS’ RESPONSES TO CLIMATE CHANGE
By Zoltán Grossman
Native peoples have faced massive ecological and economic changes in the past — from colonialism, genocide, epidemics, industrialization, and urbanization — yet many Native cultures have survived against overwhelming odds. The climate crisis is the latest, and perhaps the ultimate challenge, but this history may make Native peoples better equipped than the non-Native society that is reliant on chain grocery stores and shopping malls.
WIND POWER’S ASCENT IN RURAL KANSAS
By Philip Warburg
The wind is at times a frighteningly destructive force in Kansas life. Killer tornadoes have leveled entire towns and have made tornado chasing a precarious summer sport for daredevils seeking grim moments of media attention. Yet it also offers a vast and largely untapped source of clean, renewable energy. According to a recent government survey, Kansas could install sufficient wind power to supply almost 90 percent of America’s total present-day power consumption.
By Hal Crimmel
If you want to raft a remote Class V desert river, one with risky, demanding rapids, you want some assurance that the river you have chosen is familiar even if it isn’t. You might first check the geology — canyons formed in soft, easily eroded rock tend to contain predictable rapids forgiving to rafts, promising a margin of safety on unfamiliar water in most conditions.
By John R. Campbell
On Thursday morning I arrive where the well-groomed sales staff hover, where senior citizens speed-walk, where young mothers push strollers with a determined ease. Extravagantly real tropical plants soar above me. Fluorescent light kindles the general air, while sharply-focused halogen lights illumine the displays, so that the merchandise mimics light itself, bathing the world in a material glow.