Lascher at Large

A Renter’s Market?

My latest post for High Country News‘s“A Just West” blog explores why it isn’t easy being green if you’re a renter

For the first time in decades it’s cool to be a renter. So why is it so hard to rent a home and still be “green”?

This week, as news outlets across the board reported a steep decline in home sales and prices in July, especially in the West, some reported increased preferences for renting, especially with the added uncertainty wrought by high unemployment levels. Particia Orsini of AOL’s Housing Watch reported Aug. 26 that Americans, particularly homeowners, are now more likely to think that renting a home is more prudent than buying one. Other news outlets, such as Forbes and the Real Estate Channel and Time’s “Curious Capitalist” blog, also recently dissected the growing preference for renting.

Orsini cited statistics from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies . I took a glance at that report – titled State of the Nation’s Housing 2010 – and found it shows that rental vacancies grew from 2006 to 2009, even though the renter pool was growing at the same time. In fact, U.S. Census Bureau housing vacancy survey data cited by the report shows that fewer people own homes in the West compared to any other region in the nation. The same numbers also show that nearly three-quarters of white Americans own homes while fewer than half of minority populations do.

So, what does this all have to do with the environment?

Continue reading “A Renter’s Market?”

National Parks for the Whole Nation

For High Country News‘s A Just West blog this week I explored the interplay between race, economic status and access to parks and outdoor recreation. The post originally appeared here.

I’ll admit it. There are some environmental topics I just don’t know much about.

For example, I first heard of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir when friends living near Yosemite invited me to visit during my move from Los Angeles to Portland (that January trip was itself my first visit to Yosemite). I saw a sign and took note of the name mainly because I thought it sounded funny. Of course, it’s more than amusing alliteration. News about the state of the Hetch Hetchy and a recent vote on the reservoir’s future had me wondering: how many people served by the reservoir have actually been to Yosemite, or any other National Park?

Though I grew up within sight of Channel Islands National Park, I’ve only set foot on the islands twice. I did, however, often take vacations with my family to the Sierras and attended a summer camp there. During a summer in my college years I spent a summer living just outside Yellowstone and I’ve since traveled to a number of other national parks.

There’s something else that by my very nature I won’t be able to fully understand: what it’s like to be non-white in America. When it comes to our national parks, I often felt as an adult like I was “catching up” with friends when I visited, partaking in an experience that I thought was normal, but turns out isn’t so common for people who don’t look like me.

Continue reading “National Parks for the Whole Nation”

What a Week for Wind

I’ve begun blogging about environmental justice and the West for High Country News My first post went up July 30 and discussed growth, economics and justice.HCN has been kind enough to allow me to cross-post, so beginning with this week’s edition I’ll also be putting my posts up here at Lascher at Large.

On Tuesday, July 27, the Los Angeles Times reported the groundbreaking of the immense Alta Wind Energy Center near the Mojave Desert town of Tehachapi. The story described a facility “being called the largest wind power project in the country,” and its potential to generate three gigawatts of electricity for Southern California homes. Though light on opposing voices, the story did quoted the president of the nearby Old West Ranch Property Owners Association, who object to the project. A day later, Tehachapi – and particularly the Old West Ranch – again made national headlines, albeit for quite different reasons. The afternoon of the groundbreaking a fire broke out on the Old West Ranch. NPR carried the story in its morning news update the next day. Firefighters already strained by a blaze in the nearby Sequoia National Forest struggled to keep up with the inferno. Dozens of homes at Old West Ranch were lost. Despite initial worries, wind turbines were left unscathed. The news brought a glimpse of what life was actually like at Old West Ranch, where residents lived off the grid and as self-sufficiently as possible. This fact was barely, if at all, acknowledged by media outlets that seemed to have difficulty reconciling the ultra-modern prospect of a $1.2 billion project that could power 600,000 homes with an inwardly-focused community interested in sustainability on a very small scale. While on one hand the wildfires spared a project that could begin to significantly shift energy usage in California, they ravaged an example of an older, quieter, less shiny approach to environmentalism. It was almost as if the fire itself declared that there are acceptable, and unacceptable, approaches to sustainable living – one best left in the ashes of the past, the other glimmering in the future.

Continue reading “What a Week for Wind”

Northland

Words: Bill Lascher | Photos: Whitney J. Fox

Part I: The Community Office

THE NATION is on Orange Alert.

In north-central Maine, thick forests blur the line separating the United States from Quebec. The only indication that the border exists is a small government checkpoint surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of wilderness. Curious about what life must be like at the edge of America when national security is on the tip of everyone’s tongue, I head to the border one late-September afternoon.

Government officials manning the Port of Entry have little to say to me. It’s difficult to tell if they’re quiet because of the new alert, or because they’re new transfers unfamiliar with the region. Nonetheless, they make an attempt to be helpful and suggest I track down one man, Sherby Paradise, who lives sixteen miles south in Jackman and is bound to have more to say about the region.

Searching for Sherby Paradise, I discover the Northland.

I discover strong friendships and traditions in a wilderness on the verge of destruction. I discover hospitality in a town bracing itself against outsiders.

Jackman doesn’t fear foreign terrorists. It fears domestic tourists. The same influx that breathes life into the town will be the force that changes it forever.

For now, life goes on much as it always has.

Continue reading “Northland”

Following a war correspondent's footsteps to the oil spill

Two nights ago I tweeted the following: Dreaming of dropping everything to report on the oilspill like an old fashioned war correspondent. Anyone hiring experienced reporters?

At first it was a bit of a whim. I’ve been working on a complex but often dry assignment. During breaks I’ve read these fascinating – if horrifying – stories about the spill. There are just so many pieces of this story that need to be covered. How could I contribute to that coverage, particularly when the story will have such far reaching impacts on our world?

Then I thought: why not just ask? Who needs help reporting on the spill? Why not offer my services as an experienced reporter who’d be willing to contribute his work, his time, and his energy?

So, who needs help?

Two years ago, when I applied to grad school, I described our shifting environment and its impact on society, politics, economics and culture — let alone life — as perhaps the only great global story. As I did, I had my grandmother’s cousin, Melville Jacoby, on my mind.

As I’ve described before, Melville served as a correspondent in China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and early 40s. His work appeared in places like Time, Life and the United Press Syndicate at the onset of World War II. Younger than I am now, he was so deeply immersed he reported from the midst of a narrow escape from the Philippines after the Japanese invasion and, during his travels through China, became close to Chiang Kai-Shek. Killed at 25 in an accident in Australia in 1942, he left behind rich accounts of his life in the form of letters, dispatches and photos now in my grandmother’s possession.

As I learned from my grandmother about Melville, I realized he played a central role telling stories about one small part of another great, global crisis. Perhaps the war was more romantic than seemingly glacial environmental changes (though really, they aren’t so glacial) but both crises are the defining milieus of a particular generation. “Like Melville,” I wrote, “I want to chronicle my generation’s response to its crisis.”
‘
I have some travel credits, some time, and a little cash saved up.

I even have Melville’s typewriter.

If that could get me to the Gulf Coast, could there be a floor to sleep on for the minutes I’m not in the field? Who’s in need of a collaborator? A researcher? An errand boy? A transcriptionist?

Let’s talk. Even if it’s not in the field, how can I help?

Amusements

When I am doing more than just writing

When I am seeing

As I wander

All for one and one for all: why writer communities

Michelle Rafter, Blogathon Organizer and Owner of WordCount

One of the more interesting features of the 2010 Blogathon is today’s guest post exchange day. Blogathon participants have wandered about the Internet to post on each other’s blogs. Visiting Lascher at Large today is Michelle Rafter, a freelance business and technology reporter who blogs about freelancing and new media at WordCount: Freelancing in the Digital Age and organized the Blogathon. In today’s appearance at Lascher at Large Rafter discusses what she’s learned about community and writers through putting together the Blogathon. I, meanwhile, can be found on her site discussing the Oregon News Incubator.

Anyhow, here’s what Michelle wrote:

Writing is a solitary endeavor. Even if your favorite place to write is a crowded coffee shop, in the end it’s just you and your laptop.

Being part of a writing community doesn’t take away the pain of getting the words on the page. But exchanging tips, opinions and war stories with other writers provides a level of support you can’t get from the random guy sipping a caramel macchiato next to you at Starbucks.

I’ve blogged a lot about the importance of belonging to writing tribes, whether in a newsroom if you’re lucky enough to still be a staff reporter, in the city where you live if there’s an SPJ chapter or other organized journalism group, or online through a virtual writers’ group such as the Online News Association, Freelance Success, or UPOD.

This sense of writers as community hit home again in a big way during the early days of this year’s WordCount Blogathon.

Every May, I host a blogathon where freelancers, reporters, copywriters and other writers with blogs commit to posting every day of the month. This year, more than 110 writers registered before the official deadline and another dozen or so joined after the fact.

Continue reading “Guest Post – All for one and one for all: why writer communities”

One Year Ago: Mastering the Bus

(Looking for the last excerpt from my tales of rural Maine? Come back tomorrow, or check out part 1 and part 2)

May 15, 2009.

I quit a job, spent a year of my life and paid thousands of dollars to get this shot.

Do what I would do.

I’m going to someplace not Portland this weekend. If you feel like following me, you might head east of Idaho, south of the Hudson Bay, north of Mali and west of Bhutan.

However, if I were staying town, there are a number of things I might do:

Check out what the Cascades Volcano Observatory has to say about the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
Explore the Sunday Parkways in Northeast.
Make up for totally spacing last Saturday on National Train Day and ride the train somewhere.
Find a hammock to string up in my yard and whip together some micheladas.
Finally finish reading The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring after eight years of constantly losing every copy of Tolkein‘s classic I get.
Write letters on my typewriter.
Head to the coast and see if there are any last minute yurt cancellations (doubtful).

Have anything else a would-be me should do? Let me know in the comments … and share some ideas for later when I’m actually not somewhere that’s not where I am right now.

Sights seen while not writing

As I noted last week, I don’t just write:

Part I: The Community Office

May 15, 2009.

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