Look Ma, No Car! - Sierra Magazine

My legs start to burn as I hit a hill, but the soft yellows of dawn are filtering through the city streets, and a cool breeze is brushing my cheeks. My mind is clear. At the end of my five-mile bike commute, my blood is flowing, I'm focused, and I'm excited for work. This is how I start my day: fully alive. How many Americans can say the same about their commute? I have a hunch: all the cyclists. More.

Low-hanging fruit - Earth Island Journal

Mike Cohen, executive director of the Bellingham Food Bank in Washington, often gets phone calls from area farmers who have recently harvested a crop. These small-scale organic farmers call to say they just picked carrots or kale or apples from their fields and are ready for the gleaners – volunteers who pick leftover produce and distribute it to the poor. Sometimes these calls come a few days before a farmer wants the gleaners to arrive. Sometimes Cohen’s phone rings just a day before a farmer needs them. He’s never sure when the next call will come and exactly what crop his group will be picking. More.

An orphan heads to college - High Country News

The Gemstone Cafe at Pima Community College, in Tucson, Ariz., fills up quickly on the first day of the new term. Coolers full of bottled water and Gatorade hum in the background as students in jeans, T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts mill around sleepily.

At a quarter to 9:00, Chan Kuoth, 30, walks into the cafe wearing a tan suit-coat and slacks. Class won't start for a few more minutes, so he sits down and relaxes in a teal-blue plastic chair. Tall and dark-skinned, he smiles as he talks about his life. Six horizontal scars line his forehead -- the marks of his formal initiation into adulthood in a ceremony common back in his native land. More.

Ramadan dinner - InTheFray Magazine

It’s almost time for dinner on the next-to-last night of Ramadan. Hassan Ahmed sits on a well-used sofa facing a big-screen TV that dominates the front room of his small, two-bedroom apartment in the Kennedy Park neighborhood of Portland, Maine. He’s watching an Egyptian movie playing on an Arabic satellite station. After a commercial break, Hassan, a Sudanese refugee who came to the United States in 2003 with his family, relaxes his body and leans back into the couch. His dark black skin stands out in contrast to the white jelabia he wears. His short hair is starting to recede from his forehead, where expressive lines form when he’s thinking. The room is illuminated with soft yellow light from a floor lamp in the corner. Outside, the sun hangs low in the sky and the street is empty. A bitter wind blows off the Atlantic several blocks away — another cold Maine winter not far behind. More.

To a home unknown - InTheFray Magazine

At 7 o’clock on a cool fall morning, Matthew Kongo steps out of the Spencer Press printing plant and into daylight. The air coming off the ocean to the east is moist, the world quiet compared to the printing room inside where Kongo, 65, has been working the night shift. He wears a gray fleece jacket, dark jeans, and heavy leather work boots. Large thin-rimmed glasses balance on his wide nose, magnifying soft, sleepless brown eyes. More.

Western water in the age of climate change - High Country News

In 1893, at a meeting of the International Irrigation Congress, Major John Wesley Powell, known for his daring exploration of the Colorado River, stood up to grand applause in front of men eager to build big water projects. And then he said what nobody wanted to hear. As the applause turned to boos and hisses, the major stated clearly: "I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply these lands." More.

Renewing a battered land - High Country News

In 1874, when most of the West was held in common, a simple invention – barbed wire – pushed the region towards the nation’s long-held ideal: privatization. It didn’t take long for ranchers to enclose their lands and herds; just a few decades later, millions of acres of formerly open range were surrounded by fences. More.