This Week at the Bill Lane Center for the
American West

Read Executive Director Jon Christensen's weekly letter about what is happening at the Bill Lane Center for the American West.

Dear colleagues,

This week our California Constitutional Reform project is moving full-steam ahead, planning a launch of our CaliforniaChoices.org web site on March 2 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, and the scholars in that project have three major papers appearing in the current issue of California Journal of Politics and Policy; we have added a research position with Sunset magazine to our summer internship program, which will focus on Water in the West and the Rural West; and we bid farewell to one visiting scholar, Marco Armiero, and welcome another, Kathryn Gin, to our bullpen.

You're invited to join us the morning of Tuesday, March 2, in downtown San Francisco for the public launch of our CaliforniaChoices.org web site, a collaboration with the nonprofit organization, Next 10, which will provide Californians with a convenient way to navigate, comprehend, and make choices about the many reform proposals that are being placed before the voters this year. Click here to RSVP and learn more about the event, which will feature a broad array of reform advocates, as well as our partners in this crucial nonpartisan effort to educate and engage voters.

Meanwhile the research end of our California Constitutional Reform project is humming right along. The current issue of the California Journal of Politics and Policy features three important papers by Thad Kousser, Mike Binder, Vlad Kogan, and Tammy Frisby that summarize the lessons learned by other states in their own efforts to reform their state constitutions, analyze public opinion on specific reform proposals in California, and consider both the causes and consequence of polarization in the state legislature. Visit our home page to find links to these papers, in addition to a link to our own web page describing their ongoing research.

Getting to Reform in California

Californians will consider several proposals to fundamentally restructure state government in November 2010, and here at the Bill Lane Center for the American West, we are focusing our resources on helping voters and policymakers understand the best options for getting to reform. Our goals are to help Californians recognize and evaluate the potential pathways to reform and to provide them with objective and thoughtful analysis of reform proposals. You can learn more about our research and public engagement in this important project here.

In the current issue of the California Journal of Politics and Policy, scholars in residence at the Center this year summarize the lessons learned by other states in their own efforts to reform their state constitutions, analyze public opinion on specific reform proposals, and consider both the causes and consequence of polarization in the state legislature.

As we move toward November, visiting associate professor Thad Kousser and graduate students Vladimir Kogan and Mike Binder will continue to produce new research, analysis, and commentary to help Californians make an informed decision in what has the potential to be an historic election. As part of this effort, on March 2, the Center will launch a website — CaliforniaChoices.org — in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Next 10 that will serve as an independent, nonpartisan clearinghouse for the latest research, news, analyses, and discussion about getting to reform in California.

2010 Summer Internships in the West

The Bill Lane Center sponsors paid summer internships for undergraduates and graduating seniors at national parks and conservation and media organizations in the American West. We have openings for interns at the Committee for Green Foothills here in Palo Alto, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Henry's Fork Foundation in Idaho, New West in Montana, the San Francisco Estuary Institute in Oakland, Yellowstone National Park, and Yosemite National Park, and Sunset Magazine. Application deadline is February 22. (Click here for details.)

Last summer Annemarie Golz tagged trout and studied water quality for the Henry's Fork Foundation in eastern Idaho, an internship suggested by Nelson Ishiyama, a member of our Advisory Council. Annemarie also learned some practical western skills, such as how to drive with a trailer and be safe around bears. "It was one of the best summers that I have ever had," she reports, echoing the sentiment of many of our interns, including John Kyed. At the Heritage and Research Center in Yellowstone National Park, John cataloged photographs taken by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and '40s, and created an exhibit of the history of Yellowstone from early explorations to the founding of the National Park Service in 1916. "Between the scenery, fishing, people, and pace of life, this entire experience was heaven," John says. Learn more about our internship program

Joint Program on Water in the West: Solving Complex Problems Through Integrated Research

More than 70 souls braved a downpour last month to learn about our multi-year research and policy program on Water in the West — a collaboration with the Woods Institute for the Environment here at Stanford, and university, public and private sector partners around the region. We had a very lively conversation about solutions to the challenges facing our arid region (though it didn't seem so arid that night). The Stanford Daily published a nice front-page article about the event (click here). We have a video of the talks given by David Kennedy and Buzz Thompson posted here. And you can find our proposed five-year work plan on our web site. (click here)

James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Reporting

The 2009 winners of the James V. Risser Prize for Western Environmental Reporting — Hal Bernton, Justin Mayo and Steve Ringman from the Seattle Times — recently joined by Jon Christensen, from the Bill Lane Center for the American West, Jeff Heer, from Stanford's Human-Computer Interaction Lab, and Robin Grossinger, from the San Francisco Estuary Institute, for a public forum here at Stanford focusing on emerging techniques using mapping and data visualization for environmental journalism, scholarship, and policy.

Bernton, Mayo and Ringman were awarded the $5,000 prize — co-sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the James S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford — for their two-part series, "Logging and Landslides: What Went Wrong." Their work used innovative computer-assisted reporting and geospatial analysis along with good old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting and stunning photography to show how heavy logging in southwestern Washington accounted for a significant proportion of landslides in the region.

Click here to learn more about our annual prize for the best environmental reporting in the West in any media. Click here to download the mp3 audio files from the event.

Photo: Steve Ringman / Seattle Times

Once Upon a Time — and a Place — in the West

It all started with a little metal cookie tin from environmental historian Marco Armiero’s Aunt Maria. “All my interest in migrants, nature, and the blending of both started from that tin,” says Armiero, who has spent this fall and winter as a visiting scholar from Italy at the Bill Lane Center for the American West.

The tin was full of photos and mementos of Aunt Maria’s sojourn in Mato Grosso, Brazil, in the 1950s when she moved there from Italy in search of a better life. Armiero was captivated, trying to imagine what sort of place she lived in, how she settled there, and what she did to make her new life. These musings started him on his path as an environmental historian studying immigrants’ relationship to their adopted environments.

Here at the Center, Armiero has been examining the lives of Italian immigrants in the West from the 1890s to the1930s. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, Armiero is working on a project entitled: “Written into the Land: Italian Immigrants and the Making of the Western Landscape” and planning an international conference to foster environmental histories of mass migrations. Read the rest of the story