Evonne lives in a fire lookout in Oregon, and since I meet with these graduate students on Zoom, we’ve all seen snippets of her life, including the dizzying moments when she leaps up to scan for fires while holding her tablet.

I am a freshman at Del Norte High School and a member of the STORM youth coalition. I am writing to you about the dangers of tobacco products for children. On my first day at the high school, I saw a kid give another kid a vape pen right in front of me. I was shocked that they would do that …

I am a senior at Del Norte High School and I’m writing this letter to raise awareness about children and teenagers easily getting hooked on products such as vape pens or cigarettes. Kids grow up to be the next generation, but with how the tobacco industry targets kids, this next generation i…

Socialism is evil. On the TV or radio, one would assume that this type of government is an idea that sprang forth from the devil’s own dark imagination. Programs like Social Security, food stamps and Medicare are widely popular and are socialist programs. Yet, socialism is stomped on like a …

The fate of local news in America may depend on what Oregon’s senior Senator Ron Wyden, does in the next few days.

The Grand Canyon boating community — devoted to each other and to the Colorado River — was shocked to learn this fall that we’d lost two of our own.

Whenever you hear about America's electricity system these days, it's usually some big problem that has captured the public's attention.

“While other children were sent to daycare, when I was 3 years old I was sent to a Japanese-American prison,” Carlene Tanigoshi Tinker, now 82, told the Washington Post recently.

Del Norte County is in a homelessness and mental health crisis. We should not throw money at a temporary short-term solution to a long-term problem.

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day”

If Jim Howell, a fourth-generation rancher in Western Colorado, has a guru, he’s Allan Savory, the champion of intensive cattle grazing even on semi-arid land.

What did we learn this summer and fall? We learned that people who’d been cooped up, thanks to COVID-19, flocked to our national parks and forests. Once there, many were eager to empty their bucket list of must-do activities in the outdoors.

Chances are that you’ve heard the expression, “nice guys finish last.” Nothing could be further from the truth. This statement is used by many to justify less than ethical treatment of others.

The word "awesome" is overused. But few other words seem apt when describing the fact that the world has now administered more than 6 billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Black Americans get a lot of messages about who matters and who does not in this country, and the question is: Are the messages intentional or unintentional? I lean towards unintentional but they have become deeply ingrained.

“I can’t believe that person is getting that close.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park is under siege. A surge of oil and gas development threatens this ancestral site, recognized as one of the architectural marvels of the world and revered by Native Americans who consider it a living presence.

If you’re one of those people who composts everything you can think of because you want to build up your garden soil, you might — like me this summer — learn to love the maggots of black soldier flies. They put composting on speed dial.

It was 1952 when the cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs first started gobbling up water rights in a remote, high mountain valley on the state’s Western Slope. The valley is called Homestake, and now, those same cities want even more of its pure water.

It appears the ugly takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban has fueled our own American Taliban, currently the revamped GOP under the supervision of their dear leader Trump. Governor Abbot of Texas has subjugated the women and girls in his state to second class citizens in a Taliban like move…

Last week, when we drove through the station back to California, we were greeted by a gentleman, one of two working at the time, who asked us ‘the’ question both in English and in ASL. I think that should earn a kudos.

The argument made by anti-vaccination activists that forcing people to be vaccinated is unconstitutional is false. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws.

The Pleistocene epoch that began 2.6 million years ago sent ice in waves through Yosemite.

In response to the comments from a couple of citizens during the most recent City Council meeting, I have a few comments of my own:

This year, and in many years past, my wife and I and others have cleaned up after bonfires created out of pallets and other objects on or near the Lake Earl Wildlife Area. I’m not against bonfires done safely in the proper area. What I am against is the non-burnable objects left behind.

Fire in the West is expected, and not so long ago, it seemed something the West experienced more than anywhere else. Nationally, big fires were treated as another freak of Western violence, like a grizzly bear attack or another California quirk like Esalen and avocados.

I was saddened to see that in the last edition of the Triplicate you had as a guest columnist someone espousing the Libertarian point of view regarding wearing face masks. The Libertarian Party is a sham, created by some economists and real estate developers to avoid regulations and taxes. T…

It feels like an apocalypse in the Southwest — wildfires, floods, drought, heat, smoke. This was not the norm when I moved to Colorado 35 years ago. Climate scientists may have predicted the arrival of these extreme events, but many admit their predictions have come true faster than they expected.

Secondhand smoke can be dangerous for your body and hurt other people around you. One of the reasons why secondhand smoke is bad for kids is when someone smokes. they could breathe it in. It is important to have policies that ban smoking in buildings like apartments because it could travel t…

Secondhand smoke is a horrible thing because children who live with smokers have to suffer from the consequences as well. It can cause ear infection and types of cancer.  It’s important to have policies that ban smoking in multi-unit homes because the secondhand smoke can travel through air …

All Californians will benefit if the House passes the bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by the Senate.

I think that second-hand smoke is even worse than smoking and people should stop smoking all together. Second-hand smoke is bad for kids because kids breathe in the smoke and the smoke can hurt our lungs. It’s important to have policies that ban smoking in multi-unit homes because the smoke …

Poor Butte County, California, is again on fire, its smoke choking the air of states miles away.

I think that second-hand smoke is horrible and people should close smoke shops. Second-hand smoke is bad for children because it can increase the risk of asthma attacks, ear infections and sudden infant death syndrome.

I think second-hand smoke is really dangerous and it could kill you and make you really sick. It has nicotine and that is bad for kids. It’s important to have policies that ban smoking in multi-unit homes because the smoke can travel through the vent and then you can smell it in your apartme…

As drugs become more dangerous with each passing year, they are increasingly being cut with very dangerous drugs that can cause quick overdoses, such as fentanyl. For other ingredients, suppliers will sometimes cut the drugs with whatever they can get their hands on to increase their profits.

Dear community,

As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control moves to extend a federal eviction moratorium that (including its original CARES Act version) has now been in place for most of 18 months and that President Joe Biden himself concedes is "not likely to pass constitutional muster," most of the public rh…

Love doing the King Crossword every week, but if it gets any smaller we seniors will need two magnifying glasses. Any chance of making it larger so we can at least put answers in the minuscule squares without our arthritic hands shaking? Other than that, I love the Triplicate.Rick McNamerSmi…

New Mexico, the third-ranking U.S. oil producer, has moved to curtail methane pollution from the oil and gas industry, moving it closer to neighboring Colorado’s leadership. Methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and also damages human health.

Last week, I had an experience at a local business that was very unsettling. It got me thinking. How did our country become so divided?

For more than a year, our country longed for the economy to restart. But now that businesses are once again open, employers find themselves wondering where all the workers have gone.

Homelessness is a growing problem in virtually every state. Nowhere is it more pressing than in California, which in the past three years spent more than $13 billion, roughly $30,000 annually for each homeless person, to address it. Tragically, its “housing first” approach is a colossal fail…

Hikers are flooding our public lands, so I ask the question: Why can’t people just leave the poor rocks alone?

The 4th seems to have morphed into simply a reason to trash our beaches and neighborhoods. Instead of gathering family and friends for the day to enjoy an outing of food and fun to celebrate our freedoms, some people take it to a level of disturbing others with exploding illegal fireworks th…

It was the headline that launched a thousand linguistics blog posts: “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms.”

The premise of Thomas Knapp, guest opinion in the July 16, Triplicate, that the government is trying to censor social media is false.  It is true that some social media companies have censored groups and individuals they feel post patently false and conspiratorial content, but they are priva…

The wall between the United States and Mexico has come to stand for desperation and suffering for many people. For most of us who live within 20 miles of this 452-mile wall, it’s also seen as a bizarre experiment: How much damage can ripple into the surrounding landscape from a wall that cut…

On May 9, protected by neoprene, I bobbed around in a flooded canyon in Utah’s Lake Powell. The reservoir had fallen below 35 percent full, which gave me the unique opportunity to free-dive through an underwater bridge that was now suddenly within reach.

This should be the weekend of the Southern Oregon Kite Festival. Unfortunately, it is not and never will be again. The SOKF was a huge benefit to the Brookings-Harbor area, bringing visitors from over the West.

Giant sequoias come as close to immortality as living organisms can. Many live over a thousand years, an almost unimaginable span of survival in the face of all of nature’s challenges.

Here we are, at the beginning of what could prove to be worst wildfire season ever and the world's best firefighting tool sits unused and not ready to go because of decisions made by the U.S. Forest Service and states not to use it.