=== The Greening of Winter ===
I love to snowboard, and, like most snowboarders and skiers, I love to be outdoors during winter. However, busy ski resorts can take a toll on the environment. The clear-cutting of trees to create new ski runs on mountainsides, though, a one-time event, devastate fragile ecosystems and destroys wildlife habitats. The effects don't stop there. People often drive—or in many cases fly—to their favorite ski resorts. Long-distance travel generates CO2 emissions, which, in turn, compound global warming. Once at the resort, skiers and snowboarders rely on extensive networks of energy-hungry chairlifts—gondolas and high-speed quads—to whisk them up to the top of the mountain. Often, on the other hand, the very snow they relish on the trip back down the mountain has been artificially made using powerful snow cannons that suck water from creeks and streams. Due to some of the effects of global warming in recent years, even more snow must arrive to keep the slopes covered. This process further degrades local ecosystems. We've joined a growing number of skiers and snowboarders here in Colorado who take safety classes and participate in a type of backcountry skiing nicknamed "earn your turns." I strap my snowboard and gear on my back. The hike can last for two hours or more, just so I can get in one run down a slope. But I enjoyed the slow climb up the mountain almost like they're the fast turns on the way down. I then step into a pair of snowshoes and hike up into remote areas. Even in the middle of winter, the sun, high in a blue sky, keeps me warm. Like me, wildlife avoids the ski resorts; I spot tracks made by elk, coyote, fox, and even the endangered lynx. Hiking up through the forest, and seeing fresh snow bunched on pine boughs, reinforces my effort to make snowboarding a little greener. And my reward at the end of the slow climb for two hours? Flying down the mountain through untouched snow! I can't imagine buying a chairlift ticket anytime soon.
=== Ashley Bryan: A Shining Life ===
Ashley Bryan, winner of numerous prizes, including the Coretta Scott King Book Award, has created more than thirty books for children. Born in New York City in 1923, this now-retired art professor began his career drawing on the walls, floors, and even the bedsheets in his parents' house. Some of Bryan's most celebrated books retell folktales from around the world. Japan, India, Nigeria, and Zambia are only some of the countries whose stories make it into his pages. For instance, Beautiful Blackbird relates a Zambian folktale that explains how birds of various colors pleaded with the blackbird to grace them with distinguishing markings, such as stripes on their tails or rings around their necks. Amazing, right? In The Story of Lightning and Thunder, Bryan, an award winner, shares a Nigerian legend about a mother sheep and her only son. The two are ultimately banished by the king to live in the sky after the son's youthful pranks were to end in disaster for the villagers. Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry honors twenty-five poems and one spiritual, "the root of Black song and poetry," Bryan writes in the introduction. Each page spotlights one poem and one letter of the alphabet. The work—celebrating poets Lucille Clifton, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and others, invites readers to be enriched by their own heritage or that of another group, as the case may be. Though his books delve at times into somber subject matter—be it slavery, the loss of a harvest, or a misunderstanding between friends—each one emerges as an affirmation of life.
=== Mary Lease—Populist Activist ===
The daughter of a Pennsylvania farmer, Mary Elizabeth Lease possessed a natural sympathy for farmers, which made her a powerful champion in their fight for political reform in the late 1800s. After struggling financially in the Depression of 1873, she and her husband, moved to a farm in Kansas attempting to regain financial security. There, they experienced firsthand the difficulties that plagued farmers at that time, such as high mortgage rates and the railroads' inflated fees to ship agricultural goods. These conditions prompted Lease to become politically involved. By 1888, Lease begun delivering speeches for the emerging Populist Party, a political group that sought to represent the interests of farmers and workers. Party leaders, mindful of Lease's persuasive speaking ability, officially invited Lease to 'stump' for them in the 1890 congressional election campaigns.
=== Political Influence of Lease ===
d the invitation and, during that year, delivered over 160 speeches for the party. A shrewd speaker. Lease presented complex issues, such as interest rates, in a confident, straightforward manner that her audiences understand easier. She denounced big business and bank owners who, she believed, created disadvantages for farmers and workers. Lease used genuinely accurate language to extol the Populist Party's call for election reforms, minimum wage laws, and a redistribution of wealth. Lease also ridiculed her opposition and presented the Populist Party as both the logical and morally correct choice. Thus it was that critics and supporters alike admired her ability to energize audiences. One critic even noted, 'She could recite the multiplication table and set a crowd hooting and harrahing at her will.' Such positive responses to Lease's compelling speeches gave the Populist Party the momentum it needed. In the fall of 1890, the Populists elected five representatives to Congress. In the 1880s, Lease was admitted to the bar and later practiced law in New York City.