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Profiles from the American West
Series Focuses on People Inspired by Region's Landscape, Culture
• Patagonia Founder and President Yvon Chouinard
• Fresno County Supervisor Juan Arambula
• Seattle chef Christine Keff
• Montana writers Judy Blunt and Rick Bass
 Read Seattle chef Christine Keff's recipe for crab cakes with lemongrass mayonnaise.
Read excerpts of works by Judy Blunt and Rick Bass.
November 2002 -- The frontier is long gone, but the American West clings to some of its roots. Whether it is through literature, fashion or food, there is a Western style -- a way of connecting to the land -- that remains distinct. To help mark the opening of NPR's new production facility in Los Angeles, Morning Edition presents a series of profiles of people who are inspired by the landscape, resources and culture of the American West.
 Nov. 12, 2002 -- Patagonia Founder and President Yvon Chouinard
Yvon Chouinard was a world-class climber when he came up with a better way to make outdoors equipment. Now the owner of the Patagonia Clothing Co., Chouinard wants to find a better way to run a business, NPR's Robert Smith reports.
Now 64, Chouinard has mostly given up the mountains for the waves. "It takes a very different personality," he says. "Climbing is a very controlled move-by-move. Surfing is a very dynamic, fluid, quick motion, quick decisions."
Chouinard and the Ventura, Calif., company he founded are trying to balance those characteristics. As Smith explains: "The focus and ambition of a climber, the Zen-like acceptance of the surfer. Like most of what Chouinard has done in his life, it takes good sense of balance."
Nov. 13, 2002 -- Fresno County Supervisor Juan Arambula
Juan Arambula, the son of immigrant farm workers, is the vice chairman of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, the first Hispanic to serve on the board. It's not surprising that education is the issue that most interests Arambula.
While growing up in the late 1960s, Arambula was inspired by the legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez to rebel against the conditions of his life, NPR's John McChesney reports. A Harvard recruiter suggested Arambula apply and he was accepted. But his high school counselor unintentionally motivated him further. "She said to me, 'Juan, I think we'll see you back here picking grapes in a couple of weeks.'" Though his first two years at Harvard were tough, he graduated with honors, then went on to get a master's degree from Stanford and a law degree from the University of California Berkeley.
Arambula often visits his county's schools to tell students about his background, hoping to encourage them to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Nov. 14, 2002 -- Seattle Chef Christine Keff
As one of the Northwest's premier chefs, Christine Keff focuses on fresh local products, often enhancing them with an Asian twist, NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.
The award-winning Seattle chef has much to choose from. There's an incredible bounty of fish and shellfish -- and local growers produce amazing berries and pears, potatoes and more, not to mention the wild mushrooms of every shape and color sprouting in the woods.
When many people shop for groceries, they make a list and go from there. Or they take a recipe and buy the ingredients they need. Keff takes a different approach: She asks purveyors what they have that's ready to harvest or gather. Then, she decides what she'll make. That way, the freshest products determine what goes on the menu. Keff's approach also adheres to the Northwest sensibility that favors organic products and fish taken from populations that are not in decline.
Nov. 15, 2002 -- Montana Writers Judy Blunt and Rick Bass
NPR's Elizabeth Arnold visits with two Montana writers, one who is struggling to save the place he writes about, the other who left it, in order to write.
Judy Blunt spent more than 30 years on wheat and cattle ranches in rural Montana, before leaving for college and taking up the life of a writer. Breaking Clean, her memoir about leaving the homestead, is in its fifth printing and has won national critical acclaim.
"I think there's a difference between writing about a piece of land, standing on the outside writing about it," Blunt says. "I wrote from inside the landscape. It's so much a part of the stories and so much a part of where I came from it's like a member of your family."
In northwestern Montana's Yaak Valley, Rick Bass has been writing about the land for 15 years. But unlike Blunt, Bass wasn't born into the place he writes about, Arnold reports. He took up the struggle to protect the forest from the pressure to build roads and log there.
"I'm living where I want to live and I'm choosing to do this stuff," Bass says. "Think how awful it would be to care about this place and not have a voice -- you'd be really angry then."
In Depth
Read Seattle chef Christine Keff's recipe for crab cakes with lemongrass mayonnaise.
A New 'Code of the West' for City Slickers
Other Resources
• Read an excerpt of Judy Blunt's memoir, Breaking Clean.
• Read an article about Blunt in the Montana Kaimin, the student newspaper at the University of Montana, Missoula.
• Read an excerpt of The Hermit's Story, by Rick Bass.
• Read a 1974 essay co-written by Yvon Chouinard urging mountaineers to protect the environment and "climb clean."
• Visit Supervisor Juan Arambula's Fresno County Web site.
• Learn more about chef Christine Keff at the Flying Fish Web site.
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