American West

Say the words "gay cowboy" and chances are the conversation will turn to "Brokeback Mountain," the 2005 film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and based on the Annie Proulx short story. The Oscar-winning drama, which is set in the 1960s to '80s, highlighted a long-submerged facet of frontier culture. But as a new series at the Autry National Center shows, the presence of homosexuals and transgender individuals in the American West is much older than the movie might lead you to think.

When Native American activists from around the U.S. took over Alcatraz in 1969, George P. Horse Capture was a steel inspector for the state Department of Water Resources - a young man on his way to a solid career and ever further away from any sense of pride in his Montana reservation roots. "I was very happy climbing that white mountain of success," he once said. "But then I looked down over the top, and there was nothing there. " The solution was to switch mountains. Joining the protesters for short periods over their 19-month stay, Horse Capture went on to become a passionate advocate for Native American culture and a museum curator who helped give his people an unprecedented voice in how their heritage would be presented and their artifacts displayed.

Last week, Texas and Oklahoma squared off in a Supreme Court battle over water rights that has the drought-ridden West on edge. At issue is a state's control over its own water: Texas seeks to buy or otherwise tap water from Oklahoma under the terms of an interstate water compact, actions that Oklahoma has so far refused to permit despite the compact. The stakes of the court's decision are high. Interstate water agreements provide the legal foundation for the economies of most Western states, which are disproportionately dependent on irrigated agriculture.

Last week, Texas and Oklahoma squared off in a Supreme Court battle over water rights that has the drought-ridden West on edge. At issue is a state's control over its own water: Texas seeks to buy or otherwise tap water from Oklahoma under the terms of an interstate water compact, actions that Oklahoma has so far refused to permit despite the compact. The stakes of the court's decision are high. Interstate water agreements provide the legal foundation for the economies of most Western states, which are disproportionately dependent on irrigated agriculture.

The darkly comic tale of soldiers spending Thanksgiving leave at a Dallas Cowboys game and a warning of the environmental threats to the female body were among the winners Friday at the annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The awards to Ben Fountain in the fiction category for "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" and Florence Williams in the science and technology category for "Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History" were announced along with eight other prizes at a ceremony kicking off The Times' 18th annual Festival of Books.

POP MUSIC Talk about sweethearts of the rodeo. You've got John Doe and Exene, the punk patron saints of our gritty metropolis, plus the sweet, ethereal harmonies of the Living Sisters, a trio of Angeleno performers who've come to reclaim the secret melodies of Laurel Canyon. Wear your best fringed accoutrement, cowboys and -girls. Museum of the American West at Griffith Park, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles. Fri. 7-11 p.m. $22-$30. (323) 667-2000.

It's long been held that North America's rugged and mountainous west was formed by the movement of the undersea Farallon plate, and that the process was roughly similar to the way groceries pile up at the end of a supermarket conveyor belt.  Millions of years ago, when the lands of present-day Nevada and Utah were oceanfront properties, the Farallon tectonic plate began sliding eastward beneath the continent, dragging island chains along with...

Cowboys tend to get all the glory, but the new exhibition "Home Lands: How Women Made the West," opening this weekend at the Autry, focuses on the ways women have shaped the American West. The exhibit comprises art, artifacts and historical accounts and explores northern New Mexico, the Colorado Front Range and Puget Sound. Autry National Center of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way, L.A. General admission $9, students and seniors $5, children 3-12 $3, children younger than 3 free.

Looking for maps of the Old West? Go east. Through May 19, the New York (City) Public Library presents "Heading West: Mapping the Territory," with about 175 maps, atlases, photographs and books dating to 1540. The exhibit draws from the library's 6,000-piece collection on the American West, among other sources. A 1540 chart by Sebastian Munster, for instance, shows a vacant waterway between Europe and Asia.

AT THE JIM BRIDGER Stories by Ron Carlson Picador USA 194 pages, $23 Contemporary stories and novels about the American West have developed certain conventions. There is a down-at-the-heels motel on a poor road at the edge of a wind-worn town. Its manager, an aging man with a dubious past, sits on a folding chair watching the flicker of the TV. Outside, a car pulls up on the gravel. A couple comes in and rents a room. A plot ensues.

The darkly comic tale of soldiers spending Thanksgiving leave at a Dallas Cowboys game and a warning of the environmental threats to the female body were among the winners Friday at the annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The awards to Ben Fountain in the fiction category for "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" and Florence Williams in the science and technology category for "Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History" were announced along with eight other prizes at a ceremony kicking off The Times' 18th annual Festival of Books.

It's long been held that North America's rugged and mountainous west was formed by the movement of the undersea Farallon plate, and that the process was roughly similar to the way groceries pile up at the end of a supermarket conveyor belt.  Millions of years ago, when the lands of present-day Nevada and Utah were oceanfront properties, the Farallon tectonic plate began sliding eastward beneath the continent, dragging island chains along with...

A new one-room permanent collection installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on view for the rest of 2013, raises provocative questions in skillfully astute ways. The subject is 19th century American landscape art, and the artists range from the relatively obscure to the celebrated -- Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, George Inness, John F. Kensett, Winslow Homer and more. The west wall has a spare lineup of all five LACMA paintings that show the American West, hung to create a continuous horizon line.

The bigger the fight between a screenwriter and a director, the better the picture. It's an arrant generalization but not necessarily an errant one. Look at Budd Schulberg's battles with "On the Waterfront," or Robert Towne's over the ending of "Chinatown," or most if not all the writers on director Otto Preminger's best movies - few if any of whom could stand ever to work with him again. "The Searchers," which many critics and filmmakers consider the best western ever made, was written by a former film critic named Frank Nugent.

Over the summer and on into the fall, images of flames, smoke plumes, firefighting teams and ruined homes have been on replay, and with good reason: As of Aug. 31, this year tied the record for total acreage burned by wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than 8.4 million acres have burned to date - an area larger than the state of Maryland up in flames. But as intense as the wildfires have been this year, they provide just a glimpse of the future of the American West.

It seems almost blasphemous for the Angels to root for a division rival, one that seized the American League West title from them in 2010 and hasn't let go, but that's an unsavory byproduct of the wild-card system. The Angels began play Tuesday seven games behind Texas in the AL West with nine to play. They were two games behind Oakland for the second wild-card spot. The Rangers and Athletics were playing in Texas. Do the math. "If it comes down to simply numbers, I'm rooting for Texas, because we're closer to Oakland," Angels left fielder Mark Trumbo said.

The four-team American West Conference will begin its basketball tournament at Southern Utah today with nowhere to go but home when it ends. The American West is among four conferences that do not receive automatic invitations to the Division I NCAA tournament. Champion Southern Utah, in fact, may not even get a NIT spot due to a mediocre overall record. In first-round games today, Cal State Northridge (7-19, 4-2) meets Cal State Sacramento (6-20, 2-4) at 2 p.m.

Oscar Lewis, 99, a historian and author who was one of the first to define the West in the context of its history. Lewis emerged as an author and historian in the 1930s, when Californians were beginning to examine their pioneer past and celebrate their heritage. His best-known book, "The Big Four," was published in 1938 and told how four robber barons built the first transcontinental railroad. It is still in print.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Angels Manager Mike Scioscia will keep both Jered Weaver and Zack Greinke on regular rest for the remainder of the season, putting the right-handers in line to pitch in both of the remaining three-game series against the American League West-leading Texas Rangers. Weaver will start Tuesday night against Texas in Anaheim. Scioscia said left-hander C.J. Wilson, who has had a problem with a blister on the middle finger of his pitching hand, is "penciled in" for Wednesday, and Greinke will start Thursday.

SEATTLE -- The addition of a second wild-card team may improve the odds of the Angels' reaching the playoffs, but it won't ease their degree of difficulty getting there. The Angels lost to the Seattle Mariners, 2-1, in Safeco Field on Sunday, their winning streak ending at five games when Jered Weaver gave up home runs to Jesus Montero in the fourth inning and .143-hitting Carlos Peguero in the fifth. Though they have won nine of 12 games since Aug. 21, the Angels are 81/2 games behind first-place Texas in the American League West, 51/2 games behind Oakland for the wild-card lead and 31/2 games behind Baltimore for the second wild-card spot.