Column by Hal Walter
Rural government – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
A RECENT ADDITION to the neighborhood is a family of yaks who have taken up residence on a nearby ranchette. There’s no home on the property, just some electric fence, a stack of hay, feeders and a heated stock tank. And several yaks.
In a neighborhood of mostly cows and horses, the yaks really stand out.
Essay by Martha Quillen
Literature – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE ASSIGNMENT — if I chose to accept it — was to make a list of some of my favorite books (including, of course, only books currently in print and readily available in 2000). That sounds easy, doesn’t it? Or at least it certainly didn’t sound like a mission impossible. But when I tried to come up with some titles, I found myself faltering.
Review by Ed Quillen
Reference books – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
ALTHOUGH I’M HARD TO BEAT at certain versions of Trivial Pursuit or You Don’t Know Jack, I still need to look things up frequently. Maybe it’s my age, but I prefer printed pages to computer screens, and it is my firm belief that it is impossible to own too many reference books.
Always nearby I keep The American Heritage Dictionary: Second College Edition. It has the clearest definitions, as determined by a parlor game we played once: one person reads definitions, and the others try to guess the word being defined.
Review by Lynda La Rocca
Favorite books – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
AFTER WATCHING A MARVELOUS BBC America production of Charles Dickens’ 19th-century classic David Copperfield a couple of months ago, I became obsessed with all things Dickens.
Not having read any of Dickens’ novels since college (with the exception of my annual rereading of A Christmas Carol, a book I extolled in a December, 1996, Colorado Central column), I’d almost forgotten how prodigiously talented — and timeless — a writer Dickens is.
Review by Ed Quillen
Prehistoric Art – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
San Luis Valley Rock Art
by Ron Kessler
Published in 2000 by Adobe Village Press
ISBN 0-9644056-2-8
Review by Jeanne Englert
Fiction – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Canyon of Remembering
by Lesley Poling-Kempes
Published in 1996 by Texas Tech University Press
ISBN 0896724352
Letter from Ray Schoch
Colorado Central – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Ed & Martha:
It was a pleasure to meet you both at the Headwaters Conference, and I always enjoy being able to put a face with the name on the byline. I also enjoyed Ed’s irreverent — I hope — comment that “legalizing poverty” might be one way the Headwaters region might adapt to the rapidly changing economy of the 21st century.
Letter from Sally Gilchrist
Art – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Ed & Martha:
As a new subscriber, I was happy to see an article on a local artist [Marty Mitchell of Saguache in the December edition].
Especially one, like myself, who has chosen to retreat to the backwoods for whatever reason. I was interested in reading about Mitchell’s philosophy and feel similarly influenced by local landscape, although I am still a figurative painter. As Thoreau once said; “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,…., and to see if I could learn what it had to teach,” It sounds like Mitchell is doing just that. Bravo. Thank you for the inclusion of art, whatever the method.
Letter from Slim Wolfe
Corporations and government – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Ed and Martha,
I got a chuckle out of Lindell Cline’s letter. Once I would have written him off as a hopeless reactionary, but now I’d call him a hopeless reactionary with a couple of good points. Yes sir, if you want the government to rein in everything wicked, then you have no moral recourse if the government comes over to tighten the reins on you. There is a time to quit whining and thumbsucking and start piling up rocks or whatever you can get and make a little bit of the world into your corner where things work right according to you. And, no sir, I did not vote for that old curmudgeon Nader as I’ve got all the old curmudgeon I need right here in my own home.
Letter from Art Goodtimes
Government & Corporations – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Ed & Martha:
I can sure understand Lindell Cline’s frustration with government, particularly at the national level [Cline’s letter in the December, 2000, edition]. But who in his right mind would advocate bashing government instead of corporations?
Sure, total government control, as exists in some countries, is bad news. But it’s setting up a false dichotomy to compare the American political system of checks and balances with the increasingly centralized power of multi-nationals and their international supra-government institutions like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.
Column by George Sibley
Chronology – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE END OF THE YEAR is a good time to think about time, but the end of a “millennium” is an even better time to think about it.
So did the new millennium began last New Year’s Eve, or (since the Romans counted from “1” rather than “0”) does it begin this New Year’s?
Sidebar by Allen Best
Homestake Mine Tragedy – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
The story of how the Homestake Mine was discovered sounds too fanciful to be real. It was 1871, and the brilliant flash of placer gold at California Gulch from 1860 had dulled considerably. Still, prospectors searched.
One party of five prospectors rode to the flanks of Mount Massive, and continued north across Galena, stopping here and there to poke around as they followed the Continental Divide north toward 13,209-foot Homestake Peak.
Sidebar by Allen Best
Homestake Mine Tragedy – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Sources
Books:
Historic Avalanches in the Northern Front Range and the Central and Northern Mountains of Colorado, by M. Martinelli Jr. and Charles F. Leaf. 1999: Rocky Mountain Research Station.
History of Leadville and Lake County, Colorado, by Don and Jean Griswold.
Leadville: Colorado’s Magic City, by Edward Blair. 1980: Pruett, Boulder.
Sidebar by Allen Best
Homestake Mine Tragedy – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Hundreds of miners lost their lives to avalanches in and near the mining camps of the West. Colorado’s recorded deaths began as early as 1860, southwest of Denver, and have continued until as recently as November 1986, when a miner working in the La Plata Mountains west of Durango went to an early grave. During the last 14 years, Colorado averaged six deaths per year, nearly all among recreationalists.
Poem by John Garvin
Homestake Mine Tragedy – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Homestake Horror
From lonely Homestake mountain,
Where the snow lies hard and deep–
From lonely Homestake mountain,
Where the rocks rise high and steep–
There came a tale of horror,
A deadening tale of woe:
“Ten men are lying buried–
Article by Allen Best
Homestake Mine Tragedy – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
THEY ALL HOPED they could get rich quickly. The plan was simple enough. Endure a winter at the remote Homestake Mine, and by summer, when the snow had lost its icy fastness on this timberline perch, the ten men would emerge with their fortunes.
For a young man in Leadville in 1885, taking risks was the only way left to make a fortune. The easy money had all been scooped up, with claims staked for miles around. It had all happened so fast.
Article by Clint Driscoll
Local artist – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE AVERAGE PERSON would not assume a man driving an older model Ford pickup with a Trout Unlimited decal and a prominently displayed “No Whining” bumper sticker would have the soul of an artist; but assumptions are often wrong. Over the past decade Robert “Bob” Gray has established his reputation as the finest creator of turned wood objects d’art in the region. He has spent hours bouncing over back roads in his Ford searching for windfall or beaver-cut aspen trees which provide the raw material for his work.
Brief by Central Staff
Forestry – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
The “Millennium Holiday Tree” — perhaps more familiarly known as this year’s White House Christmas Tree — came from Pike-San Isabel National Forest in Central Colorado.
The 65-foot-tall Colorado Blue Spruce near Woodland Park was selected two years ago, when Colorado got the chance to supply the tree.
Brief by Central Staff
Land Use – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Lake County Planning and Zoning Commission has recommended that the county commissioners deny the Eagle Sky Christian Challenge Camp.
The 3-2 vote came at a Nov. 20 meeting, and the county commissioners planned to vote before the end of 2000 on whether to follow the recommendation for denial, or to over-rule the planning board and approve the camp, perhaps with conditions.
Brief by Central Staff
Communications – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
When we started this magazine nearly seven years ago, Central Colorado was pretty much a “cell-free zone.” Now people call their friends from atop 14ers.
Cellular telephones have a short range — there has to be an antenna nearby. In towns, the fixed antennæ are often hidden inside church steeples and the like, but out in the country, there may be no place to hide it.
Brief by Central Staff
Local Book – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
We generally review books by local authors, but there are occasions when a review doesn’t make much sense, such as when the book is aimed at a specialized audience.
Such is the case for a new book by Leadville writer and librarian Sharon Chickering Moller (who contributes to this magazine from time to time).
Brief by Central Staff
Mining – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Leadville lost its last silver mine when the Asarco Black Cloud closed in 1999, and Frémont County is losing its last coal mine at the close of 2000.
The Energy Fuels Coal Mine, eight miles south of Florence, was scheduled to shut down sometime in December, putting about 40 employees out of work.
Brief by Central Staff
Chronology – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
As we went to press, Y2K was winding down, which inspires some questions, like “What do we call the new year?” and “Is this the real start of the new millennium?”
The locution Y2K is an abbreviation for Year 2000 with K standing for kilo, a scientific prefix derived from the Greek word chilias, meaning 1,000. So it would be more accurate to use 2KY to refer to “2 kiloyears.”
Brief by Marcia Darnell
San Luis Valley – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Squeakers
Florida recounts — they’re not just for Bushes anymore. Recounts were demanded in the District 60 race for state representative, where challenger Jim Snook took the seat from Al Gagliardi by only 91 votes, and in Rio Grande County, where Wendy Mellott lost her race against Vern Rominger for commissioner. In Conejos County, the recount totaled 1,672 votes to eliminate term limits for the coroner, and 1,674 to retain them.
Brief by Central Staff
Geography – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
While cleaning the other day, we ran across an old Salida phone book, which of course ended up where the new one should be when it was time to look up a number, whereupon we discovered that the “Salida Chamber of Commerce” used to be listed as the “Heart of the Rockies Chamber of Commerce.”
Comic Strip by Clint Driscoll and Laura Ravenwood
Mountain Life – January 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
COLORADO RIVER HEADWATERS’ WATER QUALITY
The Water Quality Control Commission is having a Classification and Standards Rulemaking hearing in March for the Lower Colorado River (in Colorado), the Gunnison River and Lower Dolores River and the San Juan River basins. The Colorado Water Quality Control Commission, with the encouragement of the EPA, is proposing sweeping changes to Recreational Classifications. To achieve the goal of the Clean Water Act to have all waters of the United States swimable and fishable, the Division is proposing that standards be set for all water segments for primary contact recreation. This would require standards of 200 fecal coliform colonies/100 ml or 126 e-coli colonies/100 ml.
