Column by Hal Walter
Wildfires – June 2002 – Colorado Central
IN APRIL, AS I was jogging through what is normally a grassy park but is now a sandlot punctuated by sun-scorched, wind-parched, flat-grazed bunches of dead grass, I thought it odd that clouds of grasshoppers flew with every step. There were hundreds of them, like some sort of Biblical prophesy. Grasshoppers in April? I really didn’t need any extra evidence that the climate has truly gone berserk. But this was only the kicker.
Letter from Phil Doe
Water – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
While our state’s Constitution declares in clear language that the water in our rivers belongs to the people, that declaration has been pushed aside over the years to serve the unfettered appetite of the state’s water development interests. Perhaps most telling is the language that has been devised to devalue rivers. The mantra is that we must “develop” our water, or we will lose it to those nasty folks down in Nevada, California, or Mexico. Implicit in this statement is a reckless denial of the obvious: first, that water runs downstream, usually to an ocean, and second, that rivers are themselves a development, albeit natural, that all our engineering science can only wonder at. We can destroy our rivers, but we cannot create them.
Letter from Clay Warren
Current events – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors,
Imagine mah suprize when ah got back from several months worth o’ dressin’ up funny to find even funnier stuff goin’ on within’ the pages o’ mah favorite magazine. Combine thet with irrational statements made on facetious radio, factual irresponsibility in letters to the Mtn. Myth, and the Burro Chaser putin’ his foot in his mouth and hit’s just one hell o’ a circus. Plenty o’ clowns, but we need more animal acts. Ah jist hope somethin’ explosive comes along and puts people’s minds’ back in prospective (no pun intended thar).
Letter from Ed Rogers
Mining – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Hi Ed,
Enjoyed your article on the Mica mine [May edition] very much. Being a geologist and in minerals exploration for twenty years it hit a home run with me. Nothing galls me more then folks who drive a low gas mileage SUV, wearing gold watches and bracelets, silver buttons, sitting encased in a metal vehicle going to protest a mine. The protesters were probably alerted to the meeting via the internet looking at a computer which is loaded with metal which was mined and which gets power from a coal burning power plant. Gads let’s insure that this lifestyle is preserved, but not in their backyard!
Letter from Paul Martz
Mining – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors,
I suppose given the circumstances I’ve put myself into through the agency of a big mouth and my own free will, I’m required to respond to Hal’s diatribe against the proposed mica mine on Poncha Pass, and to try and reconcile fact from the various fictions that are being touted as truth about it.
Letter from Jeanne Englert
Ute vocabulary – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Hello there. Timothy Englert, his older sister, our Havana Brown cat and I went on a trip to California. On the way, to and fro, I noted more pah words that might be of interest to readers, pah being in its various spellings the Ute/Paiute word for water.
Column by George Sibley
Climate – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE ARGUMENT about evolution goes on and on. Is the earth and its abundance of life the product of “an intelligent design,” a “vast eternal plan,” or is it just the fractal unfolding of an exfoliation of things that started happening in the random generation of possibilities in a universe where who knows what else is going on?
Essay by Dave Skinner
Land Use – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
LIKE NEARLY EVERYONE, I am concerned with the gradual, and sometimes not-so-gradual replacement of our wide-open West with housing. I’ve seen more than a few of my favorite hunting and fishing spots, and my favorite neighbors, disappear forever.
It’s a bad situation, made worse by conservation easements.
Sidebar by Ed Quillen
Land Use – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Conservation Easements involve two principals: the landowner who sells the easement, and the non-profit corporation (generally known as a Land Trust) which acquires and administers the easement.
Different Land Trusts have different goals. Some want to preserve relatively pristine environments and therefore have rather restrictive easements, while others (like the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust) aim at keeping the land in agricultural production, and they’re not real concerned about how the land is grazed or fenced.
Sidebar by Ed Quillen
Land Use – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine – 5ERN4Q62K64Q
Why all the interest in Conservation Easements? One reason is that we’re undergoing an economic and cultural shift.
The economic part of the transformation starts with classical economic geography and something called “central-place theory,” which is a branch of “location theory,” which tries to explain why activities occur where they do.
Essay by Ed Quillen
Land Use – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHEN HALF A DOZEN PEOPLE strung across our state tell me I really ought to attend something, even if that something is 50 miles away on a weeknight, eventually I run out of excuses. That’s the best way to explain a trip to the standing-room-only meeting room in Westcliffe’s new bowling alley on the night of April 25, just to watch a forum on conservation easements.
Review by Abby Quillen
Vice – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Hell’s Belles: Prostitution, Vice, and Crime in Early Denver
by Clark Secrest
Revised edition published in 2002 by the University Press of Colorado.
ISBN 0-87081-633-0
Review by Martha Quillen
Gardening – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine –
Culinary Herbs for Short-Season Gardeners
by Ernest Small and Grace Deutsch
Published 2002 by Mountain Press
ISBN 0-87842-453-9
Essay by Forrest Whitman
Land Use – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
RECENTLY I VOTED with the Gilpin Planning Commission as we sent a gravel pit and reclamation project down to the Court House for decision by the County Commissioners. During the break I swear I heard some of the neighbors muttering “Kill the Planning Commission and get a new one!” Maybe that was just my imagination, but the phone calls I got first thing the next morning sure were real. I didn’t like the Pactolus gravel mining and reclamation project from the start, but the Gilpin planning commission had no real choice but to vote for it. How can that be?
Sidebar by Ed Quillen
St. Elmo – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
The town hall and jail in St. Elmo, along with outbuildings and several other historic structures, were destroyed by fire on April 15.
What happens next is still up in the air, according to Melanie Milam-Roth of Nathrop, whose family owned several of the destroyed buildings — the town hall and jail were owned by the St. Elmo Property Owners Association.
Article by Sid Dickinson
St. Elmo – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
IN THE MID AND LATE 1930s my brother and I were two of the luckiest kids in Colorado because we got to spend our vacations in St. Elmo, Colorado. This good fortune was a direct result — as were my brother and I — of a romance between a postmaster and schoolmarm who worked in St. Elmo and Romley.
Article by Stephanie Schuck
Local Art Scene – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
MANY A GREAT IDEA first surfaced on a beverage napkin while the creator wielded a pen in one hand and a cocktail in the other. And rumor has it that Salida’s Artwalk had similar origins. “I think it basically started over a couple of beers by Michael Boyd and Michael Parry,” says Geraldine Alexander, who, along with artist Boyd, co-owns the Salida working studio, cultureclash.
Brief by Central Staff
Recreation – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
If you were planning to fish or boat on Tarryall Reservoir in South Park this summer, you need to change your plans.
The reservoir has been closed to public use, but not on account of the drought. Instead, the problem is a structural crack that was discovered on the dam last year.
Brief by Central Staff
Local politics – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Lake County seems to be leading in the contest to be Recall Capital of Central Colorado.
A year ago, voters recalled Sheriff George Shears. Earlier this year, residents began circulating a petition to recall Commissioner Bill Hollenback on the grounds that he was micro-managing the county and invading county employees’ privacy by photo-copying their paycheck stubs.
Brief by Central Staff
Railroad History – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Narrow-gauge cabooses (cabeese?) uised to be common in Salida, but now there are only two: one at Centennial Park, and this one, recently restored. It belongs to Fred Lowry, who found it in Cañon City. Now he needs to figure out what to do with it, and he’s considering several possibilities.
Brief by Central Staff
Pack-burro racing – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Pack-burro racing is one of the more obscure sports, but on the other hand, it’s the only sport indigenous to Central Colorado.
This year’s season starts with two races in the Cripple Creek District as part of the annual Donkey Derby Days Festival that celebrates, among other things, the small herd of feral burros which wanders around the World’s Greatest Gold Camp.
Brief by Ed Quillen
Baca Ranch – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
CALL THIS THE “Mother of All Foreclosure Sales,” at least by the financial standards of Central Colorado. It’s scheduled for 10 a.m. May 30 in Saguache at the county courthouse. It’s for an $8 million debt, and it’s part of the process of expanding Great Sand Dunes National Monument into Great Sand Dunes National Park & Wildlife Refuge.
Brief by Central Staff
Media – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
If all goes well, Salidans should have another radio station in January — KHEN-LP at 106.9 FM.
It’s a low-power community radio station. The Federal Communications Commission in Washington granted a construction permit on Jan. 11, and the organizers must build a studio and install a transmitter before getting a license. The goal is to get on the air early in 2003.
Brief by Central Staff
Wildfires – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
When it comes to campfires in the mountains this summer, the most appropriate attitude is “Don’t even think about it.”
Every county in Central Colorado has, or soon will have, some sort of fire restrictions in effect. All ban fires outside of the standard firepits in campgrounds, and some ban even those — along with all forms of outdoor flame or ember, like smoking cigarettes.
Brief by Central Staff
Terrorism – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Salida is usually a rather quiet town in early May — the skiers have departed, and the summer tourists haven’t started arriving. But it was in the national news for a few days, starting on May 6.
That’s when Walt Iiams, a retired policeman and former city councilor, went to get his mail at 1220 I St. Inside the box, he found a capped six-inch piece of ¾ inch pipe; it was enclosed in a plastic sandwich bag with a note. Such mailbox pipe bombs had already been discovered along rural routes in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, and six people had been injured.
Brief by Central Staff
Water politics – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Only one election will be held this year for a seat on a water conservancy district board. Generally, such directors are appointed by a district judge, but it is possible (but not easy) to petition for an election.
That election will be held June 18 for the Division 7 seat in the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District. Steve Schechter will challenge Jim Cochran, who was appointed earlier this year to fill out the term of George Stowell, who had resigned.
Brief by Allen Best
Wildlife – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
It’s springtime in the Rockies, and wildlife researchers have found evidence of “catting around” in the woods. But will Canada lynx kittens come of it? That’s the unknown.
“We don’t have absolute proof that they have been breeding, but all the circumstantial evidence points to it,” said Tanya Shenk, wildlife researcher for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
Dreamy eyes? Unusually long lunch hours? Disheveled ear tufts?
Brief by Marcia Darnell
San Luis Valley – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Rain on Me
The word in the San Luis Valley is a grim one — drought.
The snowpack for the upper Rio Grande basin is 12 percent of normal. State water division engineer Steve Vandiver says it will take a Noah-type rain to bring us up to normal wetness.
Brief by Central Staff
Water – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
There may not be much water in the Arkansas River this year, but there will still be plenty to discuss at the annual Arkansas River Basin Water Forum, scheduled for June 6-8 at the National Mining Museum and Hall of Fame in Leadville.
Brief by Central Staff
Drought – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
The ongoing story this spring is drought, as in “Dry as a Baptist wedding” or “So dry that the jackrabbits are carrying canteens and compasses.” (Other metaphors for aridity are welcome, and those which are printable will be published.)
Statewide, Colorado averages 4.92 inches by mid-May; this year, it’s 1.58 inches, and precipitation has been below normal since last August.
Comic Strip written by Clint Driscoll and illustrated by Judie Moorhead
Mountain Life – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Essay by Tony Malmberg
Ranching – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
MY EARLIEST MEMORIES revolve around my dad waking me up with the sun to work cattle. My feet took the shape of the pointed boots and my head grew within my Stetson, leaving an indented white forehead. I never even thought about not ranching.
COLORADO GROUND WATER GOES ON AUCTION BLOCK
About 925 million gallons of ground water a year is for sale along Colorado’s Front Range, an offer that may attract buyers from nearby towns with impending water crises or bids from as far away as California or Arizona. Denver Rocky Mountain News; May 7 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1131512,00.html>
