Column by Hal Walter
Mountain Life – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
THERE HAVE BEEN YEARS, certainly, when I’ve managed to keep the corrals pretty clean all the way past the Winter Solstice. This isn’t one of those years.
Month: January 2006
When the sap is running high
Column by George Sibley
Music – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
HERE WE ARE in the dark days of the year. Our boys are slogging on in Iraq; the price of heating fuel is going up as fast as the temperature is going down; the Colorado legislature is slouching toward Denver with the far left and far right already trying to undermine continuation of last year’s bipartisanship; the national debt has just gone past eight trillion in acceleration mode–and every time I try to get my brain in gear, it spins out into a sappy love song.
Everybody loves a donkey tale
Article by Laurel Mchargue
Pack-Burro Racing – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
“He’s looking for a nice ass. Not just any ass. A wild ass won’t do. Neither will a wise-ass. Really what he’s dreaming about is a healthy little burro that won’t mind hauling his equipment for him while he’s trotting around doing adventure races…”
Virtual national parks
Essay by John Mattingly
Recreation – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
I DON’T ADMIT THIS AT John Deere dinners, but I went to the law school in Boulder for a while. I did not graduate, perhaps to my credit. When people learned I was a farmer looking for a retirement career in the law, they invariably grimaced, asking “Why?” I never came up with a good answer.
The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan
Review by Ed Quillen
Plains History – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Worst Hard Time: The untold story of those who survived the great American Dust Bowl
by Timothy Egan
Published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin
ISBN 0618773479
Crested Butte: from Coal Camp to Ski Town
Review by George Sibley
Crested Butte – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Crested Butte: From Coal Camp to Ski Town
by Duane A. Smith
Published in 2005 by Western Reflections
ISBN 1-932738-06-1
Mainliner Denver, by Andrew J. Field
Review by Ed Quillen
Colorado History – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Mainliner Denver – The Bombing of Flight 629
by Andrew J. Field
Published in 2005 by Johnson Books
ISBN 1-55566-363-X
How soon we forget the songs of peace
Essay by Martha Quillen
War and Peace – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
ONCE AGAIN, America resounds with messages about “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.” So perhaps `tis the season to reflect upon the irony of all those old tunes devoted to Peace. Considering such lyrics, you’d think that peace must be something everybody agrees upon — be they liberal, conservative, Christian, atheist, old, young, rich, or poor.
Superlative Soprano: Tina Lovejoy of Buena Vista
Article by Sue Snively
Local Artists – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE TRIP TO DENVER was wrought with trials and trepidation due to an advancing snow storm. A semi had jack-knifed on Interstate 70 east of Frisco which meant taking a detour over icy Hoosier pass to take stormbound U. S. 285 on into the heart of the city.
Chalk Creek Pass in the Winter
Article by Tim Kregel
Recreation – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN about March of 1974, when the buds and I decided it was high time to have a new ‘hinterland adventure.’ Not that we hadn’t had sufficient adventures that winter, living in and around Garfield. We had adventures that winter, all right — we’d even said permanent goodbyes to a couple of the buds who’d gotten more adventure than they had bargained for.
One migration solution
Letter from Slim Wolfe
Immigration – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Ed,
The solution to your migration dilemma might just be the policies of the present administration. If we destroy the middle class and break the cycle of upward social mobility, or better, if we land in a great depression, there will be no more jobs in service industries or agriculture, nor will there be any motivation for the world’s disadvantaged to come here in search of an economic bonanza. Those of us with retreat cabins (as in your cover story) will retreat, and the rest will become trash-recyclers. It’s happening today in Buenos Aires, they even run special trains for the dumpster entrepreneurs and their booty. As our Patriot Acts continue to lessen our civil liberties those furriners won’t even have the lure of freedom to bring them here. Couple that with the great mass of dead protoplasm created in Iraq which may, in 300 million years replenish our petroleum reserves, and you’ll have to admit we’re sitting pretty.
Where’s the Front Range?
Letter from Roger Kirkpatrick
Geography – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Hi Ed,
This is sort of a homeland question, did you move to Salida from the Front Range, as you state on page 45, or was it really the Great Plains?
I suspect you grew up on the Great Plains and that you, like most of Colorado’s population, used “Front Range”, even if incorrect, because it sounds better than Great Plains.
Third cook on the train
Letter from Francisco Armando Rios
Railroads – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
At subscription-renewal time, a city feller asks himself: “Why do I want to renew my subscription to Colorado Central? These days I’m more likely to visit Amache, the Beecher Island Battleground, Pawnee Buttes, the site of the Pleasant Hill school bus tragedy, and Picketwire Canyon — a different Colorado, in other words, sometimes far removed from the peaks and passes of Colorado Central country.” Well, the city feller renews his subscription (the check is in the mail) because, after a few intervening decades, he wants to revivify his memories of time spent in Central Colorado — and western Colorado generally.
A higher line
Letter from Tom Mackelvie
Railroads – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Ed:
I read in the December edition about “high altitude” railroads in Colorado (and the world) and thought you might have overlooked the Argentine Central, a line from Georgetown to the top of Mt. McClellan, just east of Grays peak).
The Navy’s goat
Letter from Richard Blake
Mascots – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
After reading “Can an ass class be far behind?” [December, 2005, edition] I did some Googling and came up with this article from the US Naval Academy website.
What is the history of Bill the Goat, the Naval Academy’s mascot?
Friends organize to support Christo Project
Article by S. Reese, A. Gerlach
Over the River – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
FRIENDS OF OVER THE RIVER, an organization supporting Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s Over The River (OTR) project, held their first meeting on December 5 in Salida.
“It was a great meeting. There were over 20 people present, and there was a lot of good information available for all of us,” said Elizabeth Ritchie, one of the group’s organizers.
Regional Roundup
Brief by Central Staff
Local News – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Cold enough for you?
Nothing like some frozen pipes to remind you that we still get some winter around here, notwithstanding concerns about global warming. Some arctic air settled over Colorado on Dec. 7, and a few records were set. One was in Colorado Springs, where 2°F was the “lowest high” ever recorded for that date.
Boarding for Mars?
Brief by Central Staff
Modern Life – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
If you drive south from Salida and take state Highway 17, you’ll definitely encounter a UFO observation site. And there are some who say you might encounter a UFO, too.
And if you keep driving south, soon you might encounter a take-off site — not for UFOs, but for space-bound tourists.
Drought’s heat hurt piñons
Brief by Central Staff
Forests – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
The good news is that there could be a lot of piñon available for firewood in the near future, since there are a lot of dead trees. The bad news is that there may not be many piñon trees and their tasty piñon nuts in the long term, on account of the heat that came with the most recent drought.
Veggies can make you sick, too
Brief by Central Staff
Health – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Fresh fruits and vegetables are supposed to be good for you. But they are becoming a leading source of food-based illness, thanks to changes in the ways they’re marketed in the U.S.
The federal Centers for Disease Control recently reported that produce now accounts for 12% of all food-borne illnesses and 6% of outbreaks, up from 1% of illnesses and 0.7% of outbreaks in the 1970s. Some of that is because veggies are more popular — per-capita consumption rose from 287 pounds in 1992 to 332 pounds in 1994.
Moly price stays up, but no word on Climax
Brief by Central Staff
Mining – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Metal prices are high, which means we will likely hear more talk of mining hereabouts. Much of the talk will focus on molybdenum and the mothballed Climax Mine a dozen miles north of Leadville, which in 1980 employed more than 3,000 people.
Briefs from the San Luis Valley
Brief by Marcia Darnell
San Luis Valley – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
New Wind A-Blowin’
It used to be called a “gust,” but that term just isn’t high-tech enough for the new millennium. What’s now being called a “micro-burst” of wind is responsible for tearing the roof off of a real estate office in Alamosa. Anyone up for renaming those below-zero nights
SouthArk Funnies
Comic Strip written and drawn by Monika Griesenbeck
Mountain Life – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
40 is the age for wild & crazy guys
Brief by Allen Best
Recreation – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Who do you think has the highest risk for getting injured when skiing and snowboarding? Would you say old people, which a newspaper in Vail once called skeezers. Or how about testosterone-driven young guys?
Locals generally less likely to enlist
Brief by Central Staff
Military – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Rural communities throughout the United States, including Colorado, produce a higher percentage of military recruits, according to a study by the National Priorities Project in Northampton, Mass., which examined the Zip codes of enlistees in 2004.
Camping out at home
Essay by Alan Kesselheim
Modern Life – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE FIRST HEATING BILL I got was for October, and it jumped from summer levels right up to what I was paying mid-winter last year. Mind you, I didn’t even light the furnace pilot light until Oct.10, and because the weather was nice, it only kicked in the thermostat on a handful of days, less than six, I’d say.
Western Water Report: January 5, 2006
DEAL REACHED IN COLORADO KAYAK PARK
After years in and out of court, the Colorado Water Conservation Board and builders of a kayak park in Gunnison have reached a deal regarding how much water will be kept in the river for recreation flows and how much can be diverted upstream for development. Denver Post; Dec. 23 <http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3335894>
