By Brian RIll “Falling leaves from the winter trees, the secrets kept of you and me, all the things you said before were true. Hold on tight to what’s inside and make the best in all we try; never let me separate from you. Because baby you are the one.” You Are The One is …
By Martha Quillen
Mention America’s Great Divide today and most people will think of the partisan divisions growing between Trump supporters and critics, blacks and whites, men and women, and other political rivals. But when I first moved to Colorado the most talked-about Great Divide was the geographic barrier that divided rivers flowing east from rivers flowing west.
By George Sibley
Two months ago here, I gave a fast 250-year-revisionist overview of a two-Americas perspective on our nation’s history, positing that, from the mid-18th century on, the occupation of the continent by white Europeans was not the unfolding of some common vision of a Manifest Destiny; it was instead a contention between two contrasting cultural visions for America.
By John Mattingly
There is immense temptation to begin gardening during the first warm spells of spring. With seductive regularity, a couple of weeks of warm and windless days come along that are easily mistaken for June.
By Susan Jesuroga In 1953, Harriet Alexander took office as the first woman ever to serve on the Salida City Council. A proponent of creating a museum in Salida, she became chairman of a city committee charged with establishing one. With the help of Byrd Fuqua, they opened the first museum in the front part …
By Peter Anderson Forensics might have noted the fragment of a button from a dress shirt, the metal frame of the eyeglasses, the shred of fabric which may have been the handle of a book bag, suggesting a professor of some kind. The shred of a textbook cover – a title having something to with …
by Bill Hatcher Lantern Books, 274 pages ISBN 9781590565742 Reviewed by Martha Quillen Principles of Flight is a memoir and a treatise against war, sexism, religion, capitalism, militarism, government policies, and eating meat. It contains lots of geographic color, general information and political commentary. But it has the spirit of a literary novel, and is …
By Tina Mitchell Spiders too often get a bad rap in mainstream Western culture. “They’re aggressive.” Unless you’re an insect, most try just to avoid you. “They want to bite you.” No, only if you give them no other choice but to defend themselves. And while spiders have fangs, many are not long enough to …
Story and Photos by Mike Rosso
Anyone who drives U.S. Highway 285 between Buena Vista and Salida on a regular basis has likely experienced it.
By Forrest Whitman
Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War hero and President from 1869 to 1877, is an often forgotten part of history in Central Colorado. Interest in President Grant is sure to peak now that Ron Chernow’s biography, Grant, is out. Chernow made Alexander Hamilton come to life for us and the hit Broadway musical followed. Could a musical be on the way for Grant?
By Mike Rosso
Hal Walter’s column this month struck a chord with me. I too worked for both the Pueblo Star-Journal and Chieftain newspapers years ago. I was employed as a photographer and Hal came on board about six months after I left. We finally met in Salida shortly after I moved here in 2001.
Kurt Snyder is a designer, illustrator and Salida, Colorado, native. After earning an art degree from Colorado State University – Pueblo in 2005, he opened his own design business – Drawn Wild Design. Kurt’s detail-rich illustration work portrays a playfully-stylized perspective of the natural world.When Kurt isn’t drawing, the part-time luthier can be found in …
By Hal Walter If all the portents are correct, The Pueblo Chieftain, the last of Colorado’s family-owned major daily newspapers, could be sold to a chain before you read this, and along with it a volume of non-news stories from within its walls will fade entirely into the banality of corporate-run media. My own story …
Article and photos by Anthony Guerrero South of Monte Vista in the San Luis Valley is a prime opportunity to view nature up close. The Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge is a serene location mostly of wetlands featuring waterfowl and other water-dependent birds. The refuge is famous, hosting to up to 27,000 Sandhill Cranes every …
CCM: Did you attend college? If so, where? VS: After attending school in New England, where regional history is pretty hard to escape, I headed west to Oberlin College, where I majored in history and discovered the fun of examining the often misleading minutiae that reveal what really happened. When I moved to Colorado in …
By Elliot Jackson It was not going to be a great day for a road trip in the central mountain high country – one of those spring days where you can only tell the sun is shining because the dirt clouds, whirled into the air by the wind, are shimmering slightly; and gusts of that …
