Elliot Jackson

In Land we Trust

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By Elliot Jackson The news coming from the Colorado State Demography Office, by way of a July 2017 article in the Denver Post, is eye-opening: by 2050, the state’s population is predicted to rise to 8.5 million – a 50 percent increase from 2015 levels. Most of this growth is projected to take place along …

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Exit Stage Left: The Demise of A Community Theater

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By Elliot Jackson

Every community gets the community theater – if it gets one at all – that reflects it in some way. Its beginnings, its tenure, the choices it makes along the way in which plays to produce, which performers to feature, what sort of audience it is trying to attract and, finally, its exit from the community stage, all say something about the nature of the community itself.
Salida’s Stage Left Theater Company has made the decision to close its doors after its September 2017 production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, and this decision reflects an ironic fact about Salida itself: that despite its growing reputation as an “arts town” – its status as one of the original Colorado Creative Districts, for example, its numerous arts and crafts festivals, or its many galleries featuring local potters, painters, sculptors and photographers – many of these artists are noting that it is getting more and more difficult to produce their art here.
The reality that theater is a collaborative process, dependent on many people working together in tandem, who may or may not be getting paid for their efforts (mostly not), compounds the difficulties that theater artists face. The other reality is that with the best will, or the best volunteers, in the world, running a theater company is hard work. “I ran myself into the ground trying to keep financial flow going, and then keep everything else going,” says Devon Jencks, the current Creative Director of Stage Left. “We needed more people who knew how to tap into the community – we were exhausting resources everywhere.”
Jencks stresses that money to put on productions never seemed to be as much of an issue as finding enough people to do everything that needed to be done, whether it be acting, providing backstage help, or serving on the Board of Directors. “The young people don’t have time – they’re working three to four jobs just to try to make a living. The retirees say they want to help, but then when you call on them, they’re out of town!”

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The Salida Circus turns Ten

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By Elliot Jackson

“When I came to Salida and began talking about starting a circus,” says Jennifer Dempsey, artistic director of the Salida Circus, “people thought I was nuts. So I stopped talking about it and just started doing it.”

If anyone still thinks that, they aren’t saying so as Salida Circus stands on the brink of its 10th anniversary celebration. From its beginnings in Jennifer’s backyard, with “me, a bag of kids’ costumes, and a pair of stilts,” as Jennifer puts it, Salida Circus has grown into an organization with a full professional performance schedule, a host of classes for both kids and adults in aerial work, clowning, tumbling and juggling, and an international scope. Two years ago, Dempsey led a small team back to Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the Belfast Community Circus’s hosting of the Festival of Fools, an international street performance festival; and in autumn 2016, she led another team to do performances and workshops in Jordan as guests of former Prime Minister Abdul Kabariti. Salida Circus has also performed in London and Newcastle, England, Germany and Guatemala.

In addition to these honors, Salida Circus is the only American member of Caravan, the European “social circus” network, and in 2015 was selected to be part of the Social Circus Network, chosen by Cirque du Soleil and the American Youth Circus Organization. Social circus practitioners emphasize that it is designed to foster community andm to bring people together across class, racial, ethnic, and religious lines.

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Restaurant Review: Chappy’s Mountain View Bar and Grill

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By Elliot Jackson 213 Main Street, Westcliffe, CO 81252 719-783-0813 Monday – Saturday: 11:30 a.m. – 10 p.m. Sunday: 11 a.m. – 9 p.m. For a town of its size (565, or 1,152 if you combine it with neighboring Silver Cliff), Westcliffe has an amazing number of restaurants. Not all of them are open all …

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Foxhunting in Colorado: Headwaters Hounds

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by Elliot Jackson “Foxhunting provides those fleeting moments of total abandonment – of wind-in-your-hair, bugs-in-your-teeth kind of living. At its best, it is totally out of control. Hounds are screaming, hooves are thundering, the horn is blasting as you race and jump across country to die for, often in weather not fit for man or …

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Reviews – Intermission: A Place in Time

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By Glenda Lee Vollmecke Outskirts Press Paperback: 192 pages ISBN-10: 1478712406 ISBN-13: 978-1478712404 Reviewed by Elliot Jackson I confess, I started this book laboring under a misapprehension. From the cover art, which shows a handbill for a “Beatles Night Out” at “The Tower Ballroom, New Brighton,” I was expecting a lot more about the English …

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Book Review

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The Cowboy Takes a Wife
By Davalynn Spencer
ISBN-13: 9780373486977
Publisher: Love Inspired, 2014

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

Ah, the “historical” romance novel! Casually dismissed by the non-cognoscenti as “bodice-rippers,” the classic formula is this: take one beautiful and spirited (also penniless, orphaned or in some way materially disadvantaged) heroine, and one handsome, studly, often lordly and always rich hero; add instant mutual attraction/antagonism between same; set in an “exotic” historical setting of some sort or other; mix well with other ingredients including villainous Other men and scheming Other women, and sex – lots of unashamed, lusty and usually premarital sex. Ah, the good old days. 

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Meet Doctor Robert

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By Elliot Jackson

For most of us, our first memory of “The Music” was mediated through the miracle of electronics, whether through the radio:

12 years old, rushing around getting ready for school, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” plays on the AM radio, stops me in my tracks, and I’m instantly in love – Lynn Wetherell, Paonia, Colorado

Ancient technologies like the record player:

 Had the 45 of “Yesterday” (still remember, the flip was “Act Naturally”). Summer of 65, I was four. Maybe the first record I ever owned. Played it over and over and over and over … Adam Davis, Kirksville, Missouri

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Book Review

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Buried by the Roan
by Mark Stevens
People’s Press, 2011
Softcover, 348 pages, $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-9817810-9-9

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

OK, let me see if I’ve got this straight: our heroine in Buried by the Roan is plucky Allison Coil, yet another average working-girl mystery heroine – who always seems to be at least 40 pounds lighter and quite a bit blonder and petite-er than the average American working girl. Because of a personal crisis (she survives a plane crash), she is inspired to leave her yuppie existence in the big city and become a hunting guide in the Western Slope wilderness. And really, this is the sort of thing that could happen to anybody. Particularly a woman with no apparent previous wilderness or hunting experience.

So we have the obligatory death (one of her clients on a hunting trip, a rancher who is embroiled in a land dispute with – wait for it – an environmentalist). At this point in the story, I am hearing my internal Mike Myers chiming hopefully: “Is he an EVIL environmentalist?” Yes, as it turns out, he is! And he’s even on the cover of High Country News!

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Restaurant Review

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Garlic Mike’s
2674 Hwy 135
Gunnison, Colorado
970-641-2493

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

I confess that since moving to the Gunnison Valley earlier this year, I haven’t taken as much advantage as I might like of the multiple opportunities to dine out that the area offers. Part of this is due to time crunch, as I spend a lot of time working at odd hours; part of it is financial – probably all Colorado Central readers can relate to that one. And, somewhat related to the money-and-time-crunch issues is another one, that I have only recently identified to myself, which basically boils down to this: if I’m going to spend the time and money to go out to eat, I want to feel reasonably assured that what I’m ordering is going to be a better specimen of meal – be it omelette, salad, burrito, or steak and potato dinner – than I can make myself at home.

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regional restaurant review

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Little Cambodia
135 N. F Street
Salida, CO
719-539-6599

by Elliot Jackson

It was a couple of years ago, on a trip to San Francisco, that I became acquainted with Phò. I remember the meeting vividly – I was sitting at a large table in a Vietnamese restaurant, surrounded by the family and friends of my travelling companion. “Order the Phò,” was the command of the cognoscenti in the crowd and, obediently, I did. A large steaming bowl of noodle soup jammed with meat, fish and bean sprouts, all flavored by basil and hot spices came to the table, and I was in love.

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Book Review

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Historic Photos of  Heroes of the Old West
Text and captions by Mike Cox
Turner Publishing Company, 2010
ISBN: 9781596525689

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

The title of this handsome coffee-table book tells you almost everything you need to know about what you will find inside: yet for every photo of a traditional “hero” or villain (Wyatt Earp, George Custer, hanging judges, stolid Indians), there is a photo that chronicles a lesser-known thread in the story: Ann Eliza Webb Young, for example, one of the wives of Mormon leader Brigham Young, who spoke out against polygamy in her book, “Wife No. 19”; or Nat Love, a black cowboy born into slavery, who wrote his autobiography. There are also fascinating group shots: a group of men huddles around a faro table in one; the company of Troop C, Fifth Cavalry, which was charged with keeping the peace and throwing out squatters in Oklahoma Territory, stares out from another. All the photos are accompanied by captions by author Mike Cox, who also provides short introductory essays for each chapter.

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Pipes, Whistles and Fiddles in the Rockies

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by Elliot Jackson

When I moved to Colorado from Chicago over ten years ago, there were many things about the city that I found myself delighted to be leaving behind: traffic, crime and wild extremes of climate among them. However, the one thing I found myself indubitably missing – and craving – was its music scene: specifically, its Celtic (Scottish and Irish) music scene. Chicago was home to some of the best Celtic musicians on the planet, and it seemed like there were sessions and concerts almost every night of the week. In addition, there was always the chance to take lessons in any instrument, from harp to fiddle to accordion to bagpipes, from some of these musicians, either privately or through venerable institutions like the Old Town School of Folk Music or the Irish Heritage Center.

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Book review

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A Dozen on Denver: Stories – edited by the Rocky Mountain News

Fulcrum Publishing, 2009
ISBN: 9781555917272

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

The late, lamented Rocky Mountain News, shortly before its demise, commissioned a collection of tales from twelve Colorado authors, some famous and some virtually unknown, to commemorate the sesquicentennial of both the paper and the city of Denver. The idea for this collection was inspired, according to the forward by former RMN editor John Temple, by a similar collection of tales commissioned by the Times of London.

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A Few Words about the Cover Girl

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by Elliot Jackson

The cover photo of my Siberian Husky, Sovay, was taken in early 2009 when, as a vigorous 13-year-old, she was still pacing pal Mike and me up mountain passes and breaking trail when we went snow-shoeing. Sovay, typical of her breed, is a highly energetic dog, easily bored and not all at all disinclined to let me know about it – that is, if baleful, pointed stares, imperious whoo-ings, and impatient tap-dance routines at the door can be taken as indication of a need and desire that we be off, now, on some quest for amusement or adventure. To see the antic gleam in her blue eyes, and observe her tongue-lolling, shark-toothed grin as she peered back over her shoulder just before dusting us on the trail, has made those days of back country ramblings a special delight for me; I believed I beheld my companion at one with her ideal environment.

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Table Walking at Nighthawk

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By Carol Darnell Guerrero-Murphy
Published in 2007 by Ghost Road Press
ISBN 0-9796255-1-3

Reviewed by Elliot Jackson

Why, oh why, wonders the Inconstant Reader, do I routinely pass by poetry in my restless forays through my library’s shelves? Is it because I had a rigorous education in my youth, and read so much of it that I just OD’d? Or do I just forget about it? Maybe it’s simple intimidation: a good poem is such a richly-stuffed little nugget that getting through a whole book of poetry feels like downing a plate of baklava all by myself (maybe that’s why, when I do get around to reading poetry, that I love to read it aloud, or hear it read: just like that plate of baklava, a poem seems created to be shared – munched by multiple ears).

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Breaking Open the Heart: A Meditation on Broken: A Love Story

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by Lisa Jones
Scribner, May 2009
Hardcover, 288 pages
ISBN-10: 1416579060

Essay/Review by Elliot Jackson

“What does it matter if it hurts like hell, so long as it makes a good book?” – Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

Colorado writer Lisa Jones has just finished her first book, Broken. The title is a play on words – it refers to horse breaking, hearts breaking, bodies breaking. She has subtitled it, “a love story”, and so it is – in the way that, say, the New Testament is a love story. Bear with me, here, a moment – I mean no disrespect, and certainly no blasphemy. But imagine the gospel of – let’s call her Theodora: a well-educated Greco-Roman woman who, having heard tell of a healer and holy man working in the provinces of the Empire, makes the decision to leave Rome and travel to Jerusalem to write about him. She has heard tales of miracles which she accepts skeptically but politely: she doesn’t need to believe in miracles, or this Hebrew God, to write about them – or so she thinks.

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In Memoriam: Abbott Fay, 1926-2009

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by Elliot Jackson

I confess it: I am a print addict. A print junkie, if truth be told. I have been known to while away the time conning the labels on Kraft Mac & Cheese boxes, if no other reading material was available. This addiction is one among others that I inherited from my father, a man for whom the unfortunately hackneyed phrase, “a gentleman and a scholar,” might have been coined. A history scholar, to be precise, who, in his many years of teaching at the secondary and college levels, managed to inspire students with his particular combination of humor, rigor, and tartly compassionate appreciation for their pranks and growing pains.

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

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by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver
Illustrated by Richard A. Houser.
Harper Collins, 2007
ISBN: 0060852569

I found so much to appreciate in this book – a sprawling meditation on food, food politics, family, origns, and what we sometimes self-consciously refer to as The American Way of Life – that it is a bit of a challenge for me to know where to begin. So, let’s begin with: why this book? Why now? It came out in 2007, for heaven’s sake – two years ago being a sliver of eternity in America. 2007 – remember when?

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