love

A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

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 By Jennifer Welch

There is a certain amount of romance associated with farming; I can’t deny that this is true. Maybe it’s the idea of marrying a piece of land with a herd of livestock, or consummating that marriage with the careful placement of a seed deep inside a fold of the earth. There has to be some grand idea that makes the long hours and countless sacrifices mean something. The money makes you want to cry. The hours, and the losses, and the desolation make you want to cry. So why do farmers do it? No matter how certain farmers sound when they tell you the answer to this question, I can guarantee that they ask themselves the exact same thing every day: Why do I do this? For me, the answer is simple: it is love.

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From the Editor

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Have you noticed how home projects always take at least three times as long as planned?

I am currently in the process of remodeling the enclosed porch on the rear of my house (okay, it’s a mud room). A project that began in late fall and, at this point, with luck, might be done by the next election.

I have no one to blame for this delay except myself. Granted, the recent holidays and publishing deadlines did put a crimp in the work schedule, but it seems I can always find other things to occupy my spare time; laundry, house cleaning, snowshoeing, visiting with friends, eating … time that could be spent in my grubbies, the radio turned up, clutching tools, getting this project completed.

So why am I bringing this up here?

It’s all about love.

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Born Again Love

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By Dawne Belloise

“I think it may be time for you to let Ruby give up the ghost,” my friend said of the ‘72 VW bug I had sunk over $4k into over various and continuous mechanical ailments. There she sat in her red splendor, dead again by the side of the road. A glorified lawn mower, how hard can it be to find someone who knows what they’re doing to work on her? Beyond foolish adoration and the somewhat disturbing humanization of a machine, Ruby represents an era, an entire hippie generation of mobility and freedom, a lifestyle choice and philosophy. However, similarly to that love generation’s dream, sometimes Ruby just didn’t get as far down the road as I had hoped.

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Difficult Love

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By Susan Tweit

One morning, I was sitting with my mom in her bedroom, feeding her a cherry danish broken up in tiny pieces. Her hospital-type bed held her upright; her frail body was propped up with pillows.

After I fed her a bite, her mouth opening obediently like that of a baby bird, she said,

“How do I get out of this hospice stuff?”

I thought for a minute. “You mean why do you need it?” I asked.

“I don’t want to be here,” she said.

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For the Love of Food

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By Jennifer Dempsey

I have always had a complicated relationship with food. I’ve feared it, desired it, hoarded it, denied it, resented it, obsessed over it.

So I’ve always felt a little envious and intimidated by folks who enjoy a pure, uninhibited love affair with food. But after interviewing several food lovers for this article, I feel embraced by these enthusiastic epicures, and am beginning to understand why George Bernard Shaw believed “there is no love sincerer than the love of food …”

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Chaos Remembered in Tranquility

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Long ago, Andrew Marvel wrote the best love poem in the English language, so it is futile to attempt to write another. Instead of poesy, I offer some well-known quotations and advice about love and marriage, some of which have been found in The Book of Quotes, (Barbara Rowes, 1979). After all, even love and marriage can be humorous, and sad …VMS

If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question? – Lily Tomlin

A great philosopher once said – I think it was Henry Kissinger – nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s just too much fraternizing with the enemy. – Robert Orben

Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable. – The Wizard of Oz to the Tin Man.

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Down on the Ground Loving What I Shouldn’t

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by George Sibley

Our Colorado Central stablemaster, Mike Rosso, suggested that this month we might try to write about love – any kind of love – in honor of the St. Valentine’s festival. Because his email arrived just after I’d read an online article from The Los Angeles Times about Christo’s awning project over the Arkansas River, I thought, great: I’ll write about my love of things I love that make me wonder about myself. About my sanity, or morals, or something equally ambiguous. These are things that, on the surface, seem totally foolish, or unnecessary, or extravagant, or environmentally irresponsible, or any combination of those qualities – but I love them, which means rationality somehow got short-circuited out of the consideration.

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Bring Me a Higher Love

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mountain love

by Dawne Belloise

If you like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain, If you’re not into yoga,
if you have half a brain, If you’d like making love at midnight in the dunes on the Cape
Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for write to me and escape” — Rupert Holmes

Up here at the end of the road in the mountains, relationships and affairs of the heart can get as sticky as a box of half-bitten Valentine chocolates. The incestuous nature of small town romances can liken local dating to sinking your teeth into every piece of confection in the box just to find out what’s inside the yummy coating. Historically, ski town populations are generally male-dominated — despite that it’s an over-used cliche, the fact remains — although the odds are good for the women, the goods are odd. Nevertheless, men find themselves in the love shuffle, and as one friend recited the mountain man mantra perched from his hunting site atop a bar stool while nursing his recent breakup, “You don’t lose your girl, you just lose your turn.”

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