By Virginia McConnell Simmons
School’s out. Summer’s sightseers in Central Colorado will enjoy photographing and painting picturesque one-room schoolhouses that now stand empty or have taken on new roles such as community centers or museums – Mirage (pictured here), Alma, Jefferson, Malta, Sargents, Twin Lakes, Valley View, Westcliffe, and many more. But before we get too nostalgic, let’s picture that one-room with pupils too large and too small, a young teacher with maybe one year of training, frayed readers instead of computers, desks too close to the hot stove or at a frigid distance from it, galoshes, and no school bus.
Devout Penitentes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico gathered in adobe moradas (meetinghouses) during Lent, where hermanos (brothers) remained for the entire 40 days to pray and fast.