Colorado Central Articles From — September 1997

Column by Hal Walter

Rural life – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

There are two things you can count on here in the mountains — two snow-free months and the guy in the brown truck.

So when the Teamsters Union representing United Parcel Service drivers voted to walk at the beginning of August, I started watching for a summer blizzard. A lot of important stuff that I buy comes here via UPS: coffee, running shoes, vitamins, tack, tacky attire, books, office supplies, sporting goods. Pretty much any durable or semi-durable good that can’t be bought locally is delivered by a guy by the name of Kenny Patterson who drives a brown truck. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Jeff Donlan

Salida life – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

How to save Salida

Editors:

You printed a brief letter from a “Laird Campbell” last month, but I don’t think Laird exists. I think you invented him, or her, to ask this question and draw knee-jerk responses from readers like myself. Clever.

“Laird Campbell” hit the nail in the head, in a way. Encasing Salida in amber is its only hope. Towns like Salida are destined to be museums, if only because nobody builds towns like this anymore. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Ed Quillen

Salida politics – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

An official announcement of non-candidacy

Editor:

Many good people have urged me to run for municipal office, especially the mayor’s position, this November.

So many, in fact, that I was actually motivated to ask the authorities at The Denver Post, for whom I write two op-ed columns a week, whether they’d be comfortable with my seeking such public office. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Marianne Katte

Rural Life – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Added joys of country life

Editor:

Other humans seem convinced that we who live in the countryside need cats and more cats for the barn, or dogs and more dogs to help us with our chores. So they open their car doors, and out go kitty and Fido to fend for themselves. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Dale Hendrix

Book Review – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Or maybe even worse than disappointing

Dear Editor:

Martha Quillen’s admission in your August issue that she was not the right person to review Living on the Spine by Christina Nealson is surely the most perceptive insight she came up with. And yet she pressed on. Why didn’t you people wait? I had just finished the book when I read the review and never can I remember seeing in print a reader so far off the mark of what a writer was hitting. To call some of the most beautiful and inspiring prose-poetry to come out of this country in years “this stuff” says it all. But perhaps it is the ultimate seriousness of this work which has thrown Quillen. Such writing is so rare in the literature of our time. Read the rest of this article

Letter from David A. Lillie

Book review – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Review of Sangre book was disappointing

Editors:

I was very disappointed in your review of Christina Nealson’s book, Living on the Spine. If I had written a review like this and submitted it to you, I doubt that you would have printed it, as I don’t think it measures up to your normally high editorial standards. Read the rest of this article

Essay by Ken Wright

Rural West – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

I live in a fantastic corner of the American West, on the edge of where mountains fall away into canyon-carved desert. I live in one of this area’s mountain valleys, but at mid-morning on this day I find myself on a high above-tree-line pass, taking in a grand sweep of the country. To the east stands a range of peaks, rippling away like the choppy surface of a lake; to my immediate south rises a single massive peak, a great banded pyramid off whose face falls a sloping scree field that sprawls down and away to the rolling foothill forest lands that reach outward and downward through climate zones, from subalpine fir to piñon and juniper, across the rising and falling of foothills and gathering creeks, then across river valleys and canyons to the green valley bottom where squats the nearest town to the west. Looking in that direction from this 11,000-plus-foot perch I can see across dry sage lands for a hundred miles or more, and in that distance I see the wall of a table-top mountain, the blue bodies of three distant mountain ranges, and the dendritic arms of two major river systems. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0870813870[/amazon-product]Review by Martha Quillen

Botany – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Colorado Flora, Eastern Slope
Revised Edition
by William A. Weber and Ronald C. Wittmann
University Press of Colorado, 1996
ISBN 0870813870

Also a companion volume:
Colorado Flora, Western Slope
ISBN 0870813889 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0870814427[/amazon-product]Review by Ed Quillen

Recreation – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Exploring Colorado State Parks
Second Edition
by Martin G. Kleinsorge
Published in 1997 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 0870814427 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0671516485[/amazon-product]Review by Martha Quillen

Novel – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

The Spring
by Clifford Irving
Published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster
ISBN 0671516485 Read the rest of this article

Essay by Martha Quillen

Salida politics – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Lately, phrases from the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities have been popping into my mind more readily than popular tunes from the top ten charts. I suppose that’s because times are good hereabouts. Property values are up, tourists are plentiful, and the economy is bustling. Read the rest of this article

Poem by Jeri Mcandrews

Local artists – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

BRAIDS

Some people pat the earth

as if it was a pet

no kidding…

listen,

if you

have long hair

you live in a waterfall Read the rest of this article

Article by Marcia Darnell

Local Artists – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

ERI McANDREWS is cruisin’. Her new dance studio is up and running. Her new book is finished and ready for publication. Her poetry readings are becoming more popular, and she has completed her first year as a certified teacher.

She also finds time to be a firefighter and raise a daughter.

McAndrews has lived in Crestone for eight years, after a decade in Telluride. She’s originally from New York, where she trained in ballet and modern dance. Read the rest of this article

Essay by Ellen Miller

Colorado politics – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

If we must have corporate welfare in Colorado, then we should spread it around

by Ellen Miller

Once again, the big city is throwing itself at the feet of a corporate suitor who promises thousands of jobs and good pay, great things ahead — and asks only a few, but quite expensive, corporate subsidies.

This corporate suitor is Nike, hardly a welfare case, and its target is Broomfield, between Denver and Boulder. Economic development officials are rolling hoops on the hour for Nike, reasoning that all these jobs are too good to pass up. Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Central Staff

Pack-Burro Racing – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

1997 Races’ Results

Fairplay: 29 miles

1. Tom Sobal, Taco Bell 4:47:38

2. Hal Walter, Clyde 4:48:54

3. Curtis Imrie, Peckinpah 5:45:53 Read the rest of this article

Article by Central Staff

Pack-burro racing – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

For the second straight year, Barb Dolan and her burro Sailor crossed the finish line before all racers to take first place overall in the Buena Vista Pack-Burro Race on August 9.

Dolan’s win captured for her the title of winner of the prestigious Triple Crown of Pack-Burro Racing in the Women’s Division–as she also won the women’s division at both the World Championship Pack-Burro Race held in Fairplay July 27 and the Leadville International Pack-Burro Race August 3. Read the rest of this article

Article by Gary Norton

Education – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

My summer afternoon was disturbed when I got a call from Colorado Central — they had some 45 pages of school statistics, mostly achievement test scores, on seven school districts in Central Colorado.

The data had been collected by the Independence Institute and sent to the magazine, and Ed and Martha, and at least one educator they asked, had difficulty finding rhyme or reason in the numbers. Ed asked me to go over them and try to make some sense out of it all. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Todd Murchison

Outdoor life – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Once upon a time, people went into the wilderness equipped with the skills and tools to be able to survive on their own. Technology is rapidly changing that. Now people ride into the wilderness on machinery and bring along their cellular phones for survival.

More than a few people have decided that if you have a cellular phone and no shame, there is little need to learn anything about wilderness survival before setting off into the Colorado backcountry. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Prisons – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Nobody knew his name, and his fingers had no prints…

At first, Custer County authorities had a real mystery on their hands.

After several cabin break-ins near Wetmore, a man was spotted hiding in a cabin on July 7, and the authorities were called. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Outdoors – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Just how much does trail-based recreation affect wildlife on public lands?

Good question, and the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project is looking for some answers.

Roz McClellan, who works for the project, says the main concerns at the moment are motorized and bicycle travelers in the woods, since those are the fastest-growing uses of public lands in Colorado. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Livestock – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Women on Board at Custer Stockgrowers

They may have been prescient back in 1945 when ranchers in the Wet Mountain Valley got together and called their group the Custer County Stockgrowers’ Association rather than the Stockmen’s Association. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Geography – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Fairplay on the Move?

A brief item in The Denver Post announced that U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard would complete fulfilling a campaign promise to hold “town meetings” in every one of Colorado’s 63 counties.

So far, so good, but then we read that he would hold “five town meetings on the Western Slope” in Meeker, Craig, and “Aspen, Eagle, and Fairplay.” Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Transportation – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

5 get in line for the RR line

What happens next to the rails on the Royal Gorge Route?

We’re supposed to get an answer from the state in the middle of September.

The Union Pacific acquired the 170 miles of track last year when it merged with the Southern Pacific, which in turn had absorbed the Denver & Rio Grande Western. And the UP doesn’t want this track. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Transporation – September 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine

Upping the Limit

Signs like this one have been sprouting all over Central Colorado lately as the Colorado Department of Transportation has completed its studies and increased speed limits on many roads. This came after Congress returned such authority to the states, after years of a national 55 mph speed limit. Read the rest of this article