Colorado Central Articles From — February 2006

Essay by Hal Walter

Mountain Life – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

YOU KNOW SOMETHING’S UP when your wife drives into the driveway after dark, and then knocks at the door. In this case I opened the door and found her standing beneath the porch lights with a pint- sized Chihuahua in each hand.

“I found them out on the road over by Bear Basin Ranch. I couldn’t leave them out there.” Read the rest of this article

Article by Virginia McConnell Simmons

Transportation – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

LITTLE TRAINS huffing and puffing across mountain passes and powerful diesel locomotives grinding across the open spaces of the West may be the images that charm rail fans. But on ledger sheets, black and red ink is the picture that inevitably decides which lines endure. Read the rest of this article

Essay by John Mattingly

Local Sites – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

IF YOU’RE GOING to the Sand Dunes National Park and have a spare 30 minutes, you might consider turning east off Highway 17 at Road AA (about 5 miles south of where 17 splits off from 285). Road AA is also known as Mirage Lane, pronounced Marriage Lane by locals. It’s never been clear to me whether this is a slurred mispronunciation of Mirage that became customary, or if an unusual number of weddings took place along this county road. Read the rest of this article

Poem by Stewart S. Warrren

Wildlife – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Time To Decide

You’ve been here before:

the animal runs in front of your vehicle

and no amount of dodging or dancing

changes the certainty of bumper and thud.

I went back for her, Read the rest of this article

Poem by Stewart S. Warren

Colorado – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

My Kind of Colorado

Kremmling Colorado you’re the crossroads

of thin water and evaporative sky,

the long stride of pterodactyls

just before flight. Read the rest of this article

Article by Marcia Darnell

Local Artists – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

IF LIFE IS, as it’s said, a journey, some of us take the express train to the end of the line and others take the local. Then there’s poet Stewart S. Warren, who gets off at each stop and explores every new place.

Born in Tulsa in 1950, Warren was 13 the first time he ran away. Like any adventurous American boy, he ran away with the circus, becoming a makeshift carny. This was anathema to his affluent parents. Read the rest of this article

Column by George Sibley

Community – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

CAN YOU BE a real town if you don’t have a movie theater?

That’s a question Gunnison has been asking itself, with the consensus being that the answer is no. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Slim Wolfe

Politics – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

Democracy on the march: By the time you read this, George Bush II will have been elected president of Iraq, thanks to the magic of Diebold electronic voting equipment, which beat out truckloads of ballots smuggled in from Iran. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Warren Nolan

Wilderness – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

In the post 9- 11 era of war, rumors of war, floods, famine, rising seas, and hurricane, I wonder if the idea of wilderness (roadless areas) isn’t quaint, isn’t a luxury, isn’t superfluous, isn’t irrelevant Doesn’t the ferocious unarguable issue of homeland security trump all else? Read the rest of this article

Letter from Sam Halburian

Local Government – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Ed,

Just a short note to inform you that my wife and I stopped at the McDonald’s on Highway 50 in Salida on a December Saturday, and ordered “Big Breakfasts,” a menu item.

I usually don’t check my receipt but on this occasion I did, and I smarted when I saw that I paid a 52¢ tax for eating in. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Pseudonymous Writer

Taste – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

To whom it may concern:

How much we enjoyed your magazine’s recent dissertation on projectile vomiting (and the previous one on copious bleeding) among the Rocky Mountain human species. We have a current vacancy for Assistant Professor of Comparative Effluvia if anyone is interested. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Roger Henn

Great Depression – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

Re: January, 2006, issue:

(1) What Coloradan ever called a burro a donkey? Author Laurel McHague does this once in her fascinating tale of a Leadville burro race. Shame on your headline writers — burro, jack, jack ass but never donkey. That word is left to Easterners of Missouri. Read the rest of this article

Letter from Roger Williams

Colorado Central – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Some questions

Editors:

A few questions: Is the dog in the snowy scene on the cover “Schnee” (German for snow), mentioned in “Chalk Creek Pass in Winter” on p.17? At first I thought it might have been Buster, another German Shepherd (not Shepard) recently in the news. Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Ed Quillen

Pike – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

The best place to start, of course, is with Pike’s journals. The original 1810 version is an extremely rare book. In 1895, the journals were edited and annotated by Elliott Coues, and published in three volumes by Francis P. Harper. In 1987, Dover issued that in two paperbound volumes, complete with large maps in a pocket. Volume I covers his expedition to the source of the Mississippi; Volume II concerns the Mexican venture of most interest to us. Read the rest of this article

Essay by Ed Quillen

History – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

THIS YEAR AND NEXT are the bicentennial of the first official American visit to our part of the world: the 1806- 07 expedition led by Capt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike. Before we look at what Pike accomplished, we might look at what he did not accomplish.

Most famously, he did not climb 14,110- foot Pike’s Peak. Nor did he name it. He called it the “Grand Peak,” and the Spanish knew it as “Sierra Amalgre” (Reddish Mountain, on account of its pink granite). The first recorded climb was led by Dr. Edwin James, a botanist with the 1820 military expedition led by Maj. Stephen H. Long. The prominent mountain was afterward called James Peak by some Americans. Read the rest of this article

Sidebar by Patty Lataille

Fashion – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors’ note: The real BarbieTM was introduced by Mattel in 1959. For more than four decades now she’s been loved, cherished, criticized, politicized and analyzed. Over the years, Barbie has become the most iconic fashion figure in America — more familiar than Britney Spears and more timeless than Liz Taylor. The following so-called Barbies, on the other hand, are total counterfeits and rank amateurs and we predict that not a single one of them will still be around in a mere two decades. Read the rest of this article

Essay by Patty Lataille

Fashion – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN are back in Wal- Mart. They reappear every year at holiday time and Spring Break here in our small Central Colorado town of Salida. It’s an annual migration of the large SUV and flashy jewelry sort, accompanied by increased traffic and revenue (cha- ching!) in our tourism- based, somewhat economically depressed community. Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]0974881414[/amazon-product]Review by Columbine Quillen

Recreation – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Skinny Skis and Snowshoes: Guide to Winter Trails in Colorado’s Upper Arkansas Valley
by Nate Porter and Nathan Ward
Published in 2005
ISBN 0- 9748814- 1- 4 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]1419617362[/amazon-product]Review by Lynda La Rocca

Poetry – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Shape of a Hill poems, prose poems
by Stewart S. Warren
Published in 2005 by Mercury HeartLink
ISBN 1419617362 Read the rest of this article

[amazon-product]155591523X[/amazon-product]Review by Martha Quillen

Great Sand Dunes – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Valley of the Dunes
by Bob Rozinski and Wendy Shattil with text by Audrey DeLella Benedict
Published by Fulcrum, 2005
ISBN 1- 55591- 523- X Read the rest of this article

Cartoon by Jack Chivvis

Modern Life – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine Read the rest of this article

Brief by Martha Quillen

Local News – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Unhappy Holidays

The big topic for citizen input this December was Christmas greetings. The national media focused on the phrase “Happy Holidays,” and people from all over our region wrote to their local papers to complain about “happy holidays.” Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Education – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) recently released the 2004- 2005 school accountability reports, which now evaluate schools in two categories: Academic Performance and Academic Growth. Performance scores are: Excellent, High, Average, Low, and Unacceptable. Growth scores are: Significant Improvement, Improvement, Stable, Decline, Significant Decline. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Climate – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

As is so often the case, it’s shaping up as a tale of two winters in Colorado.

Along the I- 70 corridor and north at Steamboat Springs, the stories have been about the abundance of snow. Snow shovelers and plowers are making a good living, although some of them are running out of places to dump it. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Health – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

One consolation for aging is that people over 50 are less susceptible to altitude sickness.

Why is that? The Telluride Watch explains that as people age, their brains shrink, requiring less oxygen.

But, for those who do get the severe and often fatal forms of altitude sickness, cerebral and pulmonary edema, there is a curious remedy: Viagra The drug that is prescribed for impotency can also promote oxygenation through increased blood flow. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Allen Best

Wildlife – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Three bears were roaming Aspen in early January, and wildlife biologists told The Aspen Times bears occasionally come out of hibernation during winter.

One roamed in Silverthorne last year, and avalanche blasting at Steamboat has occasionally flushed groggy bears from the three dens found at the ski area. Wildlife officials do not suspect warmer temperatures or that hunger aroused the bears in Aspen. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Nomenclature – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

In our January edition, we misspelled the artist Christo’s name in a headline on page 9; we had it as Cristo.

We knew better and we apologize, but we can point to two mitigating factors. One is that when you’re proofreading, mistakes in body type for some reason are easier to spot than mistakes in bigger headline type. (Our publisher’s most memorable error in that department came 34 years ago on a weekly newspaper in Longmont; he left the r out of Britches on a headline that was supposed to say Little Britches Rodeo starts Saturday.) Read the rest of this article

Brief by Marcia Darnell

San Luis Valley – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Art is for the Birds

Second- graders at Boyd Elementary in Alamosa are learning about cranes, geography, and other cultures through their teacher’s activism. Sue Patterson is a member of the International Crane Foundation, which works to protect the birds and the habitats. She’s involving her art students by having them create paintings of cranes to trade with kids in Cuba, Russia, China and Korea, all of which are on the crane itinerary. Both kids and birds benefit. Read the rest of this article

Brief by Central Staff

Economy – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Saguache County made the national rankings in a magazine in late December, but it’s probably not something anybody wants to brag on. It was listed in the Dec. 10 edition of The Economist, a weekly magazine based in England which focuses on “international politics and business news and opinion.” Read the rest of this article

Comic Strip written and drawn by Monika Griesenbeck

Mountain Life – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine Read the rest of this article

Essay by Allen Best

Outdoor Recreation – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

NEWS ACCOUNTS about fatal avalanches — and we’ve had nine deaths in the West this winter — sometimes give the impression that the difference between life and death is one easy piece of technology: an avalanche beacon.

If only the buried victim had been wearing a beacon, goes the story line, a life could have been saved. That turns a beacon into something resembling a safety belt for snowmobilers or skiers. I think the analogy is more like wearing a safety belt while going over a cliff. Read the rest of this article

COLORADO COMMISSION KEEPS STORMWATER REGULATIONS IN PLACE

A federal energy bill questioned Colorado’s ability to regulate stormwater run-off from oil and gas construction activities, but the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission voted to keep such regulations in place. Grand Junction Sentinel; Jan. 11 <http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3390495> <http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/01/11/1_11_1A_stormwater_decision.html> Read the rest of this article