June 2014

If you live in or around Carbondale, you’ll be very much at home when you step into Thunder River Theater to see the company’s latest production, “American Buffalo,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet. It’s as if you’ve stepped into the Back Door Consignment Store, the Near New, or Miser’s Mercantile. The play takes place in a similar shop in an unnamed city, although Chicago, Mamet’s hometown, is implied (if you go, listen for clues). The set is chock full of good stuff from the stash of props Thunder River Theater Company (TRTC) has collected in its basement over the years, the kind of good stuff that easily could have passed through any or all of Carbondale’s well-loved secondhand stores at one time or another. You have until July 5 to see this first-rate production, skillfully directed by TRTC’s own favorite leading lady, Valerie Haugen.

Carbondale trustee Allyn Harvey, at the board of trustee’s regular meeting on Tuesday, objected to what he termed a local pot shop owner’s “disregard” for city regulations and led his fellow trustees toward denial of that shop’s medical marijuana license renewal application.
Harvey, and other trustees, also objected to the level of local ownership at the CMED medical marijuana shop, which does business as Rocky Mountain High at 66 Buggy Circle, which according to the town amounts to “one tenth of one percent” of the business in local ownership.
The remaining 99.9 percent, Harvey noted, is in the hands of owner Michael Weisser, who lives in Edwards, Colo., and has ties to the state of Florida, and who told the trustees he controls nearly 20 medical marijuana businesses around Colorado.

Connie Baker certainly does not look like anyone’s typical image of a whisky maker, but she is about to become one.
Baker, 49, is a partner in the Marble Distillery, to be located at 150 Main St. in Carbondale once construction is completed on what she described as a first-of-its-kind distillery operation with an emphasis on “green,” or eco-friendly construction and operating techniques.
The distillery plans to produce liqueurs, vodka and barrel-aged whisky, and to offer a tasting room and a shop where drinks can be sold and served, as well as a couple of rooms to lodge tourists and other guests.
“We can’t find anyone who’s doing it yet,” she said of the building, which is being constructed under Carbondale’s new green-building code and will use water and crushed marble from the Yule Quarry in Marble in its distilling process.

The Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District may not be asking voters for a tax hike in November, based on an informal polling of members of a special citizens advisory task force at its monthly meeting on Monday.
Fire district voters rejected the district’s plea for a tax increase last year, largely due to a public perception that the omission of a “sunset clause” on the tax increase could result in a windfall of unneeded cash for the district, and unnecessarily high tax bills for district residents.

It wasn’t an up or down vote, but fire district citizens advisory task force members on Monday indicated they are leaning away from recommending the fire board put a tax-hike proposal on the November ballot.
After the monthly meeting on June 16, task-force member Allyn Harvey told The Sopris Sun an informal poll at the meeting came up and then went down as follows.

Carbondale appears to be making progress toward clean energy goals: since 2009, more than 216 homes and businesses have made improvements; government and school facilities have cut energy use 15 to 27 percent, according to a press release; and solar panels town-wide produce 701 kilowatts of electricity.
But given goals of increasing energy efficiency 20 percent, reducing petroleum consumption 25 percent and generating 35 percent of electricity from renewable energy by 2020, there is more work to do, said organizers of the Clean Energy 2020 open house at the Third Street Center on Monday night.
Recent reports on rising global temperatures are focusing increased national attention to how the U.S. can address climate change.

The town trustees’ decision to accept a free piece of James Surls’ sculpture for the intersection of Highway 133 and Main Street doesn’t appear to have been a roundabout process.
With little or no public discussion or notice, the trustees voted 6-0 on July 23, 2013, to move forward with accepting a free piece of sculpture — sight unseen — from Surls.

Despite apparent misgivings on the part of some members, the Board of Trustees on Tuesday gave its nod to the Carbondale Council on Arts and Humanities (CCAH) and its partner, Dance Initiative (DI), to take over the recently vacated Gordon Cooper Library building.
The vote to accept the CCAH/DI proposal for gallery space and dance studios came down to 5-1 (Trustee A.J. Hobbs recused himself because he was involved in one of the proposals). The sole dissenting vote came from Trustee Frosty Merriott, who felt the entire selection process was mishandled.

For those in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, there are two constants in life once the recovery process has begun — the need to avoid having a drink, one day at a time, and the need for coffee to satisfy one’s oral fixation and to keep up the energy to stay off the booze.
And now the coffee and the sobriety are about to be blended, if readers will pardon the pun, in one establishment.
After three years of operations, The Blend coffee shop, 1150 Highway 133, is about to be taken over by Jaywalker Lodge, a for-profit alcoholism and addiction recovery center that opened its doors in 2005 and has spawned several ancillary facilities in Carbondale.
According to Wade Newsom, the 38-year-old founder of the coffee shop, there is to be a “grand reopening” later in the summer to celebrate the change in management and, Newsom hopes, the continuation of what he described as the “wonderful, wonderful thing” he created and nurtured at the corner of Highway 133 and Garfield Avenue.

The Carbondale Branch Library’s inaugural (L.I.T.) Crawl kicks off First Friday at 4 p.m. on June 6, with different performers at each of the new Art aRound Town installations.
“I love the idea of combining literary art with visual art on location,” said L.I.T. Crawl organizer Adrianna Pevec Brown. “The live performances will enhance and inform the viewers’ experience, making it richer and more textured than it would be if they were just looking at the sculptures. Sculptures installed around town are already an opportunity to experience art more personally, but the addition of literature and music invites us all to participate with the art in a more experiential way. Art inspires art, I do believe.”