September 2017

For fourteen days last July, myself and eleven other students from across the country, embarked on an adventure of a lifetime through the rocky Dolomite mountains on a Moondance trip. Moondance Adventures is an adventure travel company for middle and high school students with trips in five different continents, seventeen countries and eleven states in the US. The program’s philosophy incorporates a strong belief in the power of the outdoors with the ideas of positivity and “living in the moment.”

Sept. 22, 1977: Mid-Continent miners were back at work after a one day walkout over uncompleted shower facilities. The bathhouse had been destroyed in a flash flood over the summer, and Ma Mid had apparently promised to have them done by the previous week.

In 1960, Carbondale Union High School and Basalt High School came together under one roof and became Roaring Fork High School. The arrangement only lasted for two years while Basalt’s facilities were improved, but it left a lasting impression in Carbondale. The high school, now two buildings along, still has the conjoined name, mascot (Rams rather than Bulldogs) and colors (Blue and gold instead of blue and white).

WindWalkers is probably best known for the therapeutic riding it runs year round on Missouri Heights, but some of its most important work takes place outside the arena. “It goes well beyond the physical component,” Executive Director Gabrielle Greeves explained. “When you create health for one, you create the ability for them to engage in and heal the entire community.”

Carbondale’s elected leaders decided on Sept. 12 that they need to get a little tougher in enforcing the town’s ordinances aimed at requiring local households to have bear-proof containers, though the exact nature of the changes has yet to be decided.
At the very least, it appears that starting next spring the town will be requiring local homeowners to have certified bear-proof trash containers and to closely follow the town’s schedule for putting the trash out on the street for pickup.

A local non-profit since 1970, COMPASS… For Lifelong Learning operates two public, tuition free K-8 charter schools serving 270 students in the valley: Aspen Community School and Carbondale Community School. COMPASS is pleased to welcome two educational leaders to the organization.
Michael Hayes has been hired as the Executive Director of COMPASS, following the retirement of Skye Skinner who held the post for 22 years.

“If you’re not pissin’ people off, you’re not doing your job.”
That’s what veteran journalist John Colson remembers Publisher Bil Dunaway telling him one day in the early 1980s, after a pack of prominent Carbondalians spent the better part of an hour complaining about the way Colson ran The Valley Journal, which Dunaway owned then.
It has become something of a mantra for Colson, who at 66 is retiring from The Sopris Sun this week after almost 40 years of newspapering from Rifle to Aspen.

The battle over the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which came to a head on Sept. 5 when President Donald Trump announced he would end the program in six months, has barely begun, according to published national reports and comments by local immigration advocates in the Roaring Fork Valley region.
In fact, Colorado immigration activists have scheduled a statewide DACA registration drive for Sept. 16 at the Glenwood Springs High School, starting at 1 p.m., to help current DACA recipients whose documentation will expire on or before March 5, 2018 — shortly before the deadline Trump has given for shutting down the DACA program.

For founder Aisha Weinhold, the reality of this weekend’s third annual flagship No Man’s Land Film Festival (NMLFF) is a trip.“Oh my gosh, being in The Sopris Sun, and showing the films at the Crystal, I feel like I made it, This is a Carbondale girl’s dream!” says Weinhold, a cereal box cover of wholesome goodness. At 25, Weinhold is an alpinist, trail runner and business woman.