Life is full of many cyclical trends — from fashion and food to names and colors — but it all starts with the cycle of life and, consequently, death. Burials, like produce, began trending in a less natural direction with the manipulation of an organic process. Pre-Civil War burials were an intimate affair with many […]
Elizabeth Key
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Collaboration advances green building locally
Spearheaded by the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Roaring Fork Valley is sprinting in the race to zero emissions with the help of international, federal, state, local and individual participation. Global emissions need to be cut in half by 2030 and be at net zero by 2050 […]
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Bosom Buddies opens cafe con leche in El Jebel
Breastfeeding is a personal choice, but it can also be a biological decision. My first experience with breastfeeding was challenging. As an expecting new mother, I spent my nesting months obsessively researching. The literature said the science was conclusive; breastfeeding provides the optimal nutrients to enhance babies’ eyesight, brain growth, nervous system function and a […]
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Housing insecurity takes a toll on health
Melanie Test is a web and graphic designer living with her 13-year-old son in the Crystal River Valley. After moving nine times in as many years, Test is still seeking to provide a stable environment for her son. As a single mother, she has experienced significant stigma about her circumstances that lay the blame at […]
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The Crystal Palace has fallen
My childhood home was built around a blue spruce in Aspen’s West End. It wasn’t a good climbing tree — its bark rough with budding pine needles, slathered in sap and opportunistic ants. Still, we struggled up the trunk, planning tree forts and pretending to be pirates peering out of our crow’s nest across the […]
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Between the bull market and a bare paycheck
The current housing crisis in the Roaring Fork Valley is putting many working-class locals on the brink of homelessness. Wages are falling far short of the Valley’s cost of living; long-term locals are having their housing sold out from under them; and unique communities are being washed out as a result. Lynn Kirchner has owned […]
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It’s elemental: fire, lightning, wind and water
Fire and water are opposites, but when it comes to weather, they are interconnected. Large wildfires can generate their own weather systems. Weather travels through vertical columns in a convective process, but fire and weather are almost cyclical in nature as they create and destroy one another. Wildland fire communities partner with the National Oceanic […]
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Sun showers in the sunflowers
The Basalt Community Garden is blooming in Southside, just west of Basalt High School. In its 10th year of operation, the half-acre garden has reached capacity. Currently, almost 100 garden plots are traversed by bark mulch paths supporting a whole new crop of gardeners. Gayle Shugars, one of the garden’s founders, is looking to the […]
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My personal burn scar: An appeal for volunteer firefighters
It was July 3, 2018, when we fled our Hillcrest home and the hotshots were called in. We watched from Willits as the choreographed fire dance began; flames popped up and the chopper released rains of red retardant. The hillside was studded with brush fires crowning our home. We had run with little else than […]
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PitCo Landfill gets creative to curve capacity constraints
The Pitkin County Solid Waste Center (PCSWC) was originally established, in its current location, as the Aspen Free Dump in 1965. For years since, the community has received public service announcements about the landfill nearing peak capacity. The landfill has been pushing recycling and innovation to stymie the flow of mounting trash. Anything that can […]