Over the recent Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, The Buddy Program held Wilderness First Aid (WFA) training events for high school students in Rifle and Basalt. The training is a component of Buddy’s LEAD program, Leadership through Exploration, Action and Discovery. This year-long program is run in collaboration with Colorado Mountain College (CMC), and […]
Ken Pletcher
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Our Town – Meet Ed Holub, our bona fide Deadhead
Q: Where did you grow up? A: In New Jersey. I lived in Newark for 13 years and then moved to a place called Cranford. My parents were both Polish immigrants. My dad was taken to Siberia during World War II, and my mom was run out of her village and taken to Germany and […]
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Local schools struggle with tough pandemic-era semester
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on a level of disruption, uncertainty and hardship unprecedented in our country and the world. This has been especially true for our education system at all levels, which has faced enormous challenges in how to conduct cohesive, sustained and effective instruction at a time when the pandemic has wreaked havoc […]
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Restaurants deal with mixed COVID directives
Text by Ken Pletcher Photos by Laurel Smith On Dec. 10, Garfield County’s COVID-19 status was changed by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) from orange (“high risk”) to red (“severe risk”). Per CDPHE rules, it meant that restaurants were no longer permitted to have in-house dining and could only offer takeout […]
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Wolves winning by a whisker
Proposition 114, the ballot initiative mandating the reintroduction of gray wolves into Western Colorado by the end of 2023, appears to have been approved by voters by the slimmest of margins in the Nov. 3 election. The overall unofficial tally, as of press time, gave those for the proposal less than a half percent lead […]
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Counting folks during a pandemic
The decennial census of U.S. citizens, mandated by the Constitution (Article I, Section 2), is a daunting task in any year. In 2020, however, the national enumeration has been particularly challenging, principally because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which early in the count process prevented census workers from personally contacting households. However, as U.S. Census […]
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Our Town: Miles Phillips —“I just like making things”
The Sopris Sun is conducting a series of interviews with folks you may not have seen in the paper before – a sort of introduction to your neighbors. This week we caught up with Miles Phillips, musician, instrument maker and metal worker. Q: You and [step-brother James Steindler] grew up on Flying Dog Ranch? A: […]
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Did corona pay a visit? Well, maybe
I’m a healthy guy; almost never get sick. It’s pretty much been like that since getting my tonsils out decades ago. Oh, I had the childhood diseases one got back before modern vaccines — measles, chicken pox — and occasionally I’ve been knocked out by some kind of bug. But I hardly even get colds.Until […]
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Death in the time of coronavirus
Among the myriad ways our lives have been changed, disrupted and put on hold by this unprecedented health crisis, one of the most difficult aspects has been how to deal with death. Losing a loved one is often one of the most traumatic experiences during “normal” times, but the regulations that have been put in […]
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Grocery shopping in the time of COVID-19
My wife and I are both “senior citizens,” and while that status does have its perks — free rides on RFTA, discounted Skico season passes — it also has apparently become a liability in this age of the coronavirus pandemic. We are in one of the at-risk categories. While self-isolation and following social distancing have […]