Will Grandbois

If you think the Department of Motor Vehicles is the worst kind of bureaucracy, you might ask Jesus Ortiz about his 17-year journey to citizenship. “It’s been hard,” he’ll tell you. “It’s not just sending in an application. It’s a long, long process.” Ortiz, 46, has been part of Carbondale’s Public Works crew since 2012 and officially became an American in April, an accomplishment he credits largely to his sponsor, former Pour House Manager Skip Bell.

Local music lovers this Friday will once again get the chance to watch, listen to and dance to a sampling of Western Slope bands on the stage at the Fourth Street Plaza, as well as to music performed at several downtown bars and establishments — all timed to coincide with the First Friday celebration for July. The 17th Annual Mt. Sopris Music Fest, put together by well-known Carbondale impresario Steve Standiford of Steve’s Guitars fame, starts at 5 p.m. with the Lookout Mountain Showdown, which KDNK music director Luke Nestler in April called “a promising new string band from Glenwood Springs.”

July 7, 1977: Prominent Crystal Valley painter Jack Roberts released a 220-page book of illustrations and prose entitled “The Amazing Adventures of Lord Gore.” Despite Gore’s prominence — his name is applied to a pass, a peak, a range, a canyon, a lake and more — information was few and far between and no photos or portraits were to be found, making the work a challenge even for an artist of Roberts’ caliber.

Michael Brune, the executive director of the national Sierra Club, told an audience of some three dozen in Carbondale on June 29 that he got his first taste of environmental awareness while growing up near the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey. He recalled that hospitals were dumping medical waste that often turned up on beaches in the form of used needles and other potentially infectious equipment, and area chemical companies were dumping vast amounts of their own waste into the ocean, which together rendered the beaches all but unusable for nearby residents and visitors alike.

Carbondale is beginning to rub off on Clay Center Resident Artist Collette Spears.
In the year since her last solo show, her intricate, double walled carving style has given way to more experimentation and less perfectionism — a mirror, perhaps, of a new philosophy. “Art, for me, has always been in some way a reflection of the life I’m living,” she said. “Growing up, everyone always asked about my career and how I was going to fund my life. Here, people don’t care what you do as long as you’re happy. People have very balanced lives here, which is the influence I think I needed.”

Start with what you have. That’s the sentiment of Garfield County resident and properties-owner John Powers, and it’s why he commissioned the Colorado National Heritage Program (CNHP) to bring in almost 20 scientists, student interns and expert volunteers for five days to survey the species that also call his Spring Valley and Rifle Creek ranches home.

After consuming over 100 acres in a few hours on July 3, the Grand Hogback Fire near New Castle appears to have laid down and stayed put with at least 50 percent containment, according to Garfield County Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Walt Stowe.
“It didn’t really spread much beyond that,” he said. “We had a good breeze through come through (July 4) that would have flared anything up that wasn’t pretty well out.”

Arbaney Park in Basalt was probably the happiest, happenist place in town on the evening of June 22, with dozens of Buddy Program mentors and mentees chowing down on potluck picnics and pizza, slugging down soft drinks, swarming around on cool green grass, playing games and engaging in various ball-related activities, chasing each other and generally having a good time under clear skies and pleasant temperatures.