Will Grandbois

For years, Lon Winston’s name has been practically synonymous with the Thunder River Theatre Company. This week, it’s official. After the opening performance of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” on Feb. 24, the black box performance space at the heart of the building will be dedicated “The Lon Winston Theatre.”
“I’m proud, of course,” Winston acknowledged. “It just says something so deep in my heart about giving to the community and all the people who were involved. If we don’t maintain the legacy and love of theatre, we’re going to lose something so important as a civilization.”

Feb. 13, 1997: The Town of Carbondale was searching for a new police chief after long-time and highly popular chief Fred Williams retired, and the town board of trustees asked the citizens what kind of chief they’d like to see. “Can’t we just clone Fred?” was one citizen’s response, though most took the question more seriously and advocated for someone a lot like Fred — compassionate, able to listen to constituents, possessing a solid understanding of the community, and who’s more interested in Carbondale than building a career as a cop by moving to ever-larger jurisdictions.

• Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut;
• The University of California, Davis;
Coming soon:
• The Carbondale Branch Library;
• The Tattered Cover book store in Denver.
• Canada in March.
That’s a bit of Illené Pevec’s speaking schedule, after New Village Press published her book “Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy.”

Owen O’Farell stands before a group of kids just a little younger than he was when he discovered poetry.
Now a junior at Roaring Fork High, he has just finished reading a poem from his phone and has kept the Carbondale Middle School students engaged almost as well as Mercedez Holtry, who introduced him and does this for a living.

While the threat that triggered closures and lockouts in the Roaring Fork School District on Feb. 9 was ultimately deemed not credible, school officials and law enforcement stand by their cautious approach.
“Our job is to ensure as much as possible the safety of the students, the schools and the community,” said Carbondale Police Chief Gene Schilling.

A passionate young Palestinian hurtles through a bakery window in Amsterdam and encounters the baker, a lonely and emotionally remote survivor of the Holocaust.
That’s the opening premise of “Sixteen Wounded,” the latest production by Colorado Mountain College’s Sopris Theatre Company. It features Bob Moore as Hans, Jesse Monsalve as Mahmoud, Becky Levin as Nora, Kelly Ketzenbarger as Sonya, and Raleigh Burleigh as Ashraf.

Carbondale’s overall size may grow by two acres in the coming months, as the Board of Trustees considers a proposal to annex vacant land along Highway 133, between the Xcel power substation and the Roaring Fork Tire Center at the north end of town. In a presentation to the trustees on Tuesday, planning consultant Mark Chain described the intended use of the property as a site for a large mini-storage facility. This would be the first annexation to the town in six years, since the town annexed the Gateway Park property in 2011, according to Town Manager Jay Harrington.

Approximately 125 people took part in a citizens’ march to support Planned Parenthood on Feb. 11 in Carbondale, walking from The Goat restaurant (Cowen Drive and Highway 133) up the bike path along Highway 133 to the roundabout at Main Street and back again. This march, like the Women’s March on Jan. 21, was in protest against the policies of President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Congress, and was one of many such actions planned in the near future, including a local angle on a nationwide “general strike and boycott” scheduled for this Friday, Feb. 17 (see below).

The Carbondale fire department is considering whether to ask voters in November to authorize borrowing up to $10.5 million to pay for deferred capital improvement projects over the next 25 years or so, in light of the fact that otherwise the district’s tax rate will drop at the end of this year.
At a meeting on Feb. 8, the board of directors for the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District agreed to further explore the idea, after a presentation from the district’s bond counsel, Wes Bradish of RBC Capital markets, who indicated the district could seek voter approval for a new bond issue, but keep the property-tax rate, or mill levy for bonded indebtedness, right where it is today.