News

Since starting as principal of Roaring Fork High School in 2012, one of Drew Adams’ primary goals has been to enhance the rigor of every student’s educational experience at RFHS. As part of that effort, three new Advanced Placement (AP) courses were added to the curriculum this past school year, and three additional AP courses will be offered next fall.
Advanced Placement is a program created by a non-profit organization, The College Board, which designs the curriculum, and creates and grades the final exam for each AP course. Most colleges grant credit to students who receive a high score on the final AP Exam.

As Carbondale voters prepare to cast ballots in the Carbondale and Rural Fire Protection District board election later this month, one issue that has remained of concern for some voters since late in 2013 is the lack of a current fire district master plan for operations and expenditures.
The election is being conducted by mail, with ballots to be sent out between April 14 and 21, and to be counted on Election Day, May 6.

For R.J. Paddywacks owner Eric Berry, a recent purchase was a telltale indication the local economy is finally headed in the right direction.
“A man bought a dog-cooling jacket,” Berry told The Sopris Sun on Tuesday. “Usually, that’s something people buy in July … but people now have the money to look ahead. That wasn’t happening a few years ago.”
R.J. Paddywacks Pet Outfitter has sold pet supplies in Orchard Plaza in El Jebel since 1996 and a year before that in the Mid-Valley Design Center. Berry enjoyed a few years of ups (financially and emotionally), followed by downs that started during the nationwide recession of 2008-2009. Just keeping his doors open proved difficult until the last year or so. Berry said if he put his sales on a graph, 2008-2012 was “a perfectly flat line.”

With three antique stores now clustered in a one-block section of Main Street, shoppers can amble between the Old West and ancient Orient, ogling treasures at Strange Imports and Out West Antiques, then stop for coffee at Bonfire and later on hop across the street to peruse period French and English furniture and other items at European Antiques.
And then there’s the venerable Miser’s Mercantile (“The best second hand store in the West”) at the east end of Main Street, and Back Door Consignment just north of Main Street behind The Pour House. Both stores see a steady flow of antiques, collectibles and vintage items come and go through their busy doors.

Just when voters in the Carbondale area thought they could relax for a while following the recent municipal election, the ongoing contest for seats on the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District board of directors has been heating up in anticipation of another Election Day, May 6.
Two challenging candidates are charging that the current members of the fire district board have lost touch with the 15,000 or so residents they serve, as shown by the voters’ rejection last year of a proposed property-tax hike, and that new blood is needed to face the district’s fiscal challenges.

Little did 5Point Film Festival director Sarah Wood know that one of last year’s films would change her father’s life.
Robert Wood was visiting his daughter last spring and attended the festival. “When he came to 5Point, we were bugging him to retire,” said Sarah, meaning she and her mother and sister. Sarah describes her father as a hard-working man. “He was always a curious person but did not take risks. It was pretty much work and family.”
Robert Wood has been a tool-and-die maker for most of his life. He and his father, who was also a machinist, are Sarah’s inspirations. “They both rode motorcycles,” she said one afternoon at her motorcycle studio behind SAW. That’s right: a motorcycle studio called Woody’s Motor Cyclery.

As the new education director at Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, I have the privilege of working with 5,000 students from 45 schools in the area. In my first few months here, I have learned so much from these students as we built watershed models with students at Crystal River Elementary School, turned over rocks in the Roaring Fork River to test macro-invertebrate diversity, dug potatoes and collected organic eggs at Rock Bottom Ranch, and tracked snowshoe hare across Richmond Ridge on Aspen Mountain. The youth of this valley understand more about watershed and ecosystem health, biodiversity, and sustainable food than most adults I have worked with.

Forty years ago, Becky Young, fresh out of Colorado State University, moved to Carbondale to start the Roaring Fork Review newspaper with her friend Pat Noel. When the paper was bought out a year later, the duo moved on to start The Valley Journal, Carbondale’s beloved paper for 32 years. She had come into journalism after having worked for CSU’s daily paper for a year, and was following a talent and passion, though she left The Journal after 14 years for other professional pursuits.

The bipartisan bill that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law in 1964 took eight years and over 66 revisions before Congress passed it for the president to sign into law.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of that landmark legislation of courage and compromise known as the Wilderness Act. A number of activities are being planned on the White River National Forest to celebrate its passage.

The Carbondale-based Wilderness Workshop is busy analyzing a proposed BLM management plan released on March 21 that includes Red Hill, the Crown and parts of Thompson Divide.
“This (plan) is a biggie,” said Wilderness Workshop spokesman Dave Reed. “It’s the blueprint for how over 500,000 acres of BLM lands in Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle counties will be managed for the next 20-plus years.”
The Bureau of Land Management’s proposed plan also covers federal land in Grand, Jackson, Routt, Summit and Larimer counties.
“Our proposed Resource Management Plan for the Kremmling Field Office is based largely on the comments we received from the public and our State and local cooperating agencies when we put our Draft Plan out for comment in 2011,” said BLM spokeswoman Stephanie Odell in a press release. “We believe the proposed plan provides a balanced approach to managing the public’s land and resources … for the next two decades.”