News

Last spring, Kevin Passmore skied up and over Mount Sopris. The trip involved some hiking, but he relied mostly on wind power to go up and gravity to come down. “There’s not much else to say other than awesome!” he enthused, writing about the 10-mile trek in his blog. Passmore is a co-owner of the company that manufactures the UpSki, a vented, 16-foot-in-diameter circular canopy that makes uphill skiing possible.

Carbondale teacher Susy Ellison’s blog has already seen two updates since September 9, when she departed from Kodiak, Alaska on the research vessel Rainier. Ellison, a science teacher at Yampah Mountain High School, is participating in a NOAA surveying program, which aims to help understand and predict changes in the earth’s environment. She was one of just 25 teachers selected from a pool of over 250 applicants. You can view her detailed coverage of her experience on board at http://teacheratsea.wordpress.com/category/susy-ellison/.

Roaring Fork High School’s official Homecoming is still two weeks away, but the Rams are already proving their ability to seize the home field advantage, with all three teams picking up wins in the last week.

From Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation to Obama’s Race to the Top grant program, standardized testing persists as the primary measure of a school’s success and the focus of our nation’s education policies. Punishing or rewarding schools based on their test scores continues to be our government’s key strategy for attempting to improve schools.

Carbondale resident Susy Ellison is heading out to sea. Way out.
A science teacher at Yampah Mountain High School in Glenwood Springs, she is one of 25 teachers from around the nation selected by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for its Teacher at Sea (TAS) Program.

The Carbondale Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) is considering the rezoning of the old Gordon Cooper Library property at Fourth and Garfield from Residential Low Density (R/LD) to Historic Commercial Core (HCC), in order to accommodate the Surls Center for Visual Art.
The P&Z will hold a public hearing on the rezoning application at 7 p.m. on Sept. 12 at town hall, at which point P&Z can either recommend approval or denial, or continue the public hearing to a later date.
The rezoning application is the current step in the establishment of an art center that will showcase the works of James Surls, a prominent sculptor who has lived in the Roaring Fork Valley since 1997 and now lives on Missouri Heights, as well as other local, regional and nationally known artists.

Frank A. Smotherman, 69, passed away peacefully on Aug. 29, 2013 with his daughter and wife by his side as a result of injuries sustained in a tragic accident at home.
He was born on Sept. 13, 1943, in Hazel, Kentucky to J.P. and Lottie Smotherman. He was one of seven children. His family relocated to Detroit, Michigan, where he fell in love with the music of Motown and carried that love of music with him for the rest of his life. He excelled through high school as president of his class, a leader in varsity football and was a state-ranked wrestler. He graduated from Central Michigan University with a degree in business and was honorably discharged from

“That bee is humongous!”
The comment comes from my 5-year-old neighbor Sam Stableford. Sam and his sister Annabelle, who is 7, showed up and began lugging rocks into place the day I first started to build my xeriscaped meditation garden in Crystal Village. I was surprised that kids would be interested.
I laid out the path in the snow in early 2012. As soon as the ground thawed, a contractor stripped out the lawn – about 800 square feet of it – and I began installing the spiraling flagstone path and berms with help from my two young volunteers.
I designed the spiral with four goals in mind: to save fuel, water and bees – and to deliver an environmental message.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Carbondale Board of Trustees unanimously approved language to put a sales and excise tax question for recreational marijuana sales on the Nov. 5 ballot. The taxes would be five percent respectively, for a total of 10 percent on retail sales. The state of Colorado is also asking voters whether to approve statewide marijuana sales tax of 10 percent and excise tax of 15 percent.

In a YouTube video made last April, El Jebel resident Kim Doyle Wille speaks excitedly in front of Carbondale’s Third Street Center and gestures towards several brown, seemingly lifeless garden beds behind her. The spring wind buffets the microphone and tries to drown out her words, but Wille is nothing if not determined. Today that determination is stronger than ever, and the bare dirt beds have been transformed into abundant vegetable gardens.