Editor’s note: Sarah Pletts is a Colorado Mountain College community education instructor. What happens when you join an art class? Can you quantify the experience gained? When you start to read this, pause a few moments and take stock. Look closely around yourself and identify three objects. Take a chair for example — most are […]
Opinion
Posted inLetters
Letters – May 7, 2026
5-Point award — there’s moreWe accidentally missed an award in our first email and want to be sure we celebrate “Arctic Alchemy” for winning the Hayden Kennedy Award. This award represents the best of human endeavor to better understand and experience our world. Team 5PointNewsletter excerpt THANK YOU for your teachingWhen a member of our […]
Posted inColumns
Continuing a tradition
While Klaus Kocher and I were coordinating with mothers as they arrived for the Mother’s Day photo shoot this year, we came across a 1991 bound volume of the Valley Journal. The archive included that year’s Mother’s Day edition, which featured a former editor of The Sopris Sun, Will Grandbois (as a baby, of course), […]
Posted inColumns
Motherhood unfolding
Initially, I was cavalier about motherhood, treating reproduction as an experience to be had — an item to be checked off a bucket list. After two years of trying, pregnancy became an obsession, measured in doctor’s visits, sperm counts and the painful flushing of contrast dye through my fallopian tubes. When the pregnancy tests finally […]
Posted inColumns
Seeking Haystacks: Dreaming
“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” — Martin Luther King Jr. Dreams are […]
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Ps & Qs: Is Trump Number 2?
When it comes to human nature: all our peaceful sit-ins and flat-out wars for war’s sake, the goody-goodies and the Machiavellian masterminds, altruism and flagrant greed, humanity is patient. We can look back and see how the ship was righted throughout history many times … But I’m worried that mining an endless cul-de-sac of everyone’s […]
Posted inYouth News
Digging holes while singing
Our lives have no foreshadowing. We exist in a parable composed in messy handwriting and screenshots. We have no editor. No backspace. We cannot do or be anything we please, and instead wander in the vague direction of our childhood aspirations. Every parable has a moral — a lesson deemed worthy of our attention. But […]
Posted inYouth News
Breaking the bank to slay at prom
“… Today’s proms are big business: According to a 2015 Visa survey, the average cost of prom was $919 per person, which includes everything from attire and flowers to dinner, tickets, limo services, photography and after parties, as well as the phenomenon of ‘promposals.’ The survey found that American households spent an average of $324 […]
Posted inColumns
Historiography: ‘Touch Not Yon Dandelion!’
Historically, Carbondale was known for its fine and abundant potatoes. What is less known is that the dandelion was responsible for the transition from grain crops to potatoes, according to premier spud grower Eugene Grubb in “Carbondale Pioneers, 1879-1890” by Edna D. Sweet: We grew alfalfa and our land was worth only $50 per acre, […]
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Dream Well: The toll of not dreaming
Natalia Snider is a certified dream practitioner living in Carbondale. She works with people’s dreams and imaginations to facilitate self-healing. Every month, she will analyze someone’s dream in The Sopris Sun. Anyone can submit a dream for personal analysis or inclusion in this column by visiting www.dreamhealings.com Dream I haven’t had any dreams in a […]