Columns

Bob Cook told me this story years ago, so hats off to him. He was working graveyard shift in the coal mine. It was Christmas Eve. The superintendent told the crew, “Look, you guys come in and work half a shift and then you can go home.” So they came in with their minds set […]

When I was a teenager, long before the Marie Kondo simplification trend, a young Japanese woman came once a week to restore order to our home — a house peopled by two adults, three huskies, two cats and five teenagers. Miko’s real reason for housekeeping was to practice English; she wanted to master her second […]

In 1979, Mom packed me and my two little sisters in her old Datsun and we hit the road. With pit stops, it took us two days to drive from Woody Creek to Denver, and we camped for the night on Independence Pass. We were a unit. We were secure in the nest. We knew […]

e I took pen in hand (literally — I write everything longhand, much to the chagrin of my editor). The last piece I wrote was “A Raider Fan in Bronco Country,” which to my surprise was awarded best sports column in our category in the Colorado Press Association’s annual contest. I said at the end […]

In this season of gratitude, among the blessings I count are the creativity and inclusiveness that characterize this town. I could tally many examples, but Third Street Center embodies it all: As I write this, it’s bringing together the town’s English and Spanish-speaking communities for Dia de Los Muertes. Young adults are partying with KNDK […]

Dear Carbondale: Cheers, sweetheart, on our ten year anniversary! Last month marks a decade since I spent my first night on the floor in our new townhome. As you may recall, at the time the economy was puttering along and I was months away from becoming a first-time mom. And, even though my husband and […]

There has been a lot of conversation around the word “equity” within our district these past few months. As a Latino mother, I find it particularly odd that Latino families, which make up more than 55 percent of our school district, are often left in the shadows of this usually well-intentioned dialogue. Cambridge Dictionary defines […]

I’ve had enough. I’m sick and tired of having to pony up more money to support things like libraries, schools, libraries in schools… I pay taxes and that is where I want the money to go, not to the military industrial complex. “Today in Capitalism” by Iraq Veterans Against the War “Hey Siri, what is […]

The school year is in full swing, and while many high school students have begun submitting college applications, I’ve been putting the final touches on the next issue of the high school publication my friends and I started. Our publication started as an offhand suggestion. We’ve since forgotten who first offered the idea, but our […]

We sometimes ask:  “Have you read anything good lately?” A wise piece of advice I read lately in a magazine’s book review section suggested that for every modern book we read we should also read an old one. The reason? Because in the old days they had time to think about what they wrote. In […]