By now, we have all heard the sentiment that “AI is the future” and we must “adapt or get left behind!” This is all or nothing rhetoric. Pause. Breathe in and exhale. Let’s think for a moment. We have been using “AI” for decades. You read that right: since 1956, when the term “artificial intelligence” […]
Opinion
Posted inOpinion
Ps & Qs: Redneck pride
This June marks the 10th annual Redneck Olympics in my neighborhood. Satank is in unincorporated Garfield County, about a 20-minute walk from downtown Carbondale. Satank, née the Townsite of Cooperton, predates Carbondale and was named for Isaac Cooper who ventured down the valley from Aspen in the late 1800s. Still lawless as far as HOA […]
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Seeking Haystacks: One must imagine Sisyphus happy
The other night, I asked my students: If you are dedicated to righting a “wrong” in our world — say addressing your most urgent environmental issue, with inspired and assiduous effort — yet your efforts bring no change to the world, would you continue to engage, or give up? There was a long pause, and […]
Posted inLetters
Letters – June 4, 2026
Support Cavern SpringsAs faith leaders, we ask your support for Cavern Springs mobile home park’s effort to become resident-owned and save their homes from a corporate buyout.For decades, hundreds of residents have called Cavern Springs home. These workers make the Roaring Fork Valley tick. Their park, 98 units adjacent to Glenwood Springs, is for sale […]
Posted inColumns
A free-flowing river, and the need for continuing vigilance
According to Ute elder Roland McCook, the Ute name for the Crystal River Valley was “Nuche-Mu-Gu-Avatum-Ada’he,” or “The People’s Place of the Heart.” The first white settlers who arrived in the Valley somewhat unimaginatively named the river “Rock Creek.” The contrast in cultural sensitivity was palpable. It was soon realized by early settlement boosters that […]
Posted inOpinion
Ditch the water
Everyone living in Carbondale is familiar with the Town’s extensive, gravity-fed irrigation system, comprising eight miles of open ditches and underground culverts that carry water diverted from the Crystal and Roaring Fork rivers between May and October. But the history of this ingenious system isn’t well-known. When homesteaders began settling here in the 1880s, they […]
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Dreaming with the unborn
Natalia Snider is a certified dream practitioner living inCarbondale. 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 While celebrating Mother’s Day, I asked some mothers if […]
Posted inOpinion
‘Make every stitch sing’
The Crystal Theatre will be screening “Idiotka” in June. Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov) is a 20-something Russian-American who lives in an apartment in West Hollywood — “not the fancy part, the Russian part” — together with her grandmother Gita, father Samuel, and brother Nerses. They are a disparate bunch; Samuel (Mark Ivanir), a doctor recently released […]
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The abyss has ears
Our world often threatens to swallow us whole. Even in our small town, with just enough people to fill a single section in a stadium, the bustling around us is constant and consuming. Our phones demand our attention with relentless notifications and rumors littering our “for-you” pages. But tucked away in unit 26 at the […]
Posted inOpinion
The innocent assassination
Swim goggles — the new fashion fab or a senior’s desperate grasp on a $500 prize? Maybe you’ve seen seniors across the valley adorned with colorful goggles soaking in the last weeks of high school. Personally, you wouldn’t catch me getting lunch at Dos Gringos or sweating through the end of a workout without them. […]