Corrections: Last week’s Basalt Report incorrectly stated that the storage-
residential development at 555 Basalt Ave. was approved. It was not. The second reading was continued to Nov. 10. Secondly, a photo by Corbin Anno on The Sopris Stars cover was misattributed to Kayla Steele. Lastly, Wallace deBeque’s wife, Betsy, was mistakenly referred to as Patricia Richmond in last week’s
Historiography column.
Re: Historiography
I enjoyed the Sue Gray column on the (Gordon Cooper) library. The library has been a wonderful asset for the community, and all those who participated in its genesis deserve our heartfelt thanks. I was lucky enough to be a patron from 1973 into the 21st century, and even luckier to meet “Gordo” when we cut the ribbon at the dedication of the new library building on 4th Street!
Bill Gray
Las Cruces, NM
Thank you, community
On behalf of Carbondale’s The Meeting Place, we would like to thank the community for its generous support of our Trivia Night fundraiser. Your generosity directly supports our mission to provide a safe and supportive space for meetings, educational programming and community events for individuals in recovery, their families and friends. The impact of supporting those in recovery is exponential: When people achieve and maintain recovery, our entire community benefits. Thank you!
ED Dylan Tibby and the Board
The Meeting Place
Near New & Rebekas,
We thank you very much for your kind and generous donation to help us celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day on
Oct. 12 in Sopris Park and at the Third Street Center. Your generous donation helped us to pay for the plane ticket and hotel of our guest speaker and filmmaker, Brian Parras. 350 Roaring Fork showed his film, “The Condor and the Eagle,” at the 3rd Street Center to a full house with the co-sponsorship of the Roaring Fork Valley Circle.
The film exposes the environmental devastation to native lands in Canada, the U.S. and the Amazon caused by multi-national companies destroying native landscapes to drill for oil and pollute the land and people with oil refining and transportation. Clean water and clean land are necessary for all life forms, and this film tells the stories of the Indigenous people on both continents to bring these crimes against the earth to the public and the courts.
350 Roaring Fork focuses on lowering carbon emissions regionally to stop climate change, with a focus on lowering the use of oil and gas by all of us.
Roaring Fork Valley Circle presents programs on Indigenous cultures to our community. Together, we are working for a healthier future for all our children and grandchildren, and we thank Near New for helping us by sponsoring this educational and cultural event. All these organizations are open to membership for all.
The Near New volunteers and board members work all year to take our no-longer-needed items and sell them in order to donate the money earned to student scholarships and local nonprofit work that benefits our community. Near New volunteers do an amazing service with sorting, displaying and selling things so that they can be used again and not end up in the landfill. This reuse of manufactured items cuts carbon emissions and helps us get what we need in our own community. We thank you so much for making Carbondale a kinder, more affordable place for all of us to flourish.
350 Roaring Fork (350colorado.org/roaringfork)
Roaring Fork Valley Circle
Grateful for Carbondale
As the holiday season begins, take time to be still and listen to your heart. Give thanks to the community members making the magic happen every day. We live in a special place, and while the days get colder and darker, people around us make life warm and rich.
I am especially thankful for my son’s school teachers and school administration at Colorado Rocky Mountain Preschool. They pour their hearts into creating experiences that make their students’ eyes sparkle and their minds bloom.
A shout out to the residents of Old Town River Valley Ranch, the fire department, the police department and participants for a fun trick-or-treating tradition for the young and old.
While I’m at it, thanks to the Carbondale pharmacy staff, local grocery staff, teachers far and wide, postal service workers, pediatricians and doctors, therapists, Carbondale Parks and Rec, the Creative District and everyone who puts on First Fridays and other celebrations. And to our Carbondale tree expert, who was out planting new trees last week.
Life is precious and we’re all part of what makes each others’ lives well-lived. Through it all — mundane or difficult — so many people show up with effort and energy at their jobs and activities. It’s not always easy to be a helper or magic maker, so let it be known you are glad for those people.
Willa Bonzi
Carbondale
An open seat
There is a quiet kind of generosity that makes a community feel like home. It happens when someone notices that a familiar face has been missing from the coffee shop, when a neighbor checks on a person living alone or when a family makes room at the table for somebody who has nowhere to go.
As the days grow shorter in the Roaring Fork Valley, I hope we remember that loneliness does not always look like loneliness. A person can greet us warmly at the market and still go home to a difficult silence. Someone may be trying to recover from grief, manage a household alone or face a hard winter without asking for help.
My Christian faith teaches me that the command to love my neighbor is not limited to people who worship like I do, or see the world the way I see it. Jesus made a point of noticing people others walked past. That example invites me to listen longer, give more freely and remember that compassion must become something we do.
Across a community, we will disagree about all sorts of things. We can still carry groceries, offer a ride, invite someone for supper and check on the person whose porch has been quiet.
A good neighbor does not need to have every answer. Sometimes kindness is simply leaving a chair open and meaning it when we say, “There’s room for you here.”
Douglas Vandergraph
Fort Collins
Chacos Park
I suggest our Trustees step back and take a long, hard look at what we have already spent half a million dollars for. The current “Final Design” for Chacos Park resembles a jungle gym in a concrete playground more than a green, shady oasis in the heart of downtown. The ultra-modern bandstand / shade structure is larger than two gazebos from Sopris Park side by side.
Any large trees drawn in the plan are fictional. A single mature large-stature tree in that park will require “healthy, unobstructed soil” two to five times as large as its canopy to thrive.
Notably, there is no provision for a restroom in the plan, leaving downtown Carbondale still with no accessible toilet and also removing several parking spaces.
The current “pop-up” band platform works well for now and can be used, along with a porta-john, while more public input is encouraged. Minimal input the designer received from two dozen focus group meetings has barely been shared with the townspeople.
Meredith Bullock
Carbondale
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