Marble Museum
If it’s been years since you’ve visited the Marble Museum, come on up. You might be in for a surprise.
The museum features several professionally produced displays, including one of the Lincoln Memorial (made with marble from Marble) and one of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (quarried in the early 1930s). A map of the United States shows where marble was used in dozens of public and private buildings nationwide. One of those structures is the Taylor Mausoleum at Rosebud Cemetery in Glenwood Springs.
The museum is located on two floors in the historic Marble High School building, with its white marble foundation walls and front-porch pillars (built in 1912). The wooden floors still creak like they did back then. Upstairs is a one classroom, complete with original desks with ink-well holes, that looks much the same as it did when classes stopped being held there in the 1940s.
The museum is located at 412 West Main Street (just follow the signs). It’s open 11am to 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays through September. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for seniors and free for kids and dogs 12 and under. The museum is administered by the Marble Historical Society.
Lynn Burton
Docent, Marble Museum
Weavers give thanks
Mountain Valley Developmental Services expresses our sincere appreciation to the Aspen Glen Ladies Golf Association for hosting a fundraiser benefiting the Mountain Valley Weavers. A special thank you to all who attended, to Heather Conlan who arranged the event and to Cindy Engles who hosted it. The gathering was a wonderful evening filled with a great sense of community and support.
On behalf of Melissa DeHaan, Lisa Skoog, the Weavers, employees and members of our board of directors, we thank you for your generosity and interest in learning about Mountain Valley Weavers.
For those who don’t know, Mountain Valley Weavers is a weaving studio and retail store located at 209 8th Street in downtown Glenwood Springs. Unique woven items are created there by talented, local Weavers. Stop by and see us!
Sara Sims
Mountain Valley
Developmental Services
Canvassing with joy
Joy is the watchword of the Democratic Party at the national level this election year. I felt it in Carbondale last Sunday while canvassing in the Meadows Park neighborhood with Steven Arauza, the Democratic candidate running for the District 3 seat on the Garfield County Commission in November. If you don’t know what canvassing is, it’s the election season ritual anyone can participate in by knocking on doors and talking face-to-face with people in your community about the local issues that matter to us most. The need for affordable housing, health care and childcare for Garfield County’s working families — and not third homes for the one-percenters — is no laughing matter. But the enthusiasm for finding solutions that fit our neglected workforce was infectious. People are jazzed about local voting in a way I, an experienced canvasser, can’t remember. Canvass in a neighborhood near you today by contacting www.garcodems.org Spread the joy.
Dyana Furmansky
Carbondale
Leash your dog
On Sept. 1, some friends and I rode horses at Sutey Ranch. We met four hikers on the trail with four dogs off-leash. We stopped; they stopped and tried to get a hold of their dogs’ collars. The next thing we knew, one dog lunged, growled, barked and terrified one young, 5-year-old, green horse. The dog was in attack mode and we all saw the danger.
The horse spun and tried to flee near a steep hillside trail. Luckily, the rider sat right in the center of the turmoil, stopped the horse and finally dismounted. This could have been a flight for life incident, had the competent rider not gotten the horse under control.
SHAME ON DOG OWNERS WHO DON’T RESPECT THE LEASH LAW. Will dogs be removed from Sutey Ranch? The main ranch is designated by the Bureau of Land Management for horses and hikers, with only one bike connector trail to Red Hill. Fast moving mountain bikes are separated on Sutey Ranch. It’s one of the only quiet, peaceful hiker/horseback trail areas in our valley. Now we have to worry about dog attacks. WHAT?
NO! Go to Crown Mountain Park, which has turned into a great place for dog walking.
If you walk dogs on Sutey Ranch, keep your dogs on leash.
Holly McLain
Rumble Ridge, Carbondale
RFSD pitch
Read with interest the RFSD Board of Directors’ discussion regarding the house purchased to attract a superintendent or other district office “leaders.” This provides an opportunity to not only correct an error in judgment but to use the money to provide significant and sustainable housing assistance for teachers.
As they learned, educational leaders with principles will decline any housing offer. They realize teachers come first. “Leaders eat last” has long been the practice of effective leaders historically in the military setting. It’s now expanded to all leaders in charge of any organization involving people. Officers would be the last to fix their plates at mealtime to ensure the people in their command, down where the work is done and results occur, were fed and their needs met. The same would apply to any educational leadership position and their classroom teachers. Teachers are the ones building relationships with each student, determining and adapting their daily instruction to each student’s learning style, motivating each student’s attendance each day, following through with parents and assuring their child’s educational progress. The success of a school board and its leaders is determined by the level of learning generated by its teachers.
An alternative would be to sell the house, now probably worth $1.4 million, and utilize that money to facilitate teachers buying their own homes. The most effective method to reduce rents is to reduce demand for rentals by people buying houses. Generally speaking, the cost to rent and the monthly payment to a bank are approximately the same. Accumulating the down payment is the roadblock.
An effective method is to take the $1.4 million and provide $100,000 down payment loans to 14 teachers. When the teacher sells the house or moves out, they must pay back the $100,000 from the sale proceeds and the money can be reused for another teacher. Other entities utilizing this strategy have developed the other contractual policies, qualifications and contingencies necessary and are beyond the scope of this letter.
A side benefit is it returns a $1.4 million property to the county tax rolls. And it eliminates the organization spending money on administration time, repairs, etcetera that go along with owning property. A strategy worth considering.
Bryan Whiting
Glenwood Springs
Cats v. CWD
The ballot measure to protect mountain lions from trophy hunting and bobcats from baiting and fur trapping for their pelts is a crucial step towards protecting the state’s billion-dollar deer and elk hunting and wildlife-watching industries from the devastating effects of chronic wasting disease (CWD).
CWD is a neurodegenerative disease posing a significant threat to Colorado’s deer, elk and moose. It is transmitted through direct contact or exposure to contaminated environments (42 of 51 deer herds and 17 of 42 elk herds in the state are infected).
Mountain lions and bobcats play a vital role in regulating ungulate populations and in cleansing them of CWD. Continuing to sanction highly commercialized trophy hunting and commercial fur trapping of native cats in Colorado will mean 500 fewer lions and 1,000 fewer bobcats to cleanse CWD-infected cervids and ultimately to strengthen the health and viability of deer and elk populations.
Over the 50-year horizon, if we keep these commercial kills of native cats going, CWD mortality may increase to the point that hunting of deer and elk in parts of Colorado will no longer be possible. Given that all human attempts to control CWD have failed, mountain lions are a deer and elk hunter’s best friend.
In the coming decades, CWD will become a bigger and bigger national issue far beyond Colorado, especially if it becomes zoonotic and infects people or livestock, like CWD’s first cousin, Mad Cow Disease, did 25 years ago.
By protecting mountain lions and bobcats from wasteful trophy hunts and fur traps, Colorado is taking a proactive approach to prevent the spread of CWD. This decision aligns with the growing consensus among wildlife experts and conservationists that the health of our ecosystems depends on the preservation of all species, including predators.
Learn more about the vital role of mountain lions to combat CWD in Colorado — a disease without a cure that is always fatal — at www.tinyurl.com/CWDinColorado
Jim Keen, DVM, Ph.D.
Center for a Humane Economy
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