Happy Colorado Sunday, all.

I hope your week was lovely. I can’t tell you how happy I was to be able to report measurable rainfall to the Colorado Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network three days in a row. If I didn’t have a full-time job, you can bet that the big storms delivering needed doses of cooling rain every afternoon would have sent me scrambling for a novel and a chair on the covered front porch.

There is something soothing about a break with a book. These days there are stacks of to-be-read books staring at me from most flat surfaces in my house, so I don’t have the same use for the library that I did when I was a kid. But I learned reading this week’s cover story by Kevin Simpson that if I did peek inside the branch less than a mile from home, I would find a place transformed to meet the needs of my community no matter what direction they’re coming from.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Libraries have adapted to the moment, but their bedrock purpose hasn’t changed

Seems like everyone has some vivid memory of their public library, right? For me, it’s flashbacks to grade school days when the bookmobile would visit and I’d score an armload of fresh literary adventures. Or the woody scent of the main library’s massive card catalog as I scoured the Dewey Decimal System to source a high school paper. A lot has changed since then, and a pandemic demanded a whole raft of new strategies, but libraries have always operated on the premise of welcoming all and filling public needs.

And we found that’s definitely still the case — with some interesting twists — as we checked in on this amazing institution in Colorado to see how it has evolved to meet a very challenging moment. We paid particular attention to rural libraries, whose services have expanded even into connecting patrons with health care, but also looked at overarching issues like censorship and the difficult task of patching our social safety net. And just a heads up: We’ll be talking further about libraries’ evolving role with a panel of experts next month at SunFest. Sign up and bring your library cards!

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Kevin Simpson | Writer

The Colorado Lens

Things move quickly in Colorado and people wear many hats to get things done. Here are a few of our favorite images this week of people going places and making change happen in their communities.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

To-may-to, to-mah-to. Any way you juice them, they make a great cocktail.

Summer is not my favorite season — winter is, by a country mile, followed by the other seasons that at least have some snow and no 100-degree days.

However, as an avid gardener and a big fan of the fresh offerings at at our local farmers market, it’s easy to acknowledge how good a tender, juicy, heirloom tomato is with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and maybe a drizzle of really good olive oil, in the middle of summer. And as a distiller, I’m a big fan of tomato-driven cocktails, whether a Bloody Mary, Bloody Maria, Bloody Caesar, Red Snapper, really anything punched up by tomato and a bit of spice.

I’d heard of a freshly juiced Bloody Mary at Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort near Buena Vista more than 10 years ago, when some friends were married there, but didn’t have the opportunity to try it. The concept stuck with me, though. Friends described it as a totally different cocktail experience. Years later, I stopped in and interrogated some confused employees at the hot springs. They had apparently discontinued it during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So when it returned this summer, I knew it was time to strike. Tom Warren at Mount Princeton and Susan Hirt, whose Bloody Mary at Mother Muff’s in Colorado Springs was inspired by a visit to the hot springs almost 20 years ago, were very generous in talking through their processes and ingredients, and offering tips for home mixologists. There are countless possible permutations, so don’t be afraid to experiment. If it’s fresh, delicious and refreshing, if it leavens a hot summer day and puts a smile on your face, then you’ve succeeded.

READ ON FOR TIPS, TECHNIQUES AND A BASIC FRESH TOMATO JUICE RECIPE

Gabe Toth | Author

SunLit: Sneak Peek

In “Burn,” a surreal landscape greets two men with the remains of seemingly indiscriminate violence

EXCERPT: Two men emerge from a hunting trip in the Maine wilderness to find a staggering swath of death and destruction. Bestselling author Peter Heller taps into today’s disturbing political dysfunction as these lifelong best friends, Jess and Storey, navigate their way toward an understanding of what’s happened to society. Secession?

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Heller offers a glimpse inside the writing process that has made him a bestselling author, but also into his thoughts on the divisive politics of our time and the dangers that presents. Here’s a brief segment from his Q&A, but you do not want to miss Heller’s podcast conversation with our Tracy Ross:

SunLit: How does the relationship between your characters Jess and Storey, who emerge from their trip to find a starkly divided America, fit into the broader societal and political rift?

Heller: Well, there is this sense that whatever happens in this conflict — which may or may not be rippling out into the broader nation — their friendship is solid, irrevocable. I can only hope that their bond stands for the state of our Union. That whatever the perceived betrayals or wrongs … we can get past them.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH PETER HELLER

LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 The big news of the week was that a Mesa County jury returned a guilty verdict on most of the charges former Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters faced. Nancy Lofholm reported from the trial and served up the jury findings with a lot of important context. Related: Can people convicted of felonies vote in Colorado? It’s complicated.

🌞 More than half of Colorado school districts now have kids in the classroom just four days a week, a move superintendents attribute to budget problems. Erica Breunlin reports there are costs to the switch that are showing up in students’ academic performance.

🌞 In political news, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the presumptive Democratic nominee for vice president, was in Denver last week and raised $3 million for his run with Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House. Our own governor called a special legislative session to hammer out a deal that, among other things, is intended to keep two tax measures off the November ballot. The state GOP sent out a transphobic email ostensibly intended to support a well-loved Republican senator in a toss-up race in southern Colorado. He was mortified by the messaging.

🌞 A lot of money has flowed toward regional trail building projects, but not so many trails have been completed. Jason Blevins uses fragments of a trail from Carbondale to Crested Butte to explain the hold up.

🌞 An oil and gas operator with about 60 wells in Larimer County lost its right to do business in Colorado and must clean up two wells and processing sites north of Fort Collins within 90 days. Mark Jaffe explains why people living near those sites are OK that the deal with state regulators let Prospect Energy duck $1.7 million in penalties.

🌞 Colorado food banks have spent just about all the $10 million in pandemic-era aid allocated for the purchase of fresh food from small farms, Parker Yamasaki reports. So what happens after the money runs out?

🌞 Colorado’s surge of new business formations dropped like a stone in the year after the state reinstated full-freight filing fees. Economists told Tamara Chuang it just signals a return to normal. Speaking of which, metro Denver’s inflation rate fell — a lot faster than the nation as a whole — to 1.9%.

🌞 Good news! All that work to save the tiny endangered boreal toad seems to be paying off in Colorado. Jennifer Brown, who went on a recovery mission with biologists in 2019, reports the high-elevation amphibians seem to be breeding — a lot — near Pitkin.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for dropping by this morning, friends. If you’ve forgotten since the last time we said it, we appreciate all you do for us, whether it is sharing links to our stories, putting in a good word about The Sun, or subscribing to this newsletter.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Happy Colorado Sunday, friends.

It’s hard to believe that we’re well on our way to the end of summer. But time flies when you’re doing whatever you’re doing, fun or not.

It also hardly seems possible that more than four years have passed since I bowed to the stay-at-home orders of the pandemic and paid mighty tribute in the form of $20 bills handed through the door to brave pizza delivery kids. I happily added tips of 40% or 50% to the tab of my pick-up orders because I was grateful the bag included a mixed drink, even if it came bundled up in a styrofoam cup with a liquor “license” taped across the lid. I got so used to the self-imposed upcharges that I only barely cared when I started noticing little things like “staff benefits” charges still affixed to the ticket by the actual restaurants two years after public health restrictions were lifted.

I’m starting to feel it now. As menu prices continue to click up and restaurants and cafes in my orbit experiment with things like passing on credit card processing fees to customers and European-style service fees instead of tips, I wonder what I am paying for. I am especially aware of the little extra charges when service is a little sketchy or the food is not up to par.

In this week’s cover story, Tamara Chuang unpacks the economics of dining out, and explains how even some top Denver metro restaurateurs are struggling to keep their dining rooms and kitchens staffed and their operations profitable as the crowds come rushing back.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

The changing economics of eating out

Sometimes, you’ve got to look behind the data to figure out the reality of what’s going on. After a Denver economist told me that sales tax revenues for “food services and drinking places” rebounded surprisingly fast after the pandemic and the restaurants he frequented were busy, I began asking around.

Umm … no, Denise Mickelsen with the Colorado Restaurant Association essentially told me. “A busy restaurant isn’t always a thriving business, meaning that every single thing a restaurant operator needs to run their business right now costs more and more, and menu prices can’t rise in tandem or no one will go out to eat. That’s not a situation most restaurants can survive, which is why we continue to see closures across the state.”

I reached out to some of Denver’s top chefs and restaurateurs. I was floored by their willingness to share specific details about what it takes to operate a restaurant in 2024. Some added service charges in lieu of tips. Others took pricier items off the menu. They’ve had to adjust to the new economy. But just as consumers have dealt with higher prices and slower-growing incomes, owners, too, seem to be living paycheck to paycheck. Not broke, but not able to save or make much of a profit.

The added challenges of surviving in Denver have contributed to many calling it quits. It’s rough for everyone, but is this just a cycle? New restaurants continue to open weekly in Denver.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Tamara Chuang | Business/Technology Reporter

The Colorado Lens

Many essential workers behind the scenes, from educators to the farmers, keep the world connected and functioning on a daily basis. Here are recent photos by The Sun photo team in appreciation of the less-visible workers across Colorado.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Eagle’s Downvalley Vibe Fest hosting all-Colorado musicians

In 2014, Andy Jessen hatched a plan for a grassroots music festival outside his Bonfire Brewing bar in Eagle. His Bonfire Block Party blossomed, luring national acts for a three-day festival that took over most of downtown Eagle. When Jessen died in a backcountry avalanche in 2021, other businesses stepped in to carry the Eagle Block Party into a new chapter.

While the Eagle Block Party is not happening this year, the Second Street Tavern, which took over Jessen’s sadly departed Bonfire Brewing location in Eagle, is launching a festival that returns to Jessen’s original vision.

The Down Valley Vibes Fest — Aug. 23-24 — is a return to the roots of the Bonfire Block Party, with 20 musical acts, all Colorado based, playing in downtown Eagle.

“The Block Party contributed so much to our local music community and our local economy. It was something everyone in this town looked forward to every year. It’s disappointing it’s not happening, but it’s also an opportunity to do something new and different,” said Zach Gilliam, an Eagle musician who is shepherding the new festival plan. “Block Party disappearing this year opened an opportunity to put a spotlight on Colorado musicians.”

The Down Valley Vibes Festival features funky blues explorers Dragondeer and Denver’s roots-rock Taylor Scott Band as headliners, with an eclectic mix of musicians from the Eagle River Valley and the rest of Colorado. We are stoked to hear cosmic country jammers Extra Gold, psych-rockers Sqwerv and Eagle’s own Endless Shrimp. And we are especially excited about a two-day festival pass for $60. Check it out here or at downvalleyvibes.com.

Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“The Girls in the Cabin” introduces a darkly troubled girl, a grieving family

EXCERPT: Two slices of Caleb Stephens’ psychological thriller, “The Girls in the Cabin,” offer disturbing glimpses into what a widowed father hoped would be a healing camping trip for him and his two daughters — but which quickly turns into a nightmarish scenario. Told from multiple points of view, Stephens’ Colorado Book Award finalist lays the groundwork for characters caught in a web of darkness.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: After finishing a complex apocalyptic novel, Stephens wanted his next book to be more of a straightforward thriller. He explains how “The Girls in the Cabin” came to life, and how his Colorado roots influenced the writing. Here’s part of his Q&A:

SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?

Stephens: As a Colorado native who grew up in the southwestern part of the state (Cortez), I always wanted to write a book where the state not only served as the setting, but also as a character. … Settings should be immersive. And that’s what I wanted to do with this book — immerse the reader in a life-or-death struggle with a family and pose the question: How far would you go to save the ones you love?

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH CALEB STEPHENS

LISTEN TO OUR SUN-UP PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Many Colorado cities have playgrounds that are accessible to kids with disabilities. But parents are pushing to make sure that they’re also inclusive. Dan England reports from an inclusive, accessible playground being built in Berthoud to explain the difference.

🌞 All three Front Range forest fires are considered controlled and rain has been helping to snuff the hot spots. Olivia Prentzel reports that the Quarry and Alexander Mountain fires were caused by people. And Shannon Mullane looked into what the National Weather Service is calling a “flash drought” that set up perfect conditions for the wildfires to spread far and fast.

🌞 Speaking of those fires, is all that slurry dumped to douse flames and draw lines between the fireline and houses bad for the environment? Justin George checked and yes, it is harmful to waterways.

🌞 Colorado Parks and Wildlife thought it had a deal that would see 15 wolves removed from tribal lands in Washington and transplanted west of the Continental Divide. But the Colville Confederated Tribes have put the brakes on, Tracy Ross reports, because they say Colorado has done a poor job of negotiating with the Southern Ute Tribe over the potential impacts of the reintroduction.

🌞 A coalition of mountain towns is already lining up to push the state legislature next year to make it possible for them to tax houses that are almost always vacant. Jason Blevins explains the thinking behind yet another effort to solve for a shortage of housing in the high country.

🌞 Larimer County’s mental health center is letting 75 workers go. It wasn’t the first community health center in Colorado to make deep cuts. And as Jennifer Brown reports, it probably will not be the last as hundreds of thousands of Colorado people lose their Medicaid eligibility and massive changes are made to the way behavioral health providers are paid by the program.

🌞 What was it like to work on one of the most influential and controversial Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committees during the COVID-19 pandemic? Denver pediatrician Dr. Matthew Daley, who is ending his work on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, explained it all to John Ingold.

🌞 Birth rates across Colorado are down. The reasons are diverse and deeply personal. And Erica Breunlin lays out the impact already being felt by school districts trying to plan for the future.

🌞 There are two pack llamas on the lam in the San Juans near Lake City. Michael Booth has the story of how they were lost and what’s being done to find them.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for hanging out with us this weekend — we do appreciate the attention. We’ll see you back here next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Happy — I hope — Colorado Sunday, friends. I guess I jinxed the whole state last week when I suggested things would be cooling off a bit. So I’m just going to keep my thoughts and prayers inside my head this go-round and focus on that one time I went with my brother, husband and sister-in-law on an adventure in the Lower Arkansas River Valley.

The pictures from that day have us looking sunburned and maybe a little parched, but comfortable perhaps because three-quarters of our crew have ancestral roots in the arid towns east of Colorado Springs and Pueblo. But when our people got there 160 years ago, the would-be towns weren’t so arid and our great-greats maybe didn’t have to worry so much about how to irrigate their crops or graze their animals, or whether the water in their cups was safe to drink.

This week’s cover story by Michael Booth and Jerd Smith is an ambitious look at how the growth aspirations of big cities to the north are dramatically changing the fields and fortunes of southeastern plains communities that only have so much water left to give up.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Water moves in mysterious — and frustrating — ways

In a state where not enough water falls from the sky in the places where people use it, folks spend a lot of time, effort and money moving the water to where they want it.

We moved water under the mountains for distant cities and farms. We moved water from those farms back to the growing cities. This week, we’re lifting water back up to the mountains bucket by massive bucket to douse raging wildfires.

In the past couple of years, one particular movement — redirecting water from growing corn and wheat on the plains to watering lawns in the suburbs — has accelerated again. That may well be the highest and best use of some precious Colorado water, when 80% of the overall supply goes to farming arid land.

But shouldn’t we have a good debate about it first?

This Sunday, we’re trying to give voice to the less-powerful counties framing the Lower Arkansas River, from Pueblo to the Kansas line. Aurora, Colorado Springs and Pueblo want increasing amounts of those counties’ farm water to slake their thirsty suburban growth.

It’s happening. Is anybody who has the power to make it happen in a fair way paying attention?

After weeks of reporting, traveling and pleading with state officials for a meaningful interview rather than replies on paper, a certain kind of ennui became the theme. Everyone seems sympathetic. No one admits to being in charge.

Countless hours have been passed in sincere water conferences coming up with a plan to both preserve agriculture in Colorado and help cities get what they need. If we’re letting the cities win by indecision, let’s at least acknowledge that. If we agree farm economies are vital, let’s act like that.

Knowledge is power. We’re hoping to add a little more to the pool.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Michael Booth | Reporter

Jerd Smith | Fresh Water News

The Colorado Lens

The constant threat of wildland fires is a grim reality of living in Colorado. When fires occur, they can alter plans for weeks, or even a lifetime for those who lose their homes. This week, the photographers on the ground were there to create a visual narrative.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Olathe Sweet corn delivered to a parking lot near you

As connoisseurs of Colorado’s summer harvests know, there’s corn, like the kind you get from certain farms in, say, Nebraska, and CORN, like the kind you get from Olathe. And while the first might have the sweetness of, say, a Necco Wafer, the second is basically the definition of sweet.

Olathe Sweet corn kernels burst with sugary goodness thanks to crops grown at high-ish elevations under intense sunlight in Montrose County. Cool nights coupled with hot days bring out the flavor as only Mother Nature can orchestrate. If you think about it, you could say each bite of Olathe Sweet corn is a bite of Mother Nature bathed in sunlight. And if images of the ultimate pinup model aren’t coming to mind right now, then perhaps you don’t deserve to eat it.

But if you do possess the appropriate appreciation, you’re in for the butter on the ear of Colorado corn. Starting this month, the Harold family, growers of Olathe Sweet on their Tuxedo Farm since the 1970s, are expanding their direct-to-consumer reach with refrigerated truck deliveries to locations along the Front Range.

You might think of it as the old ice cream truck in the neighborhood model, with sunburned kids clutching grubby nickels. Except this is for foodies with $25 who don’t mind a little starch in their teeth.

Yes, you still can buy Olathe Sweet at King Soopers, or at the farm shed in Olathe. But for a month starting Wednesday, Tuxedo’s trucks will be making stops between Cheyenne and Pueblo. All you do is hit up the Tuxedo Corn website, place your order and arrive at the designated location at the designated time. The truck will be at Tractor Supply in Loveland on Thursday and China Buffet in Longmont on Aug. 21, for example. Or why not make a day of it by bowling at Highland Lanes in Greeley or eating a sub at Deli Dave’s in Pueblo West while you wait.

Tracy Ross | Reporter

SunLit: Sneak Peek

A secret liaison with a student led CU professor to live “Separate Lives”

EXCERPT: Mary Rippon was a groundbreaking professor at the University of Colorado as the first woman to hold that position at CU and possibly the first at any state university. She also harbored a secret — a student with whom she had an affair and a daughter — and proceeded to keep her private life hidden, in contrast to her renown as a professor. As Silvia Pettem’s biography shows, that was a particularly fraught proposition in Victorian-era Boulder.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Pettem recounts how primary documents helped her uncover many details about Rippon’s life and convince her that the story needed to be told. Here’s a snippet from her Q&A:

SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?

Pettem: It was Mary’s writings that allowed me to vicariously experience her life and times and try to imagine her life through her own eyes. To help achieve that goal, I wrote my first draft in the first person –– as if I were Mary, and as if I were writing my own memoir. Her diaries were very cryptic, and the process of deciphering them allowed me to “get inside her head.” In my attempts, I believe I gained insight into some of her very private thoughts, even a glimpse into her soul.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH SILVIA PETTEM

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 It was a bad week in terms of fires. We’ve got you covered, though. In addition to daily updates, we have stories from the major fires, including news that the Quarry fire in Jefferson County is being investigated as arson. We also mapped every fire in Colorado for the past 15 years and it’s a big number. The smoke’s bad in a lot of places, so we talked to lung experts about how to cope. Smart people at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are figuring out how to use artificial intelligence to identify forest fires earlier than humans might detect smoke or flames. Fires are burning near sources of Front Range drinking water, so we asked about the implications. And hasn’t Estes Park suffered enough?

🌞 A new Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge opened this weekend, about 3.5 miles west of the old hospital. John Ingold explains why the new hospital is essential and how the transition to the new one was planned.

🌞 The fighting over management of the state Republican party has some real-life implications for GOP statehouse candidates. Jesse Paul maps out the strategies people running for office are using — minus support from the state party.

🌞 The trial started for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk facing felony charges related to her role breaching her own county’s election system. Nancy Lofholm is in the courtroom alongside Peters’ supporters, including child-star-turned-election denier Ricky Schroder. (Yes, really.)

🌞 At a time when sophisticated surveillance tech is everywhere it seems weird that the state Child Ombudsman Office even needs to ask, but the agency is demanding that the state Division of Youth Services collect audio along with video of staff interaction with employees and people who are in detention. Jennifer Brown reports that 70 kids and teens have reported they were mistreated while they were locked up.

🌞The state’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association may have been making bad assumptions about who is going to draw a pension, when and how much they were being paid in the key final years on the job. Brian Eason has some of the details and reports that the uncertainty may lead to a legislative oversight committee making even more changes to the troubled retirement plan.

🌞 Yes, you can surf in Colorado. And the surfing is really good this year in Salida. Jason Blevins went to check out “the best river wave in the world.”

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for the time this morning, friends. I hope you all are safe this week. See you back here next Colorado Sunday.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Hi friends! I hope you all are managing the heat and the haze of distant wildfires and finding ways to enjoy this Colorado Sunday.

I might have mentioned it a million times before, but I live in a place where the long view over farm fields to the east is being rapidly filled with homes platted in the growth zone of a very aspirational neighboring city. I know it wouldn’t be happening if there wasn’t demand, but I still feel the encroachment on my sense of place.

What’s happening at the edge of my little town is probably why this week’s cover story by freelance journalist Kari Dequine Harden really resonates with me. She reported from rural South Routt County on plans to remake a middle-class community built on the foundations of a failed ski area into a lavish, members-only compound for the uber-wealthy in the model of the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana. The project is probably 30 years from completion — assuming it is approved. Some neighbors who live there now wonder if the place they call home can survive what the developers have in mind.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Stagecoach Mountain Ranch story is a tale repeated across the West

The narrative is so pervasive it is becoming tired: Ultrawealthy people buying up houses and open space in and around resort towns across the Mountain West at a rapidly accelerating rate. Middle and lower class people getting pushed out. An affordable housing crisis that doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

But when I heard about this particular development proposal, for a posh ski and golf resort at the edge of Stagecoach Reservoir, it felt different.

It felt like this plan to sandwich working class people between a golf course they can never golf on and a ski area they can never ski on in order to sell houses to wealthy people at an obscene cost — precisely to avoid the discomfort of being around working class people — epitomized the tale of the haves versus the have-nots in a way that is uniquely Rocky Mountain.

This is not just the story of Stagecoach. It’s the story of demographics that are changing in a very fundamental way in so many resort towns in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah or Wyoming.

The story also is incredibly complex. Rural South Routt County, now targeted for this new sanctuary for the elite, can use additional property tax revenue for schools. For roads. For other infrastructure. Jobs? I don’t know — as a former restaurant manager in this area I have first-hand experience at how impossible it was to find employees, at least for “regular people” jobs.

And is there an element of preservation in handing wild land over to the ultrawealthy? There are intriguing arguments on both sides.

Over the next year or more there is no doubt that the Stagecoach Mountain Ranch development proposal is going to divide the community. Is going to test the resolve of the community. Is going to test the teeth of Colorado’s environmental protections. So buckle up! This is just the beginning.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Kari Dequine Harden | Special to The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Lens

July in Colorado is for outdoor music, wildflowers, afternoon thunderstorms and, unfortunately, grassland fires. Here are our recents images from the mountain corridor.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Don’t let your skin sizzle. Slather up with free SPF.

There’s nothing like a few runs of weather that makes us feel like we’re living in an air fryer to put sunscreen top of mind.

The necessity of protecting your skin when outdoors cannot be overstated. Colorado’s average altitude of 6,800 feet above sea level (thanks 14ers!) puts just about every resident in the state a mile closer to the sun than most other places in the country — and that much more at risk for damage that can lead to skin cancer.

While we’ve apparently been doing a decent job of covering up and putting on the SPF — Colorado’s melanoma rate is about 18.6 cases per 100,000 people compared with Utah at 40.7 — the state would like us to do a better job.

That’s why Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the state health department and UCHealth have set up stations serving free sunscreen at seven state parks. If you must recreate during the riskiest part of the day, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., at Chatfield, Roxborough, Golden Gate Canyon, Eleven Mile and Spinney, Ridgway, State Forest or Castlewood Canyon state parks, there will be an IMPACT Melanoma-branded dispenser standing in plain view. Help yourself to a splash of SPF 30 and enjoy your adventure.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

SunLit: Sneak Peek

Right out of the dock, “The Waterman” charts a course for trouble

EXCERPT: In “The Waterman,” Gary Schanbacher’s collection of interconnected short stories, the restless, impetuous elements of youth wash over protagonist Clayton Royster — the prologue to a narrative arc that spans 80-some years of his life. Schanbacher’s book, scheduled for release in October, expands on the character he created in a previous novella.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: As Schanbacher experimented with various drafts of Royster’s story, he wasn’t sure what form it should take. Eventually, he landed upon the linked short story collection, which fit his purposes but also presented its own challenges. Here’s a slice of his Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Schanbacher: Other than the usual false starts, dead-ends, and countless drafts, the challenge wasn’t so much in the writing as in finding a publisher. The format of the book is not ideal for one of the large publishing houses. It is brief (but not small, I hope) and a hybrid of sorts — Is it a novel? A story collection? … I was not interested in self-publishing, so I began the search for an independent, traditional outlet.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH GARY SCHANBACHER

LISTEN TO A PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 There’s still time today to catch a few shows at Underground Music Showcase, Denver’s largest music festival. Parker Yamasaki reports the good news that the festival finally has a team paying attention to accessibility in the venues along South Broadway.

🌞 This is the first year Colorado people have been able to take paid family and medical leave under a new state-managed program. Tamara Chuang looked at the first six months of statistics and found out far fewer people applied for leave than projected and an unexpectedly small number of them took leave to care for a new baby.

🌞 Two lawsuits over Summit County vacation rental regulations are over, but as Jason Blevins reports, the fight absolutely isn’t finished.

🌞 Fatalities on Colorado roads were down during the first half of this year, and way down when we’re talking about pedestrians and cyclists, Olivia Prentzel reports.

🌞 After logging 30 cases of avian influenza in 30 days, the state now is requiring all commercial dairies in Colorado to test for the disease. John Ingold reports that the idea is to improve Colorado’s worst-in-the-nation infection rates.

🌞 The relationship between the Colorado Child Protection Ombudsman and the Colorado Department of Human Services is fraught by design. But Jennifer Brown reports that a fight over caseworkers found to have falsified records has led to a standoff requiring the ombudsman to file — and pay for — open records requests for access to crucial data.

🌞 The Olympics are underway in Paris. If you missed it, we did a primer on the Colorado athletes to watch. We’ve got an eye on cycling — especially the three athletes Ryan Simonovich introduced us to. They’re all from Durango, which has sent competitors to every Summer Games since 1996.

🌞 Who’s a good dog? Ash the fire-detecting dog is a good dog, with a very particular set of skills.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for hanging out with us today! We’ll see you back here next Colorado Sunday. Want to bring a new friend? The more, the merrier! Please share this link with them: coloradosun.com/join.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Good Colorado Sunday, friends.

I hope your weekend is going well and that you’re able to poke around a bit outdoors now that the temperatures have dipped closer to “seasonally appropriate.”

Over here, the sizzling heat that defined the start of this month wreaked havoc in my garden. It’s been too hot for the tomatoes to set fruit and for the first time in a long time, my garlic sent up no scapes and only a few cloves planted last fall bulbed up as they were supposed to. Garlic is highly reliable in Colorado, so the thought of going into fall with only a handful of weird super cloves and a few sadly small bulbs is disappointing.

This week’s cover story by Nancy Lofholm made me feel a bit better about my crop failure. The Palisade farmers she joined for their big summer dig face similar challenges, but still are entranced by the vast variety of flavor and fragrance their half-acre garlic garden produces.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Yes, Palisade is peachy, but garlic also has deep roots here

Palisade is one of those places that instantly conjures pastoral images of peach trees, lavender fields and vineyards. So, I was a little surprised late last summer when a friend asked, during one of our Sunday morning visits to the farmers market, “Do you have time to visit the garlic farm?”

Garlic farm? It turns out that I had ridden my bike past the small Green Acres U-Pick farm dozens of times but had never associated it with one of my favorite seasonings.

It didn’t take long amid the boxes and bags of allium sativum on Bob and Elaine Korvers’ small front patio — their garlic showroom — to realize that there was a story there. I had thought garlic was garlic. Toss it in pasta. Chop it in pico de gallo. Slather it on bread. My garlic knowledge didn’t extend beyond my nose and my taste buds.

I learned that day it’s possible to take a savory and olfactory world tour with the Korvers’ garlic bulbs.

So, this summer, when Bob started digging up bulbs with enticing names like Nootka rose and Asian tempest, I was there tromping along and trying to decipher the charts needed to track what’s what and what’s where in the garlic patch.

The Korvers not only grow between 40 and 50 varieties of garlic from all over the world. They also give you a little geography, history and taste lesson with each fat bulb — not a surprise from a former teacher and a retired librarian.

So, tromp along with me to the garlic farm. I promise not to make a single nose-for-news joke.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Nancy Lofholm | Reporter

The Colorado Lens

From the highs of the Rocky Mountains to the lows of the metro areas, Colorado offers a diverse set of people and places. Here are the recent images from the Sun as we swing through July.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

The little engine that probably won’t show up anytime soon

In March, the governor and transit leaders hopped a train to Longmont to demonstrate an alternative to the madness on Interstate 25. Once rail service returns, that is.

No need to buy a ticket just yet.

Coloradans have been paying for imaginary trains for nearly two decades as part of the FasTracks ballot initiative passed in 2004. Now our elected trainspotters are looking for half a billion more dollars to fire up the engines from Pueblo to FoCo.

This time it’s going to happen. No, really. Just a few more details to clean up.

SEE THE PREDICTIONS FOR WHEN FRONT RANGE RAIL WILL RETURN

Peter Moore | Illustrator

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“Blood Betrayal” sends readers on a twisting tale along a racial divide

EXCERPT: Two police shootings in one Colorado night set the stage for Ausma Zehanat Khan’s Colorado Book Award-winning mystery that turns its lens on race relations and how these incidents are perceived across the board. This slice of the book’s beginning focuses on a white cop who kills a Black man during a street chase. Khan’s protagonist, detective Inaya Rahman, a practicing Muslim, adds another twist to the genre.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Khan explains that she selected this particular excerpt in part because it tests readers’ assumptions about the kind of incident that happens repeatedly in America. And she notes it has particular resonance for Colorado, given its history of police shootings. Here’s a portion of her Q&A:

SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?

Khan: I selected it for impact and because it encapsulates the novel’s central themes. A white police officer mistakenly shoots and kills a young Black man whom he assumes is a criminal. Scenarios like this have become routine in the United States in recent years. And it was important to me to reflect on that knowing that the state of Colorado ranks fifth in the nation in terms of officer-involved shootings.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH AUSMA ZEHANAT KHAN

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Attainable housing is a top economic issue in Colorado. Lately, Brian Eason reports, policymakers are directing funding to building projects affordable to middle-income families who make as much as $170,000 a year.

🌞 The Republican presidential nominating convention wrapped in Milwaukee with all 37 of Colorado’s delegates casting their votes for Donald Trump. And now we turn our attention to the Democratic convention where the buzz out in the world suggests that voters are somewhat less aligned behind the reelection of President Joe Biden. Jesse Paul and Sandra Fish surveyed the delegates to the DNC in Chicago and they seemed more certain.

🌞 In other political news, state Rep. Jennifer Parenti, a Democrat, has dropped her reelection bid in the 19th House district. The last-minute move has watchers worried Dems won’t maintain their supermajority in the House next year. Eighth Congressional District candidate Gabe Evans, a Republican, is paying himself a salary from his campaign account, just like incumbent U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo did when she ran in the district the first time. A two-week trial challenging Colorado’s voter-approved campaign contribution limits started last week. Now that Democrat Adam Frisch doesn’t have an extreme candidate to run against in the 3rd Congressional District, he’s trying to run on the issue of protecting access to abortion. It’s a risky move. State GOP Chairman Dave Williams sent a $60,000 check to the party. He says it is not to reimburse the party for using its mailing permit.

🌞 Many of us wondered what was next for Carrie Hauser when she left her post leading Colorado Mountain College. Now we know: She’s the new boss of the 32-office Trust for Public Land. Jason Blevins spent a lot of time talking to her. You can listen in on the conversation: PODCAST.

🌞 At least two big gravel race organizers in Colorado are adding rules of the road to the documents participants must sign before they ride. Tracy Ross reports on a conflict during Ned Gravel that illustrates why organizers think this is a necessary move.

🌞 Colorado could be better at recycling. Part of the problem is that many of us don’t believe what we toss is getting reused. Tamara Chuang looked a bit more deeply into the trash and found a bunch of interesting Colorado companies that are making new markets for your old stuff.

🌞 The Summer Olympics start this week. John Ingold has data on Colorado’s athlete roster in a series of charts that started when we realized our state has the second largest number of competitors — at least on a per capita basis.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for spending time with us this morning. We appreciate every link you click and every story you share with friends and family. If you’ve got a pal you’d like to invite to the Colorado Sunday crew, please share this link with them: coloradosun.com/join.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Story first appeared in:

In a farmyard on the western outskirts of Palisade, a distinct odor seeps through the sweet scent of ripening peaches, the yeasty aroma of fermenting wine, and the perfume of lavender.

It doesn’t take a vampire to recognize that punchy smell. It is allium sativum — garlic — and it is wafting from the Green Acres U-Pick farm.

Green Acres U-Pick is the most prolific grower of garlic varieties in Colorado. In five acres that neighbor a handful of wineries, bulbs of Montana Zemo, Russian giant, Georgian crystal, Killarney red, rose de Lautrec and dozens of other garlic cultivars are waiting under the soil for farmer Bob Korver’s digging fork. 

About 1,500 pounds of bulbs will be liberated within the next several weeks.

Bob and his wife, Elaine, still have fruits and vegetables dotting and fringing their small farm, but it is the half-acre spiked with the spear-like leaves of 40 garlic varieties that has bumped up the Korvers from garlic growers to garlic geeks.

If the Korvers were to put pins on a map showing where their garlic cultivars originated, the dots would be sprinkled to the far reaches of the world.

This year’s garlic crop originated in Siberia, the Republic of Georgia, the San Juan Islands, Uzbekistan, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Transylvania, South Korea, Vietnam and Romania. There is also garlic that was first grown in California, New Mexico and the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington.

“I don’t think you will find anyone that is crazy as I am,” Bob admits about his garlic enthusiasm.

Elaine puts that obsession into more sensible terms: “We like to experiment.”

How to grow (and sell) garlic by hand

All the work of planting and harvesting garlic at Green Acres is done by hand except for the initial field preparation. Bob does that by putting around on his little orange Kubota tractor to create furrows.

Halloween is planting season. That’s when Bob hunkers down over those rows poking each garlic clove into the ground. For the next seven months, if all goes right, those single cloves will expand into a fist-sized bulb made up of many cloves.

Shortly after each Fourth of July, Bob starts the harvest by aiming his trusty garden fork with uncanny accuracy into the weed-choked rows. He digs and hauls in the early mornings and the evenings because the hot sun can leach some of the flavor from garlic.

He lays out the newborn allium bulbs in his well-used wheelbarrow and hauls them one load at a time up the road, past the revelers on the patio of Red Fox Cellars winery, to the Korvers’ little garlic-colored house.

There Elaine sorts it, with nothing more than an appraising eye and a quick heft in the hand to determine the size of each bulb.

In a couple of weeks, this same patio will become the sales floor for Green Acres garlic.

The Korvers don’t waste any time or money on advertising. Those in the know watch their Facebook page for Elaine’s posts that the garlic is ready or that different varieties are running out.

Right now, the Korvers’ earliest harvest is undergoing a two-week curing rest in their four-car garage (which has never had a car in it). They fill it with garlic four times each season.

Bob is responsible for nipping the leaves and stems from the rested bulbs before Elaine takes a cheapo toothbrush to them to banish clinging dirt. Bob helps out with that task, too, when he is waiting for dinner or hiding from the heat.

Last year, there was more scrubbing to do. The Korvers had 50 cultivars of garlic. A few of those didn’t do so well in the increasing heat of western Colorado.

Bob could easily have replaced those with some of the new allium cultivars he ogles in seed catalogues during the winter, but “she said enough,” he explains while cutting his eyes toward Elaine.

She levels a hard stare at him over a grin: “Enough is right!”

Trading the classroom for the field

The Korvers, both in their early 70s and married for 37 years, never saw garlic taking over their lives back in the day.

Bob moved with his third-generation agricultural family to a farm just down the road from Green Acres when he was 4 years old. He grew up picking peaches and trying to listen to his father who warned him: “If you want to make a million dollars in farming, start out with $2 million.”

He went off to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, then on to Colorado State University where he earned a master’s in guidance counseling. He taught English and journalism and coached volleyball and track as well as serving as a counselor at schools in Columbus, Nebraska, on the Eastern Plains of Colorado and eventually in Steamboat Springs.

Elaine first met Bob in Greeley where she was attending college to earn a degree in library science. She describes herself as a city girl. She had grown up in Omaha, Nebraska, and after college aspired to teach in larger places like Denver and later Grand Junction.

The two came together like garlic and bread when Elaine was doing a librarian stint in Rifle during the oil shale boom. Friends invited her along to watch a volleyball game in Steamboat.

In between games, she spotted a guy in the bleachers who was busy grading papers, oblivious to the hubbub around him. His briefcase was beside him. Bob!

Their conversation led to a connection and eventually to Green Acres after they both decided they would retire from their professions and farm together. They would grow fruits and vegetables without using pesticides and herbicides and showcase rows of lavender.

This story first appeared in
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They proved they could master lavender when their oils won two first-place prizes in an international lavender competition last year in Australia.

Neither one remembers exactly how they came to decide that the fragrant lines of waving lavender could be neighbors to a garlic plot. It has something to do with saving water. Garlic does not require much water.

Bob’s years of classroom planning made him well suited to garlic farming. Garlic is an easy thing to grow. Home gardeners can plunk cloves in loose soil and create a bulb. But the way Bob does it requires complicated charts and graphs and timing schedules. Locations, planting dates, size of cloves, names are all neatly printed out on papers spotted with sweat and dirt, and snapped onto a clipboard that resides in the garlic field while Bob is working there.

His colored charts correspond to brown, pink, blue, red, green, orange and yellow flags that flutter at the end of rows in the recent air-fryer heat.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to think they were getting one kind of garlic and get another,” Elaine explains about all that paperwork. She is, she admits, “the queen of handouts.”

Each garlic bulb sold or given away at Green Acres comes with one of Elaine’s cheat sheets of information about that particular cultivar. Elaine staples the info to the brown paper bags that she stresses are the only proper receptacles for storing garlic. Her slips include information on variety, taste, storage, cooking, how many cloves should be in one bulb, where the garlic originated and where the seed to grow it came from.

Elaine’s taste descriptions require a passel of adjectives, including mellow, complex, spicy, musky, hot, full-bodied and even explosive. 

Beyond supermarket garlic

“I never knew there were that many varieties. It’s insane,” says Katie Henderson, a dedicated garlic customer at Green Acres who claims to cook with garlic every day.  When she runs low on Green Acres garlic, she asks the Korvers to scrounge around for scraps. Even a couple of cloves will do, she says, to keep her from having to buy grocery store bulbs that she now writes off as bland.

Julie McSherry of Omaha waits every year at this time for a box of garlic from Green Acres.

“I get about 15 types. The variety is exceptional,” she says. “Pungent is a good word for it.”

Pungent is a good word for it.

— Julie McSherry, an Omaha resident who gets a yearly box of garlic from Green Acres

Jarrett Nelson says Green Acres garlic has become a favorite at the Gypsum Fire Protection District where he works with the Korvers’ son.

“I am not a garlic taste-tester expert, but I can definitely tell the difference,” he says of the many varieties he has tried and used in his firehouse meals of lasagna and carne asada. This year, he has found more recipes to showcase garlic. He also plans to roast it, store it in olive oil and turn it into a butter.

Sherrie and Scott Hamilton who own Red Fox Cellars say they also cook with it regularly. They welcome garlic wafting over to mingle with the top notes of cabernet franc and merlot at their winery.

“A lot of my customers see Bob out there working in his field and they ask us, ‘What is it that he’s doing?’” she says.

A crop with deep roots

If wine tasters wander over to talk to Bob, they can get a garlic lesson.

Garlic is one of the oldest crops tended by humans. It is believed to have evolved and spread from south central Asia and was carried around the Mediterranean and European continents by nomadic tribes.

Garlic appears in the oldest written language, Sanskrit, in writings from 5,000 years ago. The Egyptians used garlic with its loads of sulfides for food and medicine. They revered it so much they entombed garlic with their dead.

There are two subgroups of garlic — hardneck and softneck. The hardneck varieties send up a flower stalk that is known as a scape (a tasty morsel on the grill or in a pickle jar). Hardnecks do better in colder climates, and they often pack the spiciest punch.

Softneck garlic (the kind you will see in those fancy garlic braids) has no tough stem.

Beyond those neck differences, there are 13 sub-varieties of garlic. Bob holds up one called an artichoke. The name comes from the fact that the cloves resemble artichoke petals. The cloves on the outside are large, and they get smaller toward the center.

Bob has also grown sub-varieties of porcelains, purple stripes and creoles.

He didn’t do great with the latter, he says, because he failed to figure out that something called creole would do better in Southern climates.

 “I’m kind of slow sometimes. I learn some things the hard way,” Bob says, garnering an indulgent smile from Elaine.

Garlic’s future 

There are other vegetable farms around Colorado that grow garlic. The Rocky Mountain Garlic Farm near Salida grows about a quarter-acre on an agricultural operation that has gone in the opposite direction of Green Acres and pivoted to more vegetables. Several other small Colorado garlic farms have closed in recent years.

Trisha Nungester with Tagawa Gardens in Centennial says Tagawa sells about 40 varieties — mainly for seed. Their garlic comes from multiple sources, including the motherlode of U.S. garlic, Filaree Farms in Washington state. When Tagawa announces that garlic is ready for sale, there is always a line out the door with people clamoring for favorite varieties.

In terms of homegrown variety in Colorado, the Korvers take the odiferous prize.

They grouse about maybe wanting to plant less. They both have had health problems in recent years.

But their seed-saving practices say cutbacks won’t happen soon.

They are already at work picking out 300 pounds of the fattest bulbs that will be saved to seed next year’s crops.

And there is always one new garlic variety to try, one more wheelbarrow load to sort, one more giant bulb to marvel over, and one more group of kids who come to Green Acres to get a farming lesson from a librarian and a teacher who can’t drop those old habits.

Bob won’t tell many of them one of the deepest, darkest secrets of Green Acres: He really doesn’t like to eat garlic.

Good morning, all.

I hope everyone managed through the last few sizzling days with a minimal amount of sweating, though I know that’s probably not how it went down. The good thing about weather like this is that it can allow you to shift your gaze for a day or two, focusing on indoor hobbies or aspirational browsing for a place to be next time a heat dome settles over your house.

I can remember when I was a kid that we sometimes spent hot summer days in my grandparents’ basement messing around with this weird multiband radio my grandfather had on a shelf that purportedly could allow us to listen to people sending shortwave radio signals from far, far away. My memory is garbled, but I remember him talking about at some point (probably when he was a kid himself) listening in on transmissions relayed by shortwave from Admiral Richard Byrd’s Little America outpost on the South Pole to receivers thousands of miles away. I like to think that these fuzzy messages helped spark his love for travel and his curiosity about the lives of distant people.

This week’s cover story by Jason Blevins helped confirm my thinking. He and photographer Andy Colwell spent a weekend in a remote corner of Park County with a group of people who still tinker with radio technology and use it to listen to the world, but also step up to help in times of community crisis.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Radio to the rescue!

A couple months ago, we got a dazzling treat in Colorado when the aurora borealis made a rare appearance in the northern sky, painting the horizon with dancing streaks of green and purple.

It wasn’t just the sky gazers who were thrilled. Amateur radio operators often see space weather storms acting as a sort of atmospheric reflector that can enable radio signals to reach much farther than normal. And in some locations, the solar flares from the sun that pepper light-reflecting particles in the upper atmosphere can also wreak havoc on radio signals.

Either way, it was a spicy time for ham radio operators who have been helping the federal government better understand how the most powerful geomagnetic storms in more than 20 years in May impacted communications.

Ham radio operators are always eager to help. They’ve been poised to step up for more than a century.

Last month The Colorado Sun spent a day with the technical wizards in the Rocky Mountain HAM Radio Club. In a mountain meadow far from pavement, the radio operators circled their trailers and retired satellite news trucks to create a communications command post as part of the national amateur radio field day that started in 1933.

They spent the day reaching across radio waves, making contacts far and wide as they honed technical communications skills that are essential in crises.

It could be a tornado, flood, hailstorm or wildfire. Maybe an earthquake or solar storm has knocked out satellite communication. Maybe rural emergency service folks need help with a big event, like a mountain bike or running race. Whatever the reason, there are 19,629 licensed amateur radio operators in Colorado — almost 750,000 in the U.S. — who are trained and ready to keep critical communications flowing.

“There is only so much local sheriffs can do in small towns and you will see amateur radio operators stepping in to fill the gaps as volunteers to help as a second service to our emergency management professionals,” said Desiree Baccus with the nonprofit Rocky Mountain HAM Radio club that maintains a network of radio-transmitting equipment across Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter

The Colorado Lens

From the farmlands to the urban centers, here is our curated visual feed created as we swung through the midsummer heat in Colorado.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Cool off in a river made from carpet

The heat might seem too intimidating for a visit to the Denver Botanic Gardens’ York Street location, but it’s a great time to check out indoor exhibits and the library, grab a lemonade or iced coffee at Copper Door or lunch at Offshoots Cafe.

Totally worth your time is River’s Voice, which highlights artist Alexandra Kehayoglou’s hand-tufted carpet depicting Argentina’s Paraná de las Palmas River and the wetlands surrounding it, along with several smaller works focusing on the area. Her works highlight the impacts of climate change, creating detailed depictions of the river ecosystem, which is threatened by development and agriculture. You may actually walk (in stocking feet) across the major work, which hangs from a wall and spills to the floor. (Kehayoglou has another work, a carpet made from used plastics, in the Denver Art Museum’s Biophilia exhibit.)

Across the hall at the botanic gardens, check out photographer Elliot Ross’ Geography of Hope featuring large-scale photos of Glen Canyon, where the West’s years of drought have revealed canyons of the past.

And if you can take the heat, check out the gardens at 1007 York St. They’re open most days from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sandra Fish | Data Journalist

SunLit: Sneak Peek

A struggling middle-aged woman takes to the highway in “Three Keys”

EXCERPT: Ammalie Brinks is in crisis mode, much like the world around her. The frazzled protagonist of “Three Keys,” award-winning author Laura Pritchett’s latest novel, has hit the road in search of equilibrium, herself and maybe even love — of an unexpected nature. This slice of narrative introduces a character whose adventures take her across the country, and beyond, with the help of keys that provide her unauthorized access to accommodations along the way.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: The backstory to Pritchett’s novel is a great peek into the creative process, and she goes on to touch on some of the themes that emerge throughout the narrative. Here’s a portion of her Q&A:

SunLit: Your protagonist, Ammalie Brinks, is wrestling with middle age and a world that no longer conforms to the norms she used to observe. Did you construct this character from whole cloth, or is she more of a composite?

Pritchett: Like me, Ammalie is going through the transformation into middle age — and confronting the accompanying invisibility situation. And it’s true that our culture does a fine job of erasing older women — an impulse that must be met with resistance, of course. How satisfying, then, to be playing around with the idea of anonymity and the exact opposite, which is really being seen as the manifested, powerful, perfect self we are.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH LAURA PRITCHETT

LISTEN TO A PODCAST FEATURING THE AUTHOR

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 One day Nederland voted down a plan to build a pump track in Chipeta Park. A few weeks later, a bunch of mad dads were carving a simple course from the dirt on privately owned lot where kids can have fun and learn how to handle their bikes — for free. Tracy Ross reports on the issue that frames up the challenges of governing in a small town that serves a much bigger community.

🌞 A nonprofit that started out as a mechanism to fund Gov. Jared Polis’ transition team in 2019 but morphed into a big-spending advocacy group violated a law (signed by Polis) governing when political groups must disclose their donors. Sandra Fish reports the terms of a settlement with Boldly Forward Colorado.

🌞 In other political news, the state Senate Ethics Committee found Sen. Faith Winter violated the chamber’s ethics policy when she appeared to be intoxicated when she attended a community meeting in Northglenn. Data shows that 70% of motorists opted out of paying $29 attached to their license plate renewals to pay for state parks, but the program still met its budget goals. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet joined the chorus of Democrats concerned that President Joe Biden can’t win his re-election bid. Attorney General Phil Weiser went to the town of San Luis to learn more about the fight over a high fence keeping people allowed onto privately owned Cielo Vista Ranch from accessing their century-old right. Colorado Dems are heading into the November election with supermajority on their minds. Hitting the goal may be tough.

🌞 Xcel Energy has been slow rolling rules for hooking up rooftop and community solar systems to the grid. Regulators and consumer advocates are so mad about it that they’re asking the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to force the utility to get going, Mark Jaffe reports.

🌞 Yes, fire season is a year-round condition now. But it’s hot out and fires keep popping up, which got us wondering where those expensive Firehawk helicopters the state bought to drop water on wildfires are. Olivia Prentzel found out one $30 million craft is ready to fly, but it might not show up at the next Colorado fire.

🌞 Speaking of climate disasters, it’s getting harder for people to maintain their home and vehicle insurance in Colorado. Michael Booth explains what’s going on. And he convened a panel to talk about it in detail, which you can watch on our YouTube channel.

🌞 This story by Jennifer Brown is particularly evocative as she describes what it was like to attend a large and busy reunion at the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind. Oh, and for the first time in the school’s history, the top leader is deaf.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

That’s a wrap, friends. We’ll see you back here next beautiful Colorado Sunday. If you’d like to invite a friend to join the party, please share this link with them: coloradosun.com/join. And, as always, we appreciate your support!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Happy Colorado Sunday, friends.

I was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago to help judge a business writing contest. It’s fun to hang out with national colleagues for a day. But the real gift is in the required reading, a kind of crash course in the ways crucial issues are being reported in communities across the country. A theme or two always emerges, and this year it was the hard task of transitioning to cleaner electricity. No matter where the reporting came from, the issues were the same: Communities understand wind and solar power is where we are headed, but they’re not ready to give up what these large installations demand.

This is precisely what’s going on in the Wright’s Mesa community near Norwood. In this week’s cover story, Mark Jaffe explains the fierce blowback against plans to convert 640 acres of State Land Board ranch land into a massive solar farm.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Is what is lost to solar installations worth what is gained?

Across Colorado there has been a clash between the need for renewable energy and the value of community and place. I found it on the Eastern Plains as some farmers lamented the loss of their wide-open spaces and night skies to forests of wind turbines — even as they signed leases for those wind farms.

And now the Western Slope — which has some of the best solar radiance in the state — is facing a potential wave of large-scale solar developments, and the questions of what is lost and what is gained are being raised once more.

Perhaps nowhere are they being raised more eloquently than on Wright’s Mesa, a ranching and farming tableland about 30 miles from Telluride, where a developer proposed a 640-acre solar field.

The mesa residents — from old-time ranchers to new wave organic farmers and everybody in between — were united in opposition to the proposed solar project. At first glance the battle on Wright’s Mesa might seem like just another NIMBY tale, but the way the community went about crafting its opposition bears a closer look.

In challenging the solar proposal, the mesa residents raised questions about the balance between clean energy, agriculture, small town values, and preserving wildlife and the vistas that make Colorado, Colorado — questions that may be valid for other rural solar projects.

For a Front Range lowlander, it takes a bit of time for the mesa — with its wide-open spaces that at first may seem like a whole lot of nothing under star-studded skies — to work its magic and for one to begin to understand why folks were so hot under the collar.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

^markjaffe^1

The Colorado Lens

School’s out and PTO requests abound as people fill the foothills and mountains in Colorado to kick off the summer. Here are the recent images captured by the Sun team.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

Railbiking through Colorado’s coal mining history

Evidence that northern Colorado communities once were served by a robust network of rail lines is visible in many of the places that have not yet been covered with houses. You can sometimes see them in the grades where tracks and ties have been removed to create biking and hiking trails.

In fast-growing Erie, Colorado Railbike Adventures has taken over a few miles of idled track (owned by RTD and held in reserve for future urban transit) near the historic Boulder Valley Mine to create a pedal-powered journey through an important chapter in Colorado’s economic and labor history.

The route starts high on a hill above Old Town Erie, and drops down into town, crossing Coal Creek on a 130-foot long timber trestle, and riding across a few key intersections in town.

Participants move as fast as four people can pedal the modern version of a cart designed for track maintenance crews. Set aside at least two hours for the 4-mile out-and-back route because the trip includes a long stop when staff turn the railbikes around to begin the journey back to the depot.

Evening time slots are available to make the most of the stunning Front Range views from the depot. An 8-mile route running through Erie’s historic Wise Open Space and on west toward U.S. 287 is expected to open this fall.

MORE: Colorado Railbike Adventures, 4121 County Road 3, Erie

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“The Last Story” paints a portrait of a Las Vegas reporter not easily intimidated

EXCERPT: The 2022 murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, allegedly at the hands of a government official whose political career was damaged by German’s stories, brought a violent end to four decades of the reporter’s fearless accountability journalism. Author Arthur Kane, a former Denver print and TV reporter, recounts the career of his late colleague, including this excerpt detailing attempts at intimidation.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Kane explains the difficulty in researching his book in a case that hasn’t yet gone to trial, but he also notes that his reporting on German’s past helped him understand the rampant corruption that plagued Las Vegas. Here’s a portion of his Q&A:

SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?

Kane: The theme is the danger faced by journalists to get key information about government corruption, graft and waste out to the public. Despite the public’s concern about bias and fake news, journalists play a key function in the U.S. democracy and that role is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. While some reporting is opinion-based and biased, it is important to understand that most journalists are hard-working and take their role of watchdog over government seriously.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH ARTHUR KANE

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Reports on the huge sums spent to influence elections continue to flow in. The most recent tally from Sandra Fish has about $6 million spent by national groups on 10 legislative primaries. The outcome? Moderate candidates (read: more electable in the general election) in eight of those races won.

🌞 Remember when the governor got on the stump to argue against Colorado drivers having to fuel their vehicles with a special blend of gasoline during the ozone season? His main argument was that the cost of fuel would skyrocket. Well, that didn’t actually happen, Michael Booth reports.

🌞 Vaccines and social distancing probably spared around 800,000 American lives from COVID, but new University of Colorado-led research shows there were serious related costs, John Ingold explains.

🌞 A trip up above Ward to see some fancy new headgates that control the flow of water into South St. Vrain River using cellular technology gave Tracy Ross the chance to explain how Colorado’s “first in time, first in right” water doctrine came to be.

🌞 Good nutrition and safe housing are crucial to health and well-being. That’s why Colorado is joining other states and proposing that Medicaid be extended to include food and shelter. Jennifer Brown explains how that might work.

🌞 Wildflower season is on in the high country, which begs the question of whether it’s OK to bring home a bouquet of blue columbine. Justin George has the answer.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for popping in! We’ll see you back here again next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Good morning, friends!

Happy Independence Day week, that vexing and yet glorious period of parades, patriotic music, picnics, professional fireworks and, depending where you live, flat-out panic that some joker with a trunkload of bottle rockets from Wyoming is going to burn down the neighborhood.

My profession and my upbringing in wildfire-prone Boulder County probably leave me more tuned up to this risk than most people. Blame it on being able to see the Black Tiger fire, considered the first big wildfire in the space where civilization meets the forest, from my bedroom window in 1989. Or on that one day in June 2012, soon after an entire neighborhood on the western edge of Colorado Springs burned, when a colleague helpfully offered that he’d found a new mapping tool that showed my house in Lafayette and his in Broomfield were at elevated risk for burning in a wildland fire.

And so I knew. But what was I supposed to do with the information? I can’t control people who toss a smoldering cigarette butt into dry grass or stop the random lightning strike. The one thing I can do is get to know my neighbors, which this week’s cover story by Kevin Simpson shows could be crucial to keeping the next fire from being the worst fire.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Living on the edge — and on edge — in our perpetual wildfire season

For me, it was Waldo Canyon and then Black Forest. Wildfires that transported the idea of climate change-driven conditions — and the risk those presented — from Colorado’s vast forests to my own suburban backyard. My wife and I bought a “go bag” in case wildfire found its way to our neighborhood, squirting through natural entryways such as open-space grasslands into the so-called “built environment,” and we needed to beat a hasty retreat. The unthinkable had suddenly become … thinkable. And that nightmare scenario was reinforced two years ago, when the Marshall fire in Boulder County destroyed more than a thousand homes like ours.

Now, more and more Coloradans who live in the so-called wildland-urban interface (or woo-ey, in wildfire vernacular) have turned to increasingly more detailed, and publicly available, interactive maps and data that calculate in sometimes frightening detail the odds that their homes might become another wildfire statistic. Knowledge is good, and another facet of this week’s cover story is the research on fire-resistant materials and building systems that can aid in mitigation efforts. But the next challenge — and it can seem daunting — is nudging entire communities to concerted action.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Kevin Simpson | Writer

The Colorado Lens

The camera angle, such as low or high and wide or tight, define the visual purpose of the moment. Tight shots can show intensity, wide shots offer viewers a sense of place, and low angles make the subject appear powerful. Here are our recents from across the state by the Sun photo team.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

All aboard for the clickity-clack of the Georgetown Loop Railroad

Life comes at you pretty fast, warned the wise teen philosopher Ferris Bueller. As a corollary to that, I would add that summer vacation season moves with particular speed — witness that tomorrow July is upon us and it’s all downhill till Labor Day. So it was with all of this in mind that my wife and I resolved to steal away on a weekday morning to catch the Georgetown Loop Railroad for some day-trip immersion in mountain scenery while soaking up a little local history and enjoying lunch and ice cream dessert in town afterward.

It’s one of those fun excursions that sometimes hide in plain sight: long a Colorado institution, easily accessible (at least when Interstate 70 is functioning), reasonably priced ($35 base price for adults, $29 for kids) and just mainstream touristy enough to be overlooked by longtime residents.

We’d taken visiting relatives on the train ride — a little over an hour long, unless you tack on an optional mine tour along the route —roughly 27 years ago. This time, just the two of us hopped aboard to enjoy the sights, sounds (plenty of train whistles augmented by a witty but not-too-intrusive historical narration, plus a soundtrack of every old-timey train song ever recorded) and that evocative locomotive aroma. I never would have thought that we’d purchase the optional photo snapped by a staffer as we boarded the train. But dang, it was good; and we did.

All in all, it’s a compact yet efficient mountain foray for when you may be trying to slip some entertaining getaways into that time of year that seems stuck on fast-forward.

Kevin Simpson | Writer

SunLit: Sneak Peek

“Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other” begins with a televised disaster

EXCERPT: The hot mic strikes again. Narrator/protagonist Brynn Cornell, a rising national TV star whose public image leans into her small-town roots, reveals her true and not-so-nice feelings about her Colorado mountain upbringing when she thinks she’s off the air. In Bethany Turner’s 2024 Colorado Book Award winner for Romance, this sets the stage for exile, redemption and, of course, love.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: The origin story behind Turner’s award-winning book literally revolves around its (fictional) geographic origins. The author long ago created the imaginary town of Adelaide Springs, Colorado, but had to wait years before she settled on the characters who would populate it. That wasn’t the only challenge she faced. Here’s a portion of her Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Turner: Brynn Cornell is not very likable in the beginning of this book. I knew that would be the case and I had no desire to skirt around that. It was a challenge, however, to embrace the negative side of my primary protagonist’s personality while still creating a character readers would want to stick with and root for.

Ultimately, the story is about Brynn’s redemption and healing, and in order to get her where she needed to go, we needed to first see her at her worst. The adage “hurt people hurt people” very much applies to Brynn, but ultimately, she is deep and layered and has a great capacity for love and compassion.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH BETHANY TURNER

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Yes, we did have a primary election in Colorado last week. And there were very few surprises. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert will represent the GOP in the 4th Congressional District race in November. Only four of 18 candidates endorsed by the state GOP won their races. A hugely expensive state Board of Education race may have shifted how charter school applications rejected by districts get a rehearing by the state. Wondering about a race I didn’t mention? Click here to scroll through all our coverage.

🌞 The U.S. 50 bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir will reopen to some traffic as planned on July 3, Olivia Prentzel reports. But why did it close in the first place if the feds had issued warnings years ago about the welding techniques used to build it? Nancy Lofholm looked into the records and the inspections.

🌞 More federal money is flowing toward Colorado Springs to help expand microchip manufacturing. Tamara Chuang checked out what the latest tranche hopes to achieve.

🌞 Twenty-nine questions posed to residents of Colorado mountain communities about their quality of life yielded one main take away, Jason Blevins reports: Towns are too crowded with visitors.

🌞 Research in the East River Basin above Crested Butte shows that groundwater is much more susceptible to climate change than originally thought. Shannon Mullane asked what happens when those vast, underground aquifers drop.

🌞 We’ve got ourselves a monolith! While the one planted in a cow pasture in Bellvue might not be exactly the same as the 246 other shiny, unidentified objects that have popped up unexplained all around the world since 2020, Parker Yamasaki paid a visit and reports that people are having fun sipping Monolith Mochas and talking about its origin.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for checking in with us again this Colorado Sunday, fam. Be careful with the fireworks (if you live in a town that allows them) and we hope to see you here again next week — with all your fingers.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Happy Colorado Sunday, friends!

For a large number of years that I am not going to describe in precise detail here, the 16th Street Mall was a crucial part of my work day. We walked there to eat spicy Chinese green beans at the food court in the basement of Republic Plaza (aka Lower Hell) or for coffee at Starbucks, or Cooks, or Ink, or hopped on a MallRide to take a quick browse through Tattered Cover in LoDo or catch the L bus home. It was just there for me — a place to sit when I needed air or a walk to declutter my brain. I loved the randomness of a stroll down the patterned pavers leading me from one end to the other.

We moved offices five years ago, leaving the glorious historic Petroleum Building at the corner of 16th and Broadway, where I could stand on the roof and see from one end of the mall to the other, first heading home for the pandemic and then posting up in shared workspace at the Buell Public Media Center. The new place is not far away, but it is in a different ZIP code both literally and spiritually.

My strolling patterns have adjusted to include a new coffee shop and some decent lunch spots, so I wasn’t really aware of the scope of change afoot on my beloved mall until Robert Davis pitched a story about the transformation going on there and what it means for the retailers and restaurateurs still trying to stick it out.

I got a taste, though, when I was walking diagonally across town with a friend on an urban adventure a few weeks ago. I imagined that at least part of our journey would follow the mall. But it was not to be. Chain-link fences, Jersey barriers and scary-deep trenches got in the way.

Dana Coffield

Senior Editor

The Cover Story

Can 16th Street Mall get its mojo back?

The word “place” is often used to describe something impersonal, like a collection of buildings in a certain part of town. But behind those buildings is a relationship, one that expresses the different dimensions of human life. We attach our emotions, imaginations and personal experiences to places.

For many Denverites, the 16th Street Mall evokes a strong sense of place. When I first moved to Denver in 2015, it was one place everyone said I had to visit. You could grab a couple of slices at Lucky Pie and listen to the buskers at Independence Plaza belt out their favorite tunes. In the summer, hordes of tourists would shop before ducking into a local restaurant. When my parents visited during the holiday season, we’d go to the Denver Christkindlmarket, then held near the Daniels & Fisher clocktower, to grab a hot chocolate and find something unique to ring in the season.

Fast-forward a decade, and that mall is almost unrecognizable. As I write in this week’s Colorado Sunday cover story, the sense of place the mall once evoked has disappeared. The sidewalks are empty as people skip the mall to avoid the hassle of navigating the city’s massive and delayed efforts to rebuild and redefine the role of 16th Street through downtown. Once-bustling restaurants and shops are struggling to survive.

Denver has been trying to revive the mall for the past two years by working to make it more of a neighborhood. But business owners like Shanti and Shyam Shrestha, who have owned Mt. Everest Imports since 1998, say the upgrade represents an existential threat to their business. Even award-winning restaurateurs like Edwin Zoe, who owns Dragonfly Noodle and Zoe Ma Ma, are not immune.

A lot of people told me that rekindling that sense of place will take time. Yet time is a finite resource, and with all the work still left to do to create the 16th Street Mall 2.0, the damage may already be done.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

Robert Davis | Freelance Reporter

The Colorado Lens

The Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice just passed. For some it’s a transition, a time of reflection on the past six months and anticipation for the next six, or simply a celebration of the longest day of the year. Here are some recent shots from our place in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Hugh Carey | Photographer

Flavor of the Week

How to deal with Colorado’s persistent summer pests

Ninety million people will travel to Colorado this year. And sometimes it feels as if all of them are close relatives of mine. I love ’em all. Still, living in this state is like winning Powerball: Suddenly your name is on everybody’s “must hit up” list, even if you last saw them at a bar mitzvah during the Obama administration.

The key is to welcome your guests in a way that doesn’t make them feel too welcome. That’s why I’ve adopted Blucifer as my Martha Stewart. As a host, he projects equal parts menace and hazard, which is just the way I want it.

Welcome to Colorado, and I’ll stare at you with my glowing red eyes until you leave!

SEE OTHER PROVEN PESTGUEST-MANAGEMENT TIPS

Peter Moore | Illustrator

SunLit: Sneak Peek

In “The Last Animal,” a family reeling from loss begins a Siberian adventure

EXCERPT: Fifteen-year-old Eve and her 13-year-old sister, Vera, have recently lost their father. Now their widowed mom, Jane, a graduate student in paleobiology, has brought them with her on a research trip to Siberia. Ramona Ausubel’s Colorado Book Award finalist “The Last Animal” is built around the idea of using genetic research to recreate a woolly mammoth — but as the excerpt quickly makes clear, the story revolves largely around the dynamics of family.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Ausubel happened across the idea for her novel shortly after the birth of her daughter, when she read an article about efforts to de-extinct various creatures. But while her research into the science behind those efforts went deep, the author sought to keep characters front and center. Here’s a slice from her Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Ausubel: Every book is a new universe and no matter how much experience I have, the fact that it’s always new is both the hard part and the pleasure. The challenge this time was partly to balance the emotional worlds of the characters with the backdrop of de-extinction.

Readers needed to understand that project without giant info dumps, and always, always the lives of the characters and their relationships needed to be centered.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH RAMONA AUSUBEL

Kevin Simpson | Writer

Sunday Reading List

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

🌞 Before you do anything else this morning, did you vote in the primary of your choice? Time is running out before the ballots are tallied Tuesday night. Here is our procrastinator’s guide to making sure your vote gets counted.

🌞 And lest you think that primaries are boring, low-stakes races, let us tantalize you with tales of big spending in state school board races, self-dealing by party leaders, Democrats paying for advertising in Republican races, and maneuvering in statehouse primary races that could change the path of the legislature for years.

🌞 There’s been plenty of cheerleading for creating a national monument around the Dolores River in Mesa and Montrose counties. But U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet got an earful from the other side and Jason Blevins reports on what in the proposal is concerning to people who actually live there.

🌞 Can Boulder really lure the Sundance Film Festival away from Utah? State economic development types told Parker Yamasaki they’re willing to try — and cut a $1.5 million check to prove it. Honestly, while there is a certain allure to standing out in frigid weather waiting to be admitted to a theater in Park City in January, the weather in Colorado seems like a major selling point.

🌞 The clock is ticking on plans to shut down a Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s coal-fired power plant in Moffat County and two mines that supply it. Mark Jaffe reports on the big ask — $118 million — by the communities whose economies will have to deal with major job losses and lost property tax revenue as a result.

🌞 Denver recently decided to extend its basic-income program, which provides no-strings-attached funding to people who are homeless. Jennifer Brown looked at the data that made program managers think the additional spending is a good idea.

🌞 The sheriff in my county sent out a news release last week crediting two off-duty firefighters with helping to save the life of a skier who fell more than 1,000 feet down the icy Skywalker Couloir high in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Tracy Ross asked some questions and it turned out the first-on-the-scene rescuers were actually two teenagers who put their training as junior ski patrollers to work managing a health crisis that unfolded in a perilous location.

🌞 It’s official: A pair of gray wolves released in Grand County in December have produced at least one pup. The reproductive success means the group is officially a pack, named the Copper Creek pack by wildlife officials. The narrative around this birth is lining up exactly as you would expect.

🌞 Best mountain town to live in if you’re an LLC? That would be Mountain Village, which already lets nonresidents vote in municipal elections and is contemplating adding owners of LLCs and trusts to the voter rolls. This could change the local political landscape in the Telluride suburb, Jason Blevins learned, as there are fewer than 600 registered voters in town and nearly 1,500 properties owned by LLCs and trusts.

Dana Coffield | Senior Editor

Thanks for spending time with us today. Here’s to you not noticing that the daylight is already waning. See you back here next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Corrections & Clarifications

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.