Brief by Martha Quillen
Local News – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Unhappy Holidays
The big topic for citizen input this December was Christmas greetings. The national media focused on the phrase “Happy Holidays,” and people from all over our region wrote to their local papers to complain about “happy holidays.”
“It’s Christmas. And contrary to popular belief, it is still legal to say the word.” Pastor Al Smith of Jefferson wrote the Fairplay Flume.
“I was appalled to learn the elementary school students here in Buena Vista were required to sing ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ in their recent recital.” Marilyn Ross of Buena Vista told The Mountain Mail. “….Where has the respect gone for the baby Jesus?”
“Yea, I said Merry Christmas, and if all the politically correct types out there don’t like it, too bad,” Bill and Diane Lindsey wrote The Chaffee County Times.
The Brown family informed the Gunnison Country Times, “While reading both the Gunnison Country Times and the Crested Butte News last week, it really distressed me to discover that the word ‘Christmas’ was barely even mentioned.”
And that’s just a sampling of some of the anti- Happy Holiday sentiments expressed.
Though we agree that it’s a little silly to edit Christmas carols, we figured people who wished others “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” were merely trying to include everyone. And wishing everyone “Happy Holidays” is certainly easier than wishing everyone either a “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Hanukkah,” “Joyous Kwanzaa,” or “blissful Boxing Day,” and “a marvelous New Year.”
But apparently many people are now offended if you extend Season’s Greetings. So next year we’ll try to remember not to. Or, as Scrooge would say, “Bah, humbug.”
SWAT Team Shoots Park County Resident
The Park County SWAT team shot and killed Roger Talbert, 48, at his home on January 14. According to the Denver Post, events leading up to the shooting started at the Park County Clerk and Recorder’s Office on a Friday afternoon when Talbert was charged a $10 late fee for a car registration. Talbert became surly and the clerk contacted the sheriff’s department.
Talbert left the clerk’s office in a jeep and headed toward Alma, but deputies confronted him; whereupon Talbert reportedly pointed a shotgun at them, then disappeared into the woods. Neighbors were alerted that an armed and angry man was in the area.
On Saturday evening, the Park County SWAT team approached Talbert in his Placer Valley home and the shooting occurred; Roger Talbert died in an ambulance on his way to the hospital. The El Paso County Metro Bomb Squad and Park County deputies subsequently searched the Talbert home and allegedly found a marijuana farm, survivalist equipment, firearms, a police scanner, and camouflage gear.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation will investigate the shooting.
Hospitals, Old and New
Plans for the new Salida hospital were put on display in Chaffee County in December, and much local talk revolved around the proposed facility. December proposals tentatively scheduled the ground- breaking in March 2006 and the building’s completion in November 2007, but in the meantime funding and design details are being worked out.
But Chaffee County isn’t the only place with hospital plans. In Leadville, however, the plans are a little different. There, the historic old St. Vincent’s hospital building is being converted into 14 condominiums, ranging in size from 580 to 1,270 square feet.
Chaffee County Has Plans Aplenty
In Central Colorado you merely need to look around to see things developing in every direction — and there always seems to be a plan on the table for more.
In December, the Buena Vista Planning and Zoning Commissioners recommended approval of a data, science and technology park to go in near the new Colorado College campus. The proposal calls for a 125- acre subdivision divided into 78 lots, with various zoning designations to provide space for everything from office buildings to production facilities to medical clinics and open space. Plans also call for pedestrian/biking trails and athletic fields. Or in other words, they hope to build a whole new community south of BV.
In the meantime, work on South Main in Buena Vista also progresses. The proposed development was featured in Outside Magazine last August, and called for a pedestrian friendly, mixed- use, densely packed development, featuring houses, apartments and shops in the “New Urbanism” style — all near BV’s River Park. This January, South Main’s review board starts to assess architectural plans submitted by lot owners. (For more information check: www.southmainriverpark.com/)
Elsewhere in Chaffee County: new houses dot Highway 285 from Granite to Poncha Springs; Nathrop is growing fast; housing west of Salida and Buena Vista is spreading like leafy spurge; and one proposed development hopes to include an 18- hole golf course.
CWD Near Pueblo
In December, the Colorado Division of Wildlife announced that a deer killed on the road west of Pueblo tested positive for ChronicWasting Disease. In addition, two deer submitted for testing by hunters at Fort Carson also tested positive for CWD.
These incidents of infection are uncomfortably close to Central Colorado, but there was also good news this year: None of the 1,300 deer tested for CWD in the Gunnison Basin during the 2005 hunting season tested positive.
Leadville Is Number 7
On January 5, the Herald Democrat proudly announced that Leadville had been chosen as one of True West magazine’s Top 10 Western Towns. Leadville was designated #7 for being “one of the few Old West mining towns that has managed to move beyond its beginnings, yet maintain its past.”
Good Samaritan Arrested
College students heard cries coming from frozen Lake DeWeese near Westcliffe on December 29 and notified authorities. As it turned out, a 60- year- old local man had fallen on the ice and broken his leg. Emergency personnel were dispatched to the scene, but the rescue was reportedly hindered by bystanders who were trying to help.
According to the January 5 Wet Mountain Tribune, Paul Kempf, one of the college students who’d made the emergency call, was arrested and charged with “obstructing a police officer and resisting arrest.” Custer County Sheriff Fred Jobe told the local newspaper that Kempf was trying to get pain medications out to the victim. But the sheriff concluded: “It was the job of my officers to keep the general public safe while the fire department and ambulance crew did their jobs.”
The ice didn’t look very safe, so rescuers donned wet suits and set up safety equipment, but managed to rescue Gil Fuller from the ice without undue incident. Fuller was subsequently transported to Parkview Hospital in Pueblo for treatment.
Snowpack Disappointing
Snowpack in the northern part of Colorado was spectacular by early January, with Yampa, White, Upper Colorado, North Platte and South Platte River drainage all measuring more than 130% of normal.
In the Arkansas and Gunnison River drainages snowpack was normal at 100% and 102% respectively.
But snowback in the Four Corners region stood at a mere 50%, and in the Rio Grande River basin (aka San Luis Valley) it was a dismal 36%.
The long drought seems to have eased in most of Colorado, leaving the land a bit parched and reservoirs a mite low here and there, but the residents hopeful. Drought continues to plague the San Luis Valley, however, and waterwise it looks like 2006 may be another very difficult year for the region.
Skier Lost for Two Nights
Paul Kent Strickland, a 64- year- old New Mexico skier, was rescued after spending more than 50 hours lost in the backcountry near Monarch Mountain. Without realizing it, Strickland ventured out of bounds while skiing newly opened expert terrain at Monarch Mountain’s Mirkwood area on a Wednesday.
When he didn’t see other skiers, Strickland skied into No Name Creek drainage for three hours, thinking that he would eventually have to cross an exit road for Mirkwood. Then, he kept skiing downhill, thinking that was the wisest way to go. Finally, Strickland became too exhausted to continue, so he sat on his skis.
The temperature on Wednesday night dropped to 10 degrees. Strickland stayed put through Thursday, only moving around to stay warm, and that night the temperature dropped to eight degrees. But on Friday morning, Strickland’s wife called the ski patrol; she’d waited to contact them because her husband had told her he’d stay at Monarch for two days if the snow was good.
Vern Kelso of the Heart of the Rockies Snowmobile Club found Strickland at 2 p.m. that afternoon. The weary skier was in amazingly good shape, suffering from mild hypothermia, frostbite and dehydration but according to the Mountain Mail “in good spirits” — and apologetic.
Kelso, a 20- year veteran of search and rescues, told the local newspaper, “He felt bad …. He was apologizing for getting lost. I said we were looking for an excuse to go out on a snowmobile ride. I’m just glad it turned out good.”
Changing of the Guard
The Gunnison Country Times has new owners, Chris Dickey and Stephen Pierotti. “Mike Ritchey has set a precedent of what a locally owned newspaper could be and do for a community, and I hope we continue on in that fashion,” Pierotti announced in the paper.
The change should be painless for readers, since the Times has long been one of the best newspapers in our region, with Dickey as editor since January 2002 and Pierotti as production manager for the last five years.
Chris Dickey may be familiar to Salidans because he’s a former Mountain Mail managing editor, but he stayed less than a year before returning to Gunnison.
Another Landmark Closed
Gunnison’s A&W Restaurant has been a familiar landmark for decades, and it may be once again. But the restaurant has shut down, at least temporarily, due to a fire which swept through its back storeroom and office on January 9.
According to the January 12 Gunnison Country Times, Fire Marshall Dennis Spritzer thought a short originating from the electrical tape around the water pipes may have caused the blaze.
Fire Chief Jim Miles told the local paper that the building was probably “salvageable.” But the damage to the rear of the building was extensive, so owner Chuck Willis couldn’t see it re- opening in the near future.
911 Not Necessarily the Same Everywhere
When someone calls 911 on television or in the movies, emergency personnel know where the call is coming from and head right on over — even if the person is too distraught to speak (and even when the caller is a toddler or pet, as is often the case in offbeat news stories).
But as it turns out that sort of thing can’t necessarily happen everywhere. In fact, for cell phone users that sort of thing can’t happen in a lot of Central Colorado.
According to a recent Denver Post article, Colorado is behind most of the nation in installing the technology to pinpoint the location of wireless 911 callers. In early January, when the Post article aired, only a third of the state had the ability to identify the callback number of a wireless caller within 50 to 100 meters.
All of our region has the capacity to determine the precise location and number of a 911 caller using a land line, but that was all Park, Custer and Lake counties had, and Chaffee and Fremont counties could merely track some wireless calls to the nearest cell tower (which is not considered state- of- the- art).
Other counties in our area could track all of their wireless calls to the nearest cell tower. But none of the systems in Central Colorado in early January could determine the number and the location of a wireless caller to within 50 to 100 meters, which is the standard currently recommended.
And that may be an important thing to remember in an emergency. Recently, 911/wireless problems made the news after emergency personnel failed to respond to a cell phone call from suburban Denver — until a second call came in from a neighbor’s land line. As it turned out, the child found unresponsive in his bed had been dead for hours, so a speedier response would not have saved the day, but it certainly would have helped the distraught parents.
So when summoning help by cell phone (be it from your home, car, fishing hole, or hiking trail) make sure the respondent knows where you are — assuming, of course, that you’re not calling because you’re lost.
Quotes:
“If policymakers can ignore four biblical hurricanes in two years, $3 gasoline, 2,000 dead in Iraq, General Motors in bankruptcy, [and] the warmest decade in 1,000 years, what sort of intervention will it take?”
Randy Udall, Community Office for Resource Efficiency, Carbondale, from an article by Allen Best in High Country News, December 12, 2005
“In North Carolina, the owners of a 4,600- square- foot home that cost $1.2 million wanted it to be as ‘green’ as possible….
“In Colorado, using recycled materials, an architecture professor built a 4,700- square- foot home that uses geothermal heating and cooling….”
“…These houses aren’t just ridiculous; they’re monuments to sanctimony. If architecture is frozen music, these places are congealed piety, demonstrating with em barrassing concreteness the glaring hypocrisy of upper- class environmentalism.”
Daniel Akst in the Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2006
“The next person who tries to explain how negative 36 degrees isn’t all that bad because it’s a ‘dry cold’ will get a severe shaking from me. OK, so negative 36 here in Gunnison may only feel like negative 14, but either way it’s still cold.”
Anthony Poponi, who recently moved to Gunnison from Florida, in the Gunnison Country Times, December 22, 2005
“Speaking of sissies, I’ll be leaving Gunnison soon, headed for a warmer place. Yes, the hubby has finally caved. He’s tired of the sting in his fingers and toes and is no longer enamored by the sensation of one’s nostrils freezing shut just walking outside to get the paper.”
Toni Todd in the Gunnison Country Times, December 29
“Down here in Lake City we recently adopted a new town slogan….
“So my wife and I thought we’d help you up there in Gunnison, come up with your new motto. How ’bout ‘Family, Friends and Frostbite.’ Or perhaps ‘Health, Happiness and Hypothermia.’ ‘Fun, Fabulous, and Frigid!’ might tie in with the Gunnison theme.
“My wife really likes ‘Blue Skies, Blue Mesa, and Blue Lips'”
From a letter signed Hy Poxic in the Gunnison Country Times, December 29, 2005
“It’s our hope that some of this increase is the result of improved reporting as opposed to society going to hell in a handbag.”
Renee Brown, Director of Gunnison/ Hinsdale Human Services upon reporting that child welfare cases have increased, in the Gunnison Country Times.
“It’s expensive money- wise and it’s expensive time- wise…. But it’s rewarding. No one loves you like your dog.”
Aaron Anderson, a Pajarito Mountain ski patrol member at a training session for search and rescue teams and avalanche dogs at Monarch in the Salida Mountain Mail, January 10, 2006.
