ONSTAGE: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF CRYPTO-JUDAISM IN COLORADO | 14 THINGS TO DO IN THE SPRINGS RIGHT NOW
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New play explores cryptoJudaism in Colorado history
Roth explains why the
The past, present and future of the Fountain Creek
Ballot question goes back to voters despite recent approval
set for April
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Colorado Springs artist finds his creativity without fear of failure
Fourteen things to do in the Springs
Local band and typographic rebels [SALT] launch from CC dorm
A sneak peek of an Aimee Mann musical
Writer talks mullets and quantum entanglement
More to EXPLORE in new public lands act
Fishing in Fountain Creek | Credit: Jim O’Donnell
Nick Hearn, EJ Becker, Braden Scott and Bodi Francis of
Jonathan Nishimoto in his home | Credit: Ben Trollinger
EDITOR’S NOTE
THE CREEK HAS RISEN
By BEN TROLLINGER ben.trollinger@ppmc.live
T.S. Elliot once wrote, in his enigmatic way, that he didn’t know much about gods, but that to him, the river “is a strong brown god — sullen, untamed and intractable.” It’s been decades since I first read that line in “The Dry Salvages,” and I still don’t know what it means. Sullen how? Untamed and intractable? Clearly, Elliott wasn’t familiar with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Regardless, the image stuck with me. A river is bigger than us. We can barely comprehend it, this life-giving, ever-changing, unknowable and dangerous water nymph. We can dam them up. We can divert them; put them under pavement and run them through drainage culverts. We can fill them up with plastic detritus, sewage and “forever chemicals” — we can flood them and then drink them dry — but somehow the spirit of the river remains, even if it lives on as an idea more than a viable ecological reality.
In his masterful new book, “Fountain Creek: Big Lesson from a Little River,” author and photographer Jim O’Donnell, with both deep affection and close attention, traces the transformation of the Fountain from a humble intermittent creek to a swelling drainage pipe for one of the fastest-growing and water-hungry cities in the state. The book is a wake-up call for anyone who cares about the natural environment that likely brought them here in the first place.
"COLORADO SPRINGS SHOULD NOT EXIST BECAUSE IT LACKS WATER ... ONLY ABOUT SIXTEEN INCHES OF PRECIPITATION FALL IN THE REGION EACH YEAR AND THAT AMOUNT IS DECLINING. THE SPRINGS … IS ALSO THE ONLY CITY OF ITS SIZE IN THE COUNTRY WITHOUT ITS OWN RIVER."
“Colorado Springs should not exist because it lacks water,” O’Donnell writes. “In reality, Colorado Springs is high desert. Only about sixteen inches of precipitation fall in the region each year and that amount is declining. The Springs … is also the only city of its size in the country without its own river.”
As you’ll read in Noel Black’s cover story for this issue, the Fountain — the little creek that swelled to become a river — is a kind of skeleton key for understanding the past, present and future of Colorado Springs. However, it’s a complex story with no easy answers. People will continue to move here. They will continue to expect clean water. And they will, for the foreseeable future, get it on demand. But we should not forget that in a time of drought, climate uncertainty and industrial pollution, watersheds like the Fountain are our best miner’s canary. We cannot mistreat our waterbodies without imperiling ourselves. After all, rivers, like strong brown gods, end up getting the last word.
LETTERS .
DISPARATE THOUGHTS
In a breathtaking feat of condescension, the Colorado Springs City Council said that the voters were confused when they chose to legalize recreational marijuana sales in the city? Do they not understand how voting works? Did they not anticipate and prepare for all voting outcomes? Their lot should be sacked.
Turn the page, and we come to “Another Homelessness Story.” A thoughtful City Council member might eventually stumble on a win/win: Slap a 5% city tax on recreational pot sales to help offset housing and assistance for the homeless. Duh. Downtown businesses AND restaurants are closing because the City Council can’t hold two disparate thoughts in their heads. I rarely visit downtown Colorado Springs for precisely these two reasons: homelessness and no cool rec stores. It’s 2025 — get with the program.
Chris Lindley
Colorado Springs •
ENABLING VAGRANCY
I read Noel Black's article on “Another Homelessness Story” recently. Like almost all homelessness stories it made no mention of the various subpopulations that fall under the label of “homeless.” We have the truly homeless, the largest subgroup; those who are unhoused due to misfortune, bad luck or bad choices. These folks are busting their fannies to get off the street. The handouts they receive hopefully contribute to their moving in a positive direction. These are not the folks stealing bicycles, panhandling, ripping each other off or drinking under the bridges. As a group, they do their best to be invisible. The most visible subgroup are the vagrants. The handouts they receive merely enable the vagrant lifestyle. How does one of our local agencies determine which kind of homeless person they are intending to support with a handout? One simply talks to them. Far too many of our local agencies and individuals hand out support with no questions asked. In most
CORRECTIONS .
cases, in a few minutes of conversation, one can determine whether the intended handout is heading toward a truly homeless person or to a vagrant.
I doubt very much God or Jesus intended for us to enable people into a life of vagrancy. Even if your religious scruples don’t get in the way of enabling vagrancy, doing so hurts the individual, the neighborhood and our city in general.
Years ago, our police returned home from a conference, reporting that our city has the reputation of being “a good place to be homeless.” Between the “low-barrier shelters,” no-questions-asked food and other handouts, a message is sent that “we can help you remain homeless.” Way too many soft-hearted (and soft-headed) drivers handing money out car windows to panhandlers only compounds the enabling. There will be no “end to homelessness” in this town as long as so many are knowingly or unknowingly supporting vagrancy.
Matthew Parkhouse
West Pikes Peak Avenue
Colorado Springs
• IN PRAISE OF ‘PIECES’
I just wanted to thank you for your fearless Jan. 9 cover story, “Edge Pieces,” by Noel Black. I read it on the edge of my seat, sort of like a mini mystery novel, and was moved and touched by it perhaps like no other Independent article I’ve read before. I think it is one of the best stories I’ve ever seen in The Independent, and I’ve been reading The Independent for almost 20 years now. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing it with everyone. I think that must have taken a great deal of courage on your part.
Keep up the good work, and with writers like Noel Black contributing, I look forward to many more years of reading The Independent.
Randall Ota
East Platte Avenue
Colorado Springs
• In the January 23 issue of the Independent, we misstated the distance of the proposed Karman Line residential and commercial development from the east periphery of Colorado Springs. It is roughly one mile from the city’s eastern border. In the same article, a claim about the project displacing an existing resident was incorrect. The developers of the project say that no residents will be forced to move as a result of the project.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must be signed with full name and include daytime phone number, full address or email address. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. We reserve the right to edit all submissions. | EMAIL ADDRESS: letters@ppmc.live
WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROOM TO GROW
By JW ROTH Special to The Independent
My name is JW, and I love Colorado Springs.
I’m also the man who built the Ford Amphitheater.
Despite what some of you may think, these two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I consider the amphitheater to be a product of my love for our city and my desire to make it prosperous for decades to come. But prosperous cities don’t grow on trees. They require forethought, sacrifice and most importantly, room to grow.
“Growth and development” in the context of cities too frequently evokes images of bulldozers making room for condo complexes. I encourage Colorado Springs’ residents to suspend these images, for a moment, to consider a more complete picture of growth and the long-term stability, longevity and vitality it provides.
Let’s begin by considering three fundamental truths about healthy, vibrant cities.
A city is never stagnant — it is either growing or shrinking.
Cities, like living organisms, are constantly changing. Every family that arrives and departs, every business that launches and fails, and every industry that expands and deflates impacts a city’s makeup and the lives of everyone living there.
As much as some residents may wish to freeze a beloved neighborhood in time, these changes are inevitable. Instead of
fighting it, citizens should consider what trends they want to support — those of growth or of atrophy.
Growing cities increase citizens’ well-being.
The undisputed fact of the matter is that citizens do far better in growing cities than dying ones.
It’s important to understand that “growth,” in this context, primarily refers to economic development. While healthy economies require productive land development, it is economic, not physical, expansion that drives improvement in citizens’ lives.
Economic growth begins by making cities attractive places for people to start and grow businesses. The development of new and diverse industries increases local tax revenue, allowing governments to build and maintain infrastructure and fund community projects.
Perhaps more importantly, industrial development expands the job market. Citizens benefit from more job openings and opportunities to climb the ladder, and wages increase as businesses compete for reliable employees.
Competitive wages mean more money in citizens’ pockets. That money can be spent on entertainment and leisure, which, in turn, leads to the development of new businesses and industries.
Growing cities require people, and people require entertainment.
Healthy economies run on talented and motivated citizens. A growing economy’s biggest adversary is brain drain — the flight of educated, hardworking locals toward bigger and better opportunities abroad. The loss of even one upstanding citizen exacts an opportunity cost; the local economy will no longer benefit from the work that individual may have completed, the money they may have spent or the ideas
they may have shared.
But the social cost of brain drain can be far more painful, leaving families and friends separated by time and distance.
I’m a family man at heart. I want Colorado Springs to be a place where families can grow for generations — a place where grandparents get to know their grandkids, and friendships can be lifelong. I certainly don’t want my city to drive people away for want of opportunities.
So how do we keep locals local? A thriving economy — and plentiful entertainment.
Humans aren’t robots. We want good-paying jobs, but we also want to enjoy the money we make. We want to go on adventures, spend time with our families, learn new skills and make new friends. That’s why thriving cities offer citizens plenty of ways to rest, recharge and engage with the community they live in.
Cities that offer economic and recreational opportunities in equal measure entice locals to stick around and give talented individuals from around the world a reason to move in.
Colorado Springs is already reaping the benefits of economic, physical and social expansion. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s House Price Index indicates housing prices in Colorado Springs have appreciated 172% since 1999 — outpacing the cumulative rate of inflation by more than 40%.
I built the Ford Amphitheater to help Colorado Springs continue to foster responsible growth and improve community outcomes.
The amphitheater provides Colorado Springs with more than 500 jobs, and we anticipate it will bring approximately $100 million into our local economy every year.
Assets like the amphitheater make cities more attractive to residents and newcomers, as evidenced in a 2016 study from Realtor.com showing that proximity
to outdoor concert venues can increase property values. Indeed, the amphitheater proved popular with out-of-towners in its inaugural season, hosting more than 100,000 guests from more than 5,000 different ZIP codes. The amphitheater’s popularity correlated with increased performance in neighboring businesses.
That’s not to say progress is free from growing pains. Economists, governments and city planners have spent decades trying to develop cities without upsetting existing residents. The truth is, there are no easy answers. Business owners, residents and civic servants must be willing to listen with humility and, in some cases, compromise to achieve the best results.
My team and I take this responsibility seriously, and I’m proud of the work we’ve done to ensure our neighbors can enjoy the amphitheater’s benefits without excessive noise pollution.
I’m grateful, too, because I know North-Siders understand the benefit of development better than anyone. Northgate, Gleneagle and Grey Hawk are some of our city’s newest editions. The families and individuals who built those communities play a vital part in Colorado Springs’ overall health and success.
I love this city and the people who live here. I want to make it a prosperous place to raise families and do business for decades to come.
To do that, our community must commit to pursue growth. The Ford Amphitheater is one of many ways I hope to further this goal. I am grateful to those who have supported my team and I in this endeavor, and I look forward to winning more of Colorado Springs to the cause.
(JW Roth, founder and chairman of VENU, is co-owner of Pikes Peak Media Co., parent company of The Colorado Springs Independent.)
By NOEL BLACK • noel.black@ppmc.live
Ken Mull looks out over the erosion at Southmoor Drive in Fountain. He’s been watching restoration efforts for weeks. | Credit: Ben Trollinger
How an insatiable thirst for growth transformed the Fountain Creek watershed
It's Friday, January 24, 2025, and my editor, Ben Trollinger, and I are walking through a muddy field full of angry prairie dogs across the street from Camping World, an RV dealership just off I-25 in Fountain.
We’ve come here to get a closer look at an eroded cliff on Southmoor Drive in Fountain that author Jim O’Donnell writes about in his new book, “Fountain Creek: Big Lessons from a Little River." It's a washed-out bend in the creek that’s been spilling an estimated hundred thousand tons of eroded sediment into the creek every year.
Over the past 75 years, the growing amount of water piped into our watershed, combined with the increasing volume of stormwater runoff from Colorado Springs’ sprawling development, has accelerated the erosion of the banks of the Fountain. It’s gotten so bad that Southmoor Drive on the east side of the creek in Fountain began to crack and nearly collapsed into the creek, prompting a multi-million-dollar restoration project to halt the erosion that began in December of last year.
Ben and I watch a backhoe in the middle of the temporarily dammed creek fill two giant John Deere dump trucks with soil from what was the west bank. The trucks then drive to the east bank and dump it all beneath the 30-ish foot cliff before they loop back around for more soil while a bulldozer spreads what just got dumped.
We spot a couple of guys in lawn chairs perched on the crumbling road above the cliff where it looks like they have a better vantage, so we walk back to the car and drive around to meet them.
They’re something of an odd couple. Lou Matthews is all handlebar mustache beneath his Army ballcap while Ken Mull, sunburned lips cracked beneath his bucket hat and a pair of binoculars around his neck, looks like he just got back from an errant birdwatching excursion in the Gobi Desert. Both are retired and have found a shared, childlike thrill in watching the heavy machinery rearrange the flow of the Fountain.
Both live nearby, and both have watched the bank recede over the past few years as it cut closer and closer to the road. Even
now, as we watch, sandy chunks of the bank fall away as the dump trumps lurch by.
A friend downstream, says Matthews, lost a quarter of an acre of his land in a recent flood. All of it just washed away. This project to keep Southmoor Drive and this neighborhood from falling into the Fountain is just one of the many invisible costs of our seemingly inexorable march toward the border of Kansas.
And now, with City Council’s approval of the 6,500-home Karman Line development, there will be even greater strain on our fragile water system, the full extent of which can be dizzyingly difficult to understand.
ANTHROPOCENE POSTER CHILD
Jim O’Donnell grew up in Pueblo and spent his boyhood stomping around on the banks of the Fountain, scrounging for arrowheads and fossils, riding bikes, hunting, fishing, partying with friends. As he got older, his obsession with the Fountain grew. He spent years studying its history, observing and photographing its wildlife, talking to the homeless residents along it banks, hiking its tributaries, cataloging its detritus and writing about it all the while.
Now 52, O’Donnell published his book about his lifelong obsession last November. Though it’s written as a personal natural history, it reads like a detective novel. And if O’Donnell is the detective, the crime is the century-long use, abuse, and neglect of Colorado Springs’ original and most reliable source of water.
“I call it the poster child of the Anthropocene because it’s this small little creek, that’s pretty unknown, but it speaks to all the big issues worldwide,” said O’Donnell in a phone interview from his home in Taos, New Mexico.
The Fountain, he writes, “is one of the most human-dominated water systems in the American West.” It has been “dammed, diverted, poisoned, rerouted, mapped, named, channelized, filled with physical and human debris, reduced, augmented, confused, litigated, studied, stolen, replaced, piped, known, forgotten, remembered, misunderstood, blamed,
monitored, sampled, screened, and very nearly tamed. More than anything else, humans have altered the very nature of the Fountain, pumping water from Colorado’s western slope into the Fountain’s watershed, making what was once an occasional creek into a full-time river.”
The story of how this creek, which flooded frequently and ran dry even more often, became a river is, as O’Donnell notes, “more than a bit mind-bending,” and has everything to do with Colorado Springs’ exponential growth and need for water over the past 75 years.
THE BIG STRAW
For centuries, tribes including the Ute, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Apache, Kiowa, Comanche and others had camped, dammed, diverted, watered their horses and hunted along the banks of the Fountain all the way from its headwaters in what is now Woodland Park to its confluence with the Arkansas. But it wasn’t until General William Jackson Palmer and his partner William Bell platted Fountain Colony just east of the confluence of Monument and Fountain creeks in 1871 that the need for more water than what a few wells could provide began to transform it.
As John Harner writes in his essential 2021 book “Profiting from the Peak,” “The founders were in the business of selling land, and land with trees, lawns, and a steady supply of water was far more valuable than the dry and bleak mesa the first visitors saw. Irrigation water was a necessary investment for the success of the colony.”
Though Fountain Creek had been diverted for irrigation at various places
along its length for agriculture since the 1850s, the El Paso Canal, which diverted the creek just behind where the Safeway at 33rd and Colorado now sits, created the first urban irrigation system specifically designed for the development of real estate and the needs of homeowners in Palmer and Bell’s genteel “Little London.”
It wasn’t long before the city’s need for drinking water and irrigation required even more infrastructure and more water sources, and in 1878 the voters of the young city decided to create a public waterworks to finance its construction and management. The utility, which later became Colorado Springs Utilities in 1924, would remain public, which still runs counter to the libertarian ethos of the west, broadly, and Colorado Springs, specifically. But, as John Harner points out:
“The wealthy elites in Colorado Springs in 1879 were the city founders, and to them private ownership of something so vital as water could jeopardize their investments. Furthermore, public ownership enables projects to be publicly financed, spreading costs among many people, yet concentrating the benefits from increased land values among the few landholders.”
The strategy proved even more vital not just to Palmer and Bell’s interests, but the interests of future developers in Colorado Springs when battles over water rights in the west began to heat up.
In 1876, Colorado’s constitution enshrined the doctrine of prior appropriation, which is commonly described as “first in time, first in right,”
View of Fountain Creek | Credit: Jim O’Donnell
which meant that whoever could prove they had first appropriated water for beneficial use — whether for drinking, agriculture, or industry (and in that order) — held the highest priority right to that water.
The newly created Colorado Springs public waterworks learned this lesson the hard way in the late 1800s when they began diverting water from Bear Creek into Ruxton on the south slope of Pikes Peak and got sued by various downstream rights holders.
But the mistake also helped the city’s water utility realize the importance of owning water rights. And from that moment on, it set out an aggressive strategy to buy up rights wherever it could, then build pipelines and reservoirs to store that water.
In the 50 years that followed, Colorado Springs bought up all the rights it could along the south slope of Pikes Peak. During the first half of the 20th century, Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) built a system of reservoirs, pipelines, and tunnels that completely rearranged the natural flow of water on the Pikes Peak.
And when that water wasn’t enough, the city began to dam up creeks on the north side of the mountain, creating Crystal and South Catamount reservoirs, and began to seek water rights on the Blue River in the Colorado River Basin.
When the Army and Air Force arrived during and just after World War II, CSU continued to look beyond Pikes Peak and the Fountain Creek Watershed if the city was going to continue to grow. And it did.
As John Harner notes, from 1950 to 2010, Colorado Springs grew from a population of 45,472 to 416,472 — a tenfold increase. Colorado’s population and water are inversely proportional from the Front Range to the Western Slope. The Front Range has 80% of the population and 20% of the water while the Western Slope has 20% of the population and 80% of the water. The only place for Colorado Springs (and Denver) to go for their growing water needs after World War II was on the far side of the Continental Divide into the tributaries of the Colorado River Basin, which is what it did.
Jim O’Donnell calls the engineering projects that Colorado Springs undertook to divert water from the Colorado River Basin “The Big Straw.” And in 1961,
Donald Worster’s assertion in his 1985 book “Rivers of Empire” that The American West is “a social order based on the intensive, large-scale manipulation of water and its products in an arid setting.”
The irony of this intensively engineered hydrological landscape, as John Harner points out, is that “the need for irrigation brought to the forefront one glaring contradiction — the West is the land of the free, where the individual escapes tyranny, yet irrigation requires organization and investment at such a scale that some larger body must finance it, organize and oversee the labor to build and maintain it, and enforce how the water is allocated. The individual must waive some of his or her personal freedoms in order to reach a common good.”
In other words, we have a socialized utility system subsidizing the private, forprofit growth of our fair libertarian-leaning city.
And there’s another cost we all pay for the receipts for which can be found downstream where the effluent of all that water we pump over from the Colorado River Basin transforms “a scrappy, mostly dry creek” into “a full-time river.”
POOPACALYPSE ’99
the first suck of water from the Blue River arrived in the newly created North Catamount and Rampart reservoirs on the north side of Pikes Peak.
No sooner had the Blue River project been completed than the Homestake Project began, pulling water through 130 miles of pipes, tunnels and reservoirs from Turquoise Lake near Leadville, and so on. Again, it’s truly dizzying. And for a full accounting of it, you can read the “Water” chapter in John Harner’s “Profiting from the Peak.”
Today, 75-80 percent of Colorado Springs Water comes from the Colorado River Basin on the Western Slope. And soon, more water will arrive via the Southern Delivery System, or SDS, which will eventually pull city-owned or leased water from the Pueblo Reservoir to fill two yet-to-be-built reservoirs out east, which may eventually serve the 60,0000+ anticipated homes in Norwood Development Company’s Banning Lewis Ranch and, eventually, the 6,500 homes to be built in the newly formed ONE | La Plata’s Karman Line development.
“Colorado Springs is nothing if not a hydraulic society,” writes O’Donnell, paraphrasing environmental historian
Richard Skorman had just been elected to City Council in April 1999 when he got a comprehensive, if unwelcome education on the politics and true cost of our city’s thirst for water and the toll it has taken on Fountain Creek, on Pueblo, and on the myriad farms and ranches downstream.
“My first week on City Council were the floods of 1999. I think it was 8 inches of rain in 48 hours. And so many people dumped the water that was in their basements into the sewer system that the people that lived at the end of the line had sewage gushing out of their toilets and shower heads.”
Skorman had been elected to District 3, which covers the Westside, and he went to the homes of some of his constituents to see for himself.
It was, he says, in a characteristically laconic bit of understatement, “terrible.” Later that night he got a call from Phil Tullis, Director of Colorado Springs Utilities at the time. Colorado Springs City Council also serves as the Board of Directors for Colorado Springs Utilities, and Tullis had some terrible news for his new boss.
“Richard,” Tullis told him, “we have no choice but to dump raw sewage into
Fountain Creek.”
It was close to a hundred million gallons of it, says Skorman.
A hundred million gallons! Terrible.
Skorman — conscientious leader and citizen of Colorado Springs that he’s always been, if a bit green behind the ears at the time — appointed himself the Ambassador of Poopacalypse ’99 and decided to take a trip downstream to “talk to the ranchers and reassure them that we're going to try to fix this problem in the future.”
When he got to Rocky Ford and La Junta, he was met by hundreds of screaming ranchers who showed him fields full of ruined crops covered in toilet paper.
“And so, at that time I made a personal commitment to really care about Fountain Creek.”
And so he did. During his 22 years on City Council, Skorman helped create what is now called The Fountain Creek Watershed District, which is funded largely by Colorado Springs Utilities, and does restoration, cleanup, erosion control, and a growing number of improvement projects in El Paso County, Pueblo County, and further down along the Arkansas. Skorman was also part of creating the city’s stormwater enterprise after lawsuits from Pueblo, the Environmental Protection Agency, and others downstream forced the city to raise money to update its stormwater infrastructure after years growth and neglect. And the construction of retention ponds and other improvements have prevented another accident like the 1999 sewage spill.
There are more reasons for optimism. Colorado Springs just received $700,000 in federal grants “to support restoration work in the Fountain Creek Watershed.” And the first stages of work have begun on The COS Creek Plan, which will make recreation along Monument and Fountain Creeks within the city limits more accessible.
However, says Skorman, we’re still struggling with contamination (E. coli, lead, PFAS/forever chemicals) and we’re still decades behind communities like Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver and Pueblo, who recognized the value of improving their waterways as recreational areas and alternative transportation routes decades ago. And until the most basic erosion problems like the cliff at Southmoor Drive
can be fixed, and the many camping along the creek can be housed, money that might otherwise pay for amenities will have to go toward mitigation and restoration.
PAPER WATER
Andy Merritt of ONE | La Plata, which will develop Karman Line, says that Colorado Springs Utilities ratepayers won’t be responsible for the upfront public utility infrastructure extensions to the development, including the extension of water and wastewater services. ONE | La Plata will pay for that. However, once the those homes are built out the maintenance and upkeep of that public utilities infrastructure does become part of the base rate that’s spread out among all Colorado Springs ratepayers. Bryan English, Development Projects Manager at CSU, says there’s no way to know at this point what that cost will be because of all the variables involved in the timeline of the development.
But whatever it costs, will the annexations end? Will Colorado Springs reach a point when it can no longer justify the expense of outward expansion, especially where the cost of water and water infrastructure, including Fountain Creek, are concerned?
Based on current projections, Colorado Springs will need even more development to accommodate the estimated 75,000 more people expected to move here by 2045, never mind the shortage of affordable housing and our persistent issues with homelessness.
For now, Colorado Springs Utilities believes it can continue to deliver water for foreseeable future growth with a combination of conservation, re-use, the construction of additional reservoirs, and the water-sharing program that helps some farmers downstream upgrade to more efficient irrigation systems and allows Colorado Springs to buy the water they’ve saved. But that all remains to be seen.
More pressing, says John O’Donnell, is that no amount of water rights will make the Fountain Creek Watershed or the Colorado River Basin on which we depend any wetter.
“I don't care how many paper rights Colorado Springs actually owns, when the day comes that there's not water, your paper water doesn't matter, right? You can have all the rights that you want, but if we get a couple of really bad years in a row, and we're already starting to see that happen with the changing climate, you
know, you may get to be where situation where Colorado Springs cannot pump water over the mountain.”
While O’Donnell acknowledges that scenario is unlikely to happen in the immediate future, it’s clear that everyone who lives here needs a better understanding of how the whole system works and how fragile it is as climate change strains water supplies throughout the southwest.
At Southmoor Drive in Fountain, Lou Matthews and Ken Mull say they plan to be here every day, snow or shine, to see the restoration project to completion later this spring.
However difficult it is to take in the full scope and stakes of the water system
we’ve created from this one precarious vantage, there are still Blue Herons fishing and ducks foraging above the temporary dam, the road and homes that were saved in the nick of time, and a sunny late afternoon view of Pikes Peak from which some of this water flows.
Even with the earthmovers grinding the creek into this temporary submission, the drama of life is built into our trans-natural relationship with this place, this drainage we’ve changed in ways we may never fully comprehend.
Jim O’Donnell will speak and sign copies of his book at 6 p.m. on March 15 at Mountain Chalet in Colorado Springs, and at Noon on March 19 at Fountain Creek Nature Center.
Restoration work underway at Fountain Creek in Fountain. | Credit: Ben Trollinger
Rec redo
Colorado Springs voters will once again vote on recreational cannabis
By OLIVIA PRENTZEL • The Colorado Sun
In April, Colorado Springs residents will vote, for the second time in five months, whether to allow the sale of recreational marijuana within city limits, after leaders in the conservative city approved a measure that would overturn November’s vote.
Voters will be asked whether to repeal Question 300 on the April 1 ballot when voter turnout is expected to be far lower than record-breaking numbers during November’s presidential election and when the measure passed with 54% of the vote.
Despite Tuesday’s 7-2 vote, the city plans to comply, for now, with November’s election result.
The city will begin accepting recreational marijuana licenses Feb. 10 and will have 60 days to review applications. If the April 1 measure fails, sales of recreational marijuana could begin as soon as April 10. If the measure passes, Colorado Springs will remain as the state’s largest city that has refused to allow the sale of recreational marijuana since it became legal in 2014.
On Tuesday, some City Council members suggested another vote was needed because voters were “confused.” Dozens of residents, including veterans, marijuana shop owners and attorneys filled City Council chambers, arguing that another vote would be undemocratic and could set a worrisome precedent for future elections.
“Question 300 is no longer about regulating marijuana. It’s now about what you stand for — respecting the will of the voters or governing by fiat,” Tom Scudder, president of the Colorado Springs Cannabis Association and owner of medical marijuana shops, said. “You all want a do-over, you want a mulligan, and that doesn’t exist in politics, when it
comes to the will of the voters.”
Council Member Dave Donelson said he heard from residents in his district that they did not understand the ballot question in November.
“It talked about medical marijuana shops. It did not clearly say, ‘legalize recreational marijuana sales in the city of Colorado Springs,’” Donelson said.
“So I believe there was confusion among voters. Was it all voters? Absolutely not. Was it even the majority? I don’t think so. Was it enough? Was it 11,000 voters? I think it may have been.”
Council Member Yolanda Avila, who voted no on Tuesday, said she didn’t receive any emails or calls from residents saying they were confused until the week before, after the City Council suggested putting the measure on the ballot again.
Question 300 passed in November by a 22,372-vote margin, 130,677 to 108,305.
In the same election, voters also defeated a measure that would have banned recreational marijuana in Colorado Springs by a 2,739-vote margin.
Mark Grueskin, an attorney who helped
draft the language of Question 300, said it would be a mistake to mistrust the voters’ understanding of the question’s language, which council members approved before it appeared on the ballot in November.
“The bottom line is this: Voters told you, in no uncertain terms, what policy they wanted at the 2024 election. You might disagree, and my guess is you do — that’s your right, just as it was their right to tell you what policy they preferred — but it’s a mistake to mistrust voter understanding of a clear ballot title that the title board and this body in its own words, ratified confirmed and approved,” Grueskin said.
“This is a case of too little, too late to complain that voters were mystified when they approved Question 300, particularly when those complaints are based on secondhand reports from anonymous voters whose concerns cannot be vetted in public in the light of day. If those voters exist, they sat on their hands and ignored their legal remedies to address those supposed concerns when they had the chance to do so. That’s on them.”
The new question that will appear on the April 1 ballot, asking voters to repeal Question 300, is flawed, Grueskin said, and adds surplus language that is “gaged to tilt the political debate.”
Pending the outcome of April’s election, recreational marijuana sales will see a sales tax of 5%. The generated revenue will go toward a fund that will support public safety programs, mental health services and post-traumatic stress disorder treatment programs.
Just eight weeks before the November election, the City Council also voted 7-2 to approve a zoning ordinance that would require any future recreational marijuana dispensaries to be at least 1 mile from day cares or schools.
The ordinance would have effectively prevented any of the existing medical marijuana shops in the city from applying for recreational cannabis licenses. The council voted to change the buffer to 1,000 feet earlier this month, consistent with the zoning regulations that voters approved as part of Question 300.
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BALLOT ORDER SETTLED FOR CITY COUNCIL RACES
Twenty candidates have qualified to run in the April 1 election for all six district City Council seats, and late last month, City Clerk Sarah Johnson drew their names out of an old ballot box to determine the order of names.
“Lady Luck was either on your side or not, as far as where your name is going to be on the ballot,” Johnson said.
Appearing first on a ballot usually increases a candidate’s chances of performing well in an election, the MIT Election Data + Science Lab says, citing numerous academic studies. This is called the ballot-order effect, and an analysis of city council and school board elections in California found that candidates listed first won 4-5% more votes than they might have been expected to win if they were listed later on the ballot, MIT says.
Only two of the candidates are incumbents – Dave Donelson in District 1 and Nancy Henjum in District 5. Incumbents often have an advantage over new contenders for a seat, and in Donelson’s and Henjum’s cases, they also benefit from the ballot-order effect because their names were drawn first for their districts.
District 4 candidate Jeannie Orozco Lira’s name was not included in the draw, as staff in the City Clerk’s office were still checking the signatures collected by her campaign when other names were drawn on Jan. 24. That’s why she is listed fourth in her district.
The candidates on April 1 are listed below in the order their names will appear on the ballot, and by district. All candidates run on a nonpartisan platform.
—
Karin Zeitvogel
DISTRICT 1
Dave Donelson –incumbent
Lee Lehmkuhl
DISTRICT 2
Frank Chrisinger
Tom Bailey
DISTRICT 3
Brandy Williams
Maryah Lauer
Richard Gillit
Greg Thornton
Christopher Metzgar
DISTRICT 4
Kimberly Gold
Sherrea Elliott-Sterling
Chauncy Johnson
Jeannie Orozco Lira
DISTRICT 5
Nancy Henjum –incumbent
Cass R. Melin
Christopher Burns
Jim Miller
DISTRICT 6
Aaron D. Schick
Roland Rainey, Jr.
Parth Melpakam
Marijuana product at Maggie’s Farm |
Credit: Andrew Rogers
THE B-PLUS MINDSET
by CANNON TAYLOR cannon.taylor@ppmc.live
When he was a kid, Jonathan Nishimoto was always trying something new. If he wasn’t knitting ferociously in the hallway or out at ballet lessons, you could find him recklessly repelling off the side of his house in Old Colorado City on a cheap, hundred-pound rope or affixing a 125cc motorcycle engine to the back of his bicycle. When he’d play the online video game World of Warcraft, he could never stick with one character, always creating a new avatar after a few hours of gameplay.
As an adult, Nishimoto is no different, jumping from hobby to hobby. One of his latest interests is in paramotors, motorized paragliders worn like jetpacks, allowing the pilot to lift off and glide through the air. Although his successful first flight ended in a hard landing that injured his ankle, Nishimoto is itching to get back in the air.
Nishimoto’s occupations have been just as varied as his hobbies. He’s been a dental assistant, firefighter, physics teacher at Manitou Springs High School and now a real estate investor. He’s even a bit of a local mechanic for his friends, fixing their cars using a little scientific know-how and YouTube instruction.
“I see people that get so passionate about one thing, and they just commit to it. You watch YouTube channels of one guy who just loves this one thing. I’ve never experienced that,” Nishimoto said. “I’m bad at everything, but I do a bit of everything. I call it my B-plus ideology. I’m B-plus at everything.”
For most of his life, Nishimoto would try anything except art. Despite the encouragement of the Colorado Springs’ Non-Book Club Book Club, a group of artists who regularly gather to share ideas, Nishimoto refused to give it a try.
Things changed when Nishimoto’s father died in 2021.
“I just had to make that first body of
JONATHAN NISHIMOTO APPROACHES ART AND LIFE LIKE A MINDFUL MAD SCIENTIST
work, and I didn’t even really want to show it to anyone. I was making these pieces to have a conversation with him, because that was our relationship. I’d call him every single day,” Nishimoto recalled. “We’d chat about weird stuff. We’d always talk about inventions. He was one of the main people that inspired me to learn how to make stuff and to not be fearful of making things and doing things. I remember, as a kid, he was like,
‘All the things around you, someone figured out. And they’re not that much smarter than you. … They’re just a human.’”
Creating art was also a way for Nishimoto to reconnect with Japanese culture after his father died. Nishimoto soon became interested in “dorodango” (translates to “mud dumplings”), an art form in which mud, hay and clay are
"LEARNING THAT WAS FRUSTRATING, BUT ALSO, I KNEW WHAT I WANTED. I HAD AN END POINT."
molded into perfect spheres that look like little planets made of marble. The dorodango in Nishimoto’s collection yield no hints on their smooth surfaces to indicate the chaotic, putrid process of their creation.
“It’s really gross. I clogged the pipes in my house horrifically because if you’re sending massive amounts of mud and dirt and gravel down your drains, they will plug,” Nishimoto laughed, describing his first attempt at dorodango. “I had all these mud balls hanging [to dry], and half of them cracked, half of them didn’t crack. I’m trying to figure out the ratios of hay to water to soil. I’m going into my backyard and digging in different spots, being like, ‘Does this work? Does garden soil work?’”
Once Nishimoto figured out the formula for a mixture that would prevent the mud from shrinking or cracking, he put his hands to work molding spheres, then applying an outer polish of natural clay.
“You’re making almost like an M&M. So, they have this really thin candy shell, and if you work it too aggressively, it’s just gone, and the whole thing disintegrates,” explained Nishimoto.
“Learning that was frustrating, but also, I knew what I wanted. I had an end point. … I’m like, ‘This is an established art form technique. There’s a way to do this. I’m going to make it happen.’”
Once Nishimoto figured out the technique, it became meditative, allowing him to release control and focus on just one task amid a sea of thoughts.
Jonathan Nishimoto in his home | Credit: Ben Trollinger
Nishimoto holds a dorodango | Credit: Ben Trollinger
Dorodango is part of the “wabi-sabi” Japanese aesthetic, which finds beauty in imperfection and impermanence.
Over the past several months, Nishimoto has explored another wabi-sabi art form called “suminagashi,” Japanese paper marbling. To create suminagashi, the artist pours ink into a tank of water and manipulates its movements through methods like fanning or blowing. When the artist is satisfied with an ink pattern in the water, they place a piece of paper on the liquid’s surface to capture the design.
Nishimoto approached suminagashi like a physics experiment, testing different surfactants and questioning what caused the ink to flow in certain ways.
“I like that exploration experience,” Nishimoto said. “You get to guide everything, but absolute control doesn’t exist. If you want absolute control, it is not the art form for you.”
Nishimoto’s dorodango and suminagashi works have culminated in the “Mono no Aware” exhibit at Shutter and Strum, on display from Feb. 7 through the rest of the month. The exhibit’s name comes from a Japanese idiom referring to an awareness of the transience of things. For Nishimoto, accepting this fact of life has been a work in progress on the forefront of his mind since his father’s death.
another tiger waiting for him at the bottom of the cliff. He knows his situation is inescapable, that he will be eaten, yet he takes the time pluck a strawberry growing from the root he is hanging from. He eats it, savoring its juicy sweetness, and it’s the most wonderful experience of his life.
“The very [essence] of existing is the start of a guaranteed tragedy. Life is wonderful, but the very moment you start it, you’re guaranteed to die,” Nishimoto explained. “So, what do we do? Do we sit and do we worry about the tiger before? Do we worry about the tiger after? Or do we try to bring ourselves into the moment?”
Nishimoto’s metaphorical strawberry, allowing him to be present and mindful, is learning. Whether it be YouTube tutorials, asking an expert for guidance or volunteering free labor, there are “weird, sneaky ways to get into almost anything.”
And, knowing Nishimoto, simply learning an art form isn’t enough for him; next, he wants to source his own materials.
IF YOU GO
“Mono no Aware” by Jonathan Nishimoto
WHEN: First Friday opening, Feb. 7 (5-9 p.m.) through Saturday, March 1
WHERE: Disruptor Gallery at Shutter and Strum, 2217 E. Platte Ave.
HOURS: Friday and Sunday 12-4 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
WEBSITE: shutterandstrum.org
THREE THINGS WE LEARNED ABOUT JONATHAN NISHIMOTO
1. Nishimoto’s parents used to own a café in Issaquah, Washington. At the time, they started playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called “Dark Age of Camelot.” His parents created “one of the largest guilds in the western United States.” When they eventually sold their café and home in Washington, they decided to move to Colorado Springs at the suggestion of one of their guild members. Nishimoto’s parents went cold turkey on MMORPGs because they’re so addictive. As for Nishimoto, he sticks with storybased games like “Baldur’s Gate 3.”
2. Nishimoto once experimented with polyphasic sleeping (sleeping in multiple, shorter bursts throughout the day instead of once at night) to get an extra hour out of his day. It was a failed experiment, but Nishimoto still looks for ways to maximize his free time and “get little bits of extra.”
Nishimoto referred to a Buddhist koan in which a man is driven to the edge of a cliff by a tiger chasing him. He begins to climb down the cliff by a root when, looking down, he sees there is
“I was reading about the process of making sumi ink, and it’s not rocket science. People have done it for thousands of years. You take a candle, you burn it, you catch the soot, and then you mix it with animal glue. That’s it. It’s really quite simple,” Nishimoto enthused. “Granted, it’s not rocket science. I couldn’t build a rocket. But most stuff is not too bad.”
3. Nishimoto has diagnosed ADHD, which he considers both a blessing and a curse — a blessing because he has a broad range of hobbies, and a curse because he sometimes jumps from an interest too soon. For example, two years ago, he wanted to buy a laser cutter for his jewelry business, Horike Jewelers. He decided to buy the parts for one and build it himself. Two years later, the parts are still sitting in a box, waiting to be built.
Nishimoto with one of his suminagashi works | Credit: Ben Trollinger
ARTS&CULTURE .
A reading of “In Her Bones” at the WAM Theatre in 2023 | Credit: David Dashiell, courtesy WAM Theatre
�arrow of memory
World premiere play explores crypto-Judaism in the San Luis Valley
by CANNON TAYLOR • cannon.taylor@ppmc.live
Mia’s family was acting strange. She had come all the way from UC Berkeley to see her dying grandmother, Raquel, one last time. In the hospital room, Raquel begged her daughter to turn the "retablos" on the walls away from her. Mia was told to refuse entry to a priest seeking to administer Raquel’s last rites. When Mia began asking questions, her mother snapped at her, and then told her to go home and retrieve some white sheets.
As Mia called her boyfriend and explained the situation on the drive home, he became uncomfortably silent. Covering a body with white linen sounded an awful lot like an old Jewish burial custom, but Mia’s family was Catholic.
The aftermath of Raquel’s death only intensified Mia’s questions. Why was her mother covering the mirrors around the house with cloth? Why had her grandmother
always choked down communion wafers and flat-out refused to eat pork? Between her grandmother’s traditions and her own upbringing, what was Mia meant to be?
Original play “In Her Bones” uses Mia’s family conflict to explore the long history of crypto-Judaism in the American Southwest. Crypto-Jews are those who have publicly assimilated to another religion while practicing Judaism in private.
In 1492, the Alhambra Decree was issued by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. The edict ordered Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. That same year, Christopher Columbus completed a voyage, sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, to what we now know as the Americas. With the Inquisition breathing down their necks in Spain, many Jews fled to Mexico, where they could remain Spanish subjects while practicing Judaism in private. But when the Inquisition later came to Mexico, those Jews migrated north toward what is now New
Mexico and Colorado. These lands were ceded to the United States upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
“I found myself surprised early in my research process,” playwright Jessica Kahkoska said. “I’m researching a present-day story in remote southern Colorado, but I’m actually researching and learning about Spain in the 1400s and 1500s.”
Growing up in Black Forest, Kahkoska wasn’t very interested in Colorado or its history. However, as she worked for regional theater companies to build experience, she fell in love with the Centennial State.
Kahkoska now splits her time among theater, documentary filmmaking and scripted TV in New York, but Colorado has remained an interest in many of her projects. For example, she’s written a women-led Western musical and a “folk opera with a documentary feel” about the 2020 East Troublesome Fire.
“The West and Colorado are so special and storied, and I’m always interested in finding the most specific ways into those stories as possible,” Kahkoska said. “I remember when I moved to New York, I was seeing shows that took place in Colorado or the West, but it was sort of some general swinging saloon door, and it didn’t feel very geographically specific. And I think that to love a place like Colorado is to love those specific things, like how the light looks and how the snow feels.”
“In Her Bones” takes place in the San Luis Valley, a cluster of isolated communities near the southern border of Colorado. The valley is surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, named for the blood of Christ. It’s also home to Colorado’s oldest church, which served early Catholic settlers in the region. But the San Luis Valley’s isolation meant priests couldn’t visit often.
As one character puts it in “In Her Bones,” the San Luis Valley has always been the perfect place for desperate people to hide from broader civilization.
As for Kahkoska, she spent some time living in the San Luis Valley in residency at Creede Repertory Theatre, a nationally renowned theater hidden away in a stretch of wilderness.
For perspective, Creede’s few hundred residents are served by the sole grocery store, Kentucky Bell Market, which closes between 4 and 7 p.m. every day. There’s not a chain store, restaurant or supermarket in sight. For Kahkoska — who had been experiencing health issues at the time and doesn’t love the “pace and barrage” of life in the city on the best of days — Creede was what she needed to recuperate.
“The experience of living in a small community is so amazing,” Kahkoska evoked. “You have the sense that people are looking after each other and you.”
It wasn’t until she was working in Boulder a few years later that Kahkoska learned about crypto-Judaism in the San Luis Valley. Being Jewish and having lived in the valley, Kahkoska knew she had to investigate the subject.
What followed was an intensive research process beginning with a “Powered by OffCenter” residency at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in 2019. In her years of research, Kahkoska conducted over 30 oral history interviews with people with some personal experience with crypto-Judaism in the American Southwest. These interviews informed the dialogue, dynamics and
texture of the play.
“The one similarity that really showed up in my interviews was a diversity of experience,” Kahkoska said.
Beyond the interviews, a number of collaborators were vital to the project. For example, Taos-based visual artist Anita Rodriguez served as a dramaturgical and Spanish language consultant. Rodriguez’s family has lived in New Mexico for almost four centuries, and Rodriguez has explored crypto-Judaism in much of her artwork.
Also bringing personal experience to the play is director Rebecca Martinez, whose family history in the San Luis Valley and northern New Mexico dates back hundreds of years. For Martinez, the play is an opportunity to reconnect with part of her family history she doesn’t know much about.
Acting as consulting religious scholar was Denver-based Seth Ward. Ward told Kahkoska that there are three main angles you can use to explore crypto-Judaism: genealogy, ritual and identity. Kahkoska was most interested in the question of identity.
“The least interesting question I could ask as a playwright is whether or not there is anthropological validity to this
“What I was interested in exploring is what makes a place the way it is, and what changes when we are losing generations.”
In “In Her Bones,” Mia’s sense of self is uprooted as she regains missing context of her family history. Some of her questions are specific to the crypto-Jewish experience. How do you honor someone’s life when you only learned their true identity after death? What faith do you adopt when you learn the religion you were raised in was a cover? Is it better to keep a child aware or in the dark about their family’s crypto-Judaism?
However, many of Mia’s questions are universally relatable. How are we supposed to react when we learn unspoken truths about our families? What quirks, rituals and traumas do we inherit from our parents? Is one’s character determined by their bloodline and the place they’re raised in? How much of a say do we have in who we choose to be?
“Something I learned is that sometimes the questions we have about religion, faith, identity and spirituality become more pronounced at major anthropological benchmarks. So, birth, marriage, death — these are times that questions bubble up
that we might not be confronted with on a day-to-day basis,” Kahkoska explained. “A theater piece is such a great container because I’m not an academic. I’m not a journalist. I don’t have to drive a thesis or come to a conclusion. A play is really just a space to ask questions and have those conversations.”
IF YOU GO
“In Her Bones”
Written by Jessica Kahkoska
Directed by Rebecca Martinez
Starring Mayelah Barrera (Mia), Bobby Plasencia (Moises), Marlene Montes (Lea) and Laura Crotte (Raquel)
WHEN: Thursday, Feb. 13, through Sunday, March 2
WHERE: Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St.
WEBSITE: fac.coloradocollege.edu
history,” Kahkoska explained.
Jessica Kahkoska at a reading of “In Her Bones” at the WAM Theatre in 2023 | Credit: David Dashiell, courtesy WAM Theatre
2
ALL PLAY, NO WORK
Saturday, Feb. 8, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., 6 p.m. fac.coloradocollege.edu/events/spotlight
One of the worst things about being adult (aside from bills, back pain and the brutal, crushing weight of the world) is a detachment from childish hobbies, from playing the latest Mario game to binging a children’s animated TV show.
Thankfully, the Fine Arts Center is force-feeding childlike wonder to a crowd of crabby adults in “A Night of Play,” a juvenile event for adults — no
Activities include friendship bracelet making, retro video game competitions comedian-led gallery tours.
6 ROOM WITH A VIEW
Friday, Feb. 21, Ivywild School, 1604 S. Cascade Ave., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
ifsoc-theroom.eventive.org
HART TO HEART
Through Sunday, Feb. 16, Ent Center for the Arts, 5225 N. Nevada Ave. Times vary. entcenterforthearts.org On Thanksgiving Day, 1973, two immigrant women, one from the Philippines, the other from Korea, meet in a grocery store and strike up conversation. They end up having Thanksgiving dinner together, although the meal mainly consists of a little bit of yam, a lot of wine and a metric ton of anxiety about being strangers in a strange land. Theatreworks’ production of “The Heart Sellers” is both a poignant, informative slice of historical fiction and a refresher course on how to fashion a home amid political uncertainty. Read more at csindy.com/theheart-sellers.
Many films have tried to replicate the “so bad it’s good” feel of Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 drama “The Room,” but nobody does it quite like the original. On release, “The Room” was lambasted as one of the worst films ever made, with third-rate cinematography,
5 STRONG ROOTS WEATHER THE STORM
3
fac.coloradocollege.edu
Thursday, Feb. 20, Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., 4 p.m.
Dallas-based multimedia artist Alisa Banks’ work approaches anthropology, as she investigates her Louisiana Creole heritage and the African diaspora in a multidisciplinary fashion. Finding inspiration in materials like
Before we had TED Talks, we had Chautauqua, showcases of education, entertainment and 4 Courtesy: Colorado Humanities
ZINE SCENE
BLACK HISTORY, LIVE! Saturday, Feb. 8, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, 215 S. Tejon St., 5:30 p.m. give.cspm.org/lectureseries
Saturday, Feb. 8, Aspen Room at Penrose Library, 20 N. Cascade Ave., 1 p.m. pikespeakzinefest.com Zines are handmade, DIY publications with subjects ranging from activism-minded pamphlets to silly comics about dinosaurs and poetry about plants. All you need to
Courtesy: Wiseau-Films
Credit: Alisa Banks, courtesy Fine Arts Center
Credit: Kelsey Choo
questionable dialogue and even more baffling line deliveries. All that negativity quickly morphed into a feverish cult following that the cast has made a living from; actor Greg Sestero wrote a memoir about its production, which was adapted into a film, and Bob Odenkirk announced two years ago that he was starring in a spiritual successor to the original. Independent Film Society of Colorado’s screening of “The Room” features Sestero as a special guest.
10 JUDGE SHOOTY
Saturday, Feb. 15, Old Colorado City History Center, 1 S. 24th St., 2 p.m. occhs.org
On July 14, 1860, in Colorado City, Jim McLaughlin shot Pat Devlin over a broken cattle agreement. Although the city’s courts and laws had not yet been set up, the people gathered for a good ol’ fashioned courtroom drama, complete with a hodgepodge judge and jury. In 2025, the Old Colorado Historical Society invites you to a reenactment of that trial. In preparation, suit up in periodaccurate cosplay and practice your booming, “Objection!”
In June 2004, Las Vegas band The Killers graced us with their sky-blue, alternative rock debut album, “Hot Fuss.” Almost exactly 20 years later, Denver band The Mssng came out of their cage like Mr. Brightside and released their debut album “Under the Surface.” Yearning, new wave drawl a la The Killers’ Brandon Flowers and The Cure’s Robert Smith blends with punchy drums and staccato guitar. When performed live, The Mssng’s sonic angst whisks you to a scene of decades past.
13
WHILE THE IRON’S HOT Friday, Feb. 14, The Black Sheep, 2106 E. Platte Ave., 8 p.m. blacksheeprocks.com
The alien synthesizer, bouncy bass and howling saxophone of The Strike are so universally enjoyable that it’s surprising I haven’t heard them on more wedding reception playlists. Electronic music of the 1980s blends with the vaporwave aesthetic of the 2010s, creating a soundscape that an indifferent teenager or out-of-touch grandma could get down to. The Strike will be joined in concert by lo-fi R&B singer Alt Bloom, cementing the night in a sense of unfettered twee.
14 ICE, ICE, BABY Saturday, Feb. 15, through Sunday, Feb. 23, Bennett Avenue, Cripple Creek. Times vary. visitcripplecreek.com
Most art is ephemeral, from once-in-a-lifetime theatrical performances to paintedover graffiti, but ice sculptures are perhaps the most short-lived art of all. All that work, precision and detail goes into something that will inevitably melt. Perhaps the beauty of ice sculptures is found in their reminders of the ever-changing nature of existence. This beauty will be on display at the Cripple Creek Ice Festival, as sculptors compete for their audiences’ affections (and a cash prize).
Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner were born into wealth. They grew up together before drifting apart due to university, war and marriage, but they kept in touch through letter writing. “Love Letters” by A. R. Gurney is a waxing and waning romance of 50 years, reminding us of how distance truly does make the heart grow fonder. Since its premiere in 1988, “Love Letters” has been performed by many stars, including Tom Hanks, Sigourney Weaver and James Earl Jones, and now it comes to the Springs courtesy our Funky Little Theater Company. plants, hair, fiber materials and handwriting, Banks crafts through embroidery, sewing and beading. The result is “Unerased,” an exhibit seeking to shine a light on both personal roots and Black American history. Opening on Feb. 7, “Unerased” will be on display in the Fine Arts Center’s Holaday and Seagraves Galleries through Sept. 6, with an Artist Talk on Feb. 20.
Scholar Becky Stone will be portraying Harriet Tubman as part of Colorado Humanities’ “Black History Live” tour. There’s no better way to learn all about Tubman’s life, from her involvement in the Underground Railroad to her years as a nurse and spy for the Union Army.
Courtesy: Lulu’s Downtown culture most popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These days, Colorado Humanities’ Chautauquans carry on this spirit of enrichment by dressing up and delivering monologues as famous historical figures.
start is an idea and a lot of paper. The making, trading and selling of zines is a practice of community-building, and the folks behind Pikes Peak Zine Fest are launching a monthly meetup to do just that. If you don’t have any interest in making a zine, you’re still welcome to come connect with some of the artists and writers in your community.
Pikes Peak Roller Derby is kicking off their 2025 season with a game themed after the centuries-long conflict between lovers and haters. The Lovers team features Dora the Destroya, Boom Boom McGee and SluggerNaut, while the Haters team features the similarly punny Ruth Bader Bone Breaker, Sassinator and Rampunzel (among others).
Who will you be rooting for? Represent your team by wearing red (Lovers) or black (Haters).
12
EPISTOLARY EMBRACE Friday, Feb. 14, through Sunday, Feb. 16, Palmer Lake Town Hall, 42 Valley Crescent St. Times vary. funkylittletheater.org
Jeremie Albino deals in folksy croons and an antique symphony of organ, twangy guitar and poignant harmonica. Musically, he lives so far in the past that it feels like a betrayal to realize that he’s extremely active on Instagram Reels and tends to wear jeans and baseball caps on his off days instead of chaps and a Stetson. Don’t get me wrong, Albino can walk the walk and talk the talk; he grew up on a farm in Ontario, where he first began composing original music. Albino’s voice is romantic, courageous and soothing in equal measure. You’d be a fool to miss him in concert.
11 1.21 GIGAWATTS! Friday, Feb. 14, and Saturday, Feb. 15, Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave., 7:30 p.m. pikespeakcenter.com
I have always been obsessed with the idiosyncrasies of the “Back to the Future” film series. The second and third movies may be fever dream rehashings of the first’s plot in the then-far off future of 2015 and the Wild West, but they still hold a special place in my heart. Still, the first film can’t be beaten, especially due to Alan Silvestri’s marvelous musical score. The instruments whisper inquisitively in curious moments before building to the blaring horns of bombastic adventure. Colorado Springs Philharmonic will be performing Silvestri’s score in sync with the film in celebration of its 40th anniversary.
Courtesy: Pikes Peak Roller Derby
Courtesy: The Mssng
Courtesy: Pikes Peak Center
Courtesy: The Black Sheep Credit: Adobe Stock
ARTS&CULTURE .
SALT THE WOUND
Members of Coloradan alternative rock band bare souls onstage
by CANNON TAYLOR cannon.taylor@ppmc.live
Hushed drums and the monotone ramblings of a downcast vocalist join a stripped, whimpering guitar riff. Moments later, all three are violently steamrolled by leaden chords and ardent shrieks. “I know I’m worth more than the worst thing that I’ve ever done” is howled over and over by a guilt-ridden coyote bargaining with the ghosts of prey come back to haunt him.
“Forgive Me,” the first single by alternative rock outfit [SALT], acknowledges the conflict between our current selves and the skins we’ve grown out of over time.
“At the time, I was being very hard on myself for a lot of things that were either in the past or out of my control,” elaborated vocalist EJ Becker from his dorm at Colorado College. “I’m not defined by the mistakes I’ve made in my past, and at the end of the day, I need to forgive myself if I want any hope of moving on and growing as a person.”
With lyrics that can emotionally gut you, you wouldn’t expect [SALT]’s members to be so disarming. They’re
Nick Hearn, EJ Becker, Braden Scott and Bodi Francis of [SALT] | Courtesy: [SALT]
each recent high school graduates from the Roaring Fork Valley who share passions for skating, skiing and Super Smash Bros. Over a Zoom call, the members’ manners of speech alternate between practiced professionalism and shameless silliness as they make jabs at each other.
Drummer Bodi Francis, guitarist
Braden Scott and bassist Nick Hearn met at Aspen’s Rock and Roll Academy 12 years ago and became fast friends. Becker joined their ensemble some years later, and they formed [SALT] to compete in the 2023 Aspen Rocks Music Competition.
Since then, they’ve been performing consistently across Colorado, opening for acts like A Giant Dog, North by North and Jesus Christ Taxi Driver.
“There’s this weird other side of music now, where people never play a live show and become famous,” Francis said. “We’re trying to push as hard as we can to get established in the scene before the scene becomes something so intangible.”
The band’s second single, “Goodbye,” was recently released in anticipation of a five-song EP called “This Is the End.”
The despairing instrumentation backs Becker’s longing vocals as he mourns a childhood friend he lost to an accidental fentanyl overdose last June.
“The day of her memorial, we got together as a group, and I know we were all still reeling from that,” Becker recalled. “And Braden just started playing a beautiful guitar riff, and I sang over it, and we wrote it.”
In rehearsal a few days later, Becker shared that he had been thinking about the death of his friend while creating the song, only to discover that each member had been playing for the same reason. That’s when they realized they hadn’t spoken to one another about their grief.
“I think it is easier for us to express what we’re going through and what
we’re feeling through music, especially onstage, screaming it to a crowd of people, than it is to write it out or talk to someone about it,” Francis confessed.
The band’s going to continue using their blend of grunge, emo and punk as an emotional outlet as they seek to establish themselves in Colorado. And, Francis joked, maybe we’ll see a pigsquealing metal act called [PEPPER] later down the line.
Manwolves, [SALT]
WHEN: Friday, Feb. 21, 8 p.m.
WHERE: Lulu’s Downtown, 32 S. Tejon St. WEBSITE: lulusmusic.co
EJ Becker of [SALT] | Courtesy: [SALT]
THURSDAY, FEB. 6
John Wise and Tribe | Jazz band performing at Rico’s Cafe & Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 5 p.m.
Acoustic Set in the Lodge | Acoustic musicians performing at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 6 p.m.
Heavy Devils Trio | Jazz trio performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 6:30 p.m.
Crimson & Slate, Metallics Jazz Choir | A cappella and jazz bands performing at Lulu’s Downtown. 32 S. Tejon St. 7 p.m.
E J R M | Ambient multi-instrumentalist performing at Ohana Kava Bar. 112 E. Boulder St. 7 p.m.
FRIDAY, FEB. 7
The Cleveland Experiment | Jazz duo performing at Rico’s Cafe & Wine Bar. 322 N. Tejon St. 6 p.m.
Craig Walter | Acoustic musician performing at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 6 p.m.
Doug Conlon | Folk acoustic musician performing at Jives Coffee Lounge. 16 Colbrunn Court. 6:30 p.m.
New Vintage Jazz | Jazz band performing at Summa. 817 W. Colorado Ave. 6:30 p.m.
Gannon Fremin & CCREV | Rock band performing at Oskar Blues Grill & Brew. 118 N. Tejon St. 7 p.m.
Gigahorse | Variety band performing at Buzzed Crow Bistro. 5853 Palmer Park Blvd. 7 p.m.
Matt Brooker | Jazz musician performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 7 p.m.
The Street Deacons | Jazz band performing at Armadillo Ranch. 962 Manitou Ave. 8 p.m.
The Wildwoods | Folk band performing at Lulu’s Downtown. 32 S. Tejon St. 8 p.m.
Trey Lewis | Country musician performing at the Whiskey Baron Dance Hall & Saloon. 5781 N. Academy Blvd. 9 p.m.
SATURDAY, FEB. 8
Bill Snyder | Acoustic guitarist performing at Rico’s Cafe & Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 6 p.m.
Triple Nickel Band | Country band performing at the Whiskey Baron Dance Hall & Saloon. 5781 N. Academy Blvd. 6 p.m.
Jazzy Tones Trio | Jazz trio performing at Summa. 817 W. Colorado Ave. 6:30 p.m.
The Dustbowls | Jazz band performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 7 p.m.
Jesse Cook | Guitarist performing at Pikes Peak Center. 190 S. Cascade Ave. 7:30 p.m.
GOYA! | Live music at Buzzed Crow Bistro. 5853 Palmer Park Blvd. 8 p.m.
The Mssng, Glass Parade, Ozonic | New wave bands performing at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
Yesness | Post-rock band performing at Lulu’s Downtown. 32 S. Tejon St. 8 p.m.
SUNDAY, FEB. 9
Colorado Springs Pickers Bluegrass Jam | Bluegrass musicians performing at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 3 p.m.
Tails From the Local Band featuring Stereo Ontario, Moth Season, Turismo Blu | “Live podcast” featuring interviews and live music with local bands at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 7:30 p.m.
TUESDAY, FEB. 11
Lyle Lovett | Country musician performing at Pikes Peak Center. 190 S. Cascade Ave. 7:30 p.m.
Stony Jam | Reggae band performing at Armadillo Ranch. 962 Manitou Ave. 8 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 12
Ava Grace | Singer-songwriter performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 6:30 p.m.
THURSDAY, FEB. 13
Gentle Rain | Variety band performing at Rico’s
MUSIC . SpringsSCENE
Cafe & Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 5 p.m.
Acoustic Set in the Lodge | Acoustic musicians performing at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 6 p.m.
Melody Ranch Trio | Variety band performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd.
6:30 p.m.
Frog & Fiddle | Folk band performing at Armadillo Ranch. 962 Manitou Ave. 7 p.m.
Spoiled Mistress | Variety band performing at Buzzed Crow Bistro. 5853 Palmer Park Blvd. 7 p.m.
Palaye Royale | Rock band performing at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
Ronnie and The Redwoods | Country band performing at Vultures. 2100 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
FRIDAY, FEB. 14
The Mitguards | Folk band performing at Rico’s Cafe & Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 6 p.m.
Sam Grow, Blake Wood, Grayson Ratliff | Country musicians performing at Sunshine Studios Live. 3970 Clear View Frontage Road. 6 p.m.
Sinatra Serenade | Valentine’s Day dinner and jazz show at Summa. 817 W. Colorado Ave. 6:30 p.m.
Dueling Pianos | Valentine’s-themed Dueling Pianos at Phil Long Music Hall. 13071 Bass Pro Drive. 7 p.m.
Julie Bradley | Jazz musician performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 7 p.m.
Tony Exum Jr., Rafiel & The Roomshakers | Jazz musicians performing at Stargazers Theatre. 10 Parkside Drive. 7 p.m.
Tron the Band | Rock band performing at Buzzed Crow Bistro. 5853 Palmer Park Blvd. 7 p.m.
William Elliott Whitmore, Ben Garcia, Dillon Hoock | Folk musicians performing at Oskar Blues Grill & Brew. 118 N. Tejon St. 7 p.m.
Matt Flaherty Band | Variety band performing at Armadillo Ranch. 962 Manitou Ave. 8 p.m. 962 Manitou Ave. 8 p.m.
The Strike, Alt Bloom | Synth-pop bands performing at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
SATURDAY, FEB. 15
SofaKillers | Variety band performing at Buzzed Crow Bistro. 5853 Palmer Park Blvd. 1 p.m.
Sara Van Hecke | Singer-songwriter performing at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 6 p.m.
Katie Hale & the P-47s | Jazz band performing at Rico’s Cafe & Wine Bar. 322 ½ N. Tejon St. 6 p.m.
Nube Nueve | Latin jazz band performing at Summa. 817 W. Colorado Ave. 6:30 p.m.
Jefferson Starship | Rock band performing at Phil Long Music Hall. 13071 Bass Pro Drive. 7 p.m.
Wayne Wilkinson | Jazz guitar trio performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 7 p.m.
Yesterday | The Beatles tribute band performing at Stargazers Theatre. 10 Parkside Drive. 7 p.m.
Ballyhoo!, Cydeways, The Harbor Boys | Reggae rock bands performing at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
Jeremie Albino | Folk musician performing at Lulu’s Downtown. 32 S. Tejon St. 8 p.m.
Colorado Springs Pickers Bluegrass Jam | Bluegrass musicians performing at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 3 p.m.
KODO | Taiko ensemble performing at Pikes Peak Center. 190 S. Cascade Ave. 7 p.m.
TUESDAY, FEB. 18
“Cowboy Bebop” Live | “Cowboy Bebop” jazz concert at the Black Sheep. 2106 E. Platte Ave. 8 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 19
Black Rose Acoustic Society Showcase | Showcase of acoustic musicians at Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. 2 El Paso Blvd. 6 p.m.
Springs Contemporary Jazz Big Band | Sixteenpiece jazz band performing at Trinity Brewing Co. 1466 Garden of the Gods Road. 6 p.m.
Dina Hollingsworth | Jazz musician performing at Tokki. 182 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. 6:30 p.m.
Palaye Royale plays the Black Sheep on Feb. 13. | Courtesy: The Black Sheep
ARTS&CULTURE .
MANN, OH MANN
By LAUREN CIBOROWSKI
“Iwish saving someone without their participation was possible,” went one particularly pithy line from “The Forgotten Arm: a Musical.” And if I could sum up the entirety of the musical in progress I saw recently, it might be just that.
Hosted by the UCCS Cabaret Club, a performance series that presents works still in development, the audience found themselves all seated on the stage of the Shockley-Zalabak Theater itself. There was a bar in the wings and two dimmed chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Six cafe tables were situated in front of the performers, with the rest of the audience forming a horseshoe shape around them.
They’re going for an intimate, cabaretlike feel, and it was a novel use of the space, to be sure. It was a very casual vibe, with rugs strewn about the stage and the performers dressed in jeans and beanies for the most part. I suspect the section of audience directly opposite the performers had a great view. As for me, on the side, I couldn’t see the faces of the two leads at all … but I did happen to have a clear perspective of Aimee Mann. Yeah, that Aimee Mann! “The Forgotten Arm: A Musical” featured Mann’s music, mostly from her 2005 album of the same name, with a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman. Mann was onstage to perform a small role as well as guitar and backing vocals for the show. The piece was directed by Oskar Eustis, also in attendance, who is the current director of the Public Theater in New York City, a company famous for incubating countless beloved theatrical favorites (“Chorus Line” and “Hamilton,” to name just two). Kudos to Visual and Performing Arts director Kevin Landis and David Siegel, executive director
of the Ent Center, for getting these high-caliber theater folks here. These luminaries had apparently spent the better part of the week rehearsing the show and working with UCCS students as well.
Although the original album, like this new musical-in-progress, also chronicles the travails of a couple named John and Caroline, this new plot has a different context from the original. We are introduced to the two main characters at rehab — Caroline-the-musician, there for the first time and suffering vocal loss and a host of other issues, and John, who is back for his 18th stint. “I think of rehab as more of a cleanse,” he opines. And boy, on the plus side, this musical was chock full of trenchant quotes, especially about rehab. AA meetings were described as “a slightly less desperate open mic,” for example, and the poor, unredeemable John, played by Michael Esper, mentions that he’s the “Sisyphus of the 12 steps.” I really enjoyed the many clever turns of phrase.
The music, of course, was also spot-on, showcasing Mann at her Manniest. Poignant lyrics and sweet melodies, additionally accompanied by Paul Bryan on bass (charmingly taking notes on his script at certain points), and Nadia DiGiallonardo, whose voicing on piano I found exceptionally lovely.
Shannon Tyo’s Caroline was an interesting, almost mellow foil to Esper’s high-intensity John. I ended up having a lot of questions about her character by the end. I had a lot of questions in general, by the end, if I’m being honest. Mostly about the plot and timing and the startlingly rash nature of the characters. Now, to be fair, no one was suffering any illusions about this not being a work in progress. I saw the show on the second night of its two-night run, and apparently 20 pages and several songs had been cut from the script between the two nights of the show alone. At the end of the day, what we saw was almost a table-reading of sorts, with the actors on bar stools and stage directions being read out loud. With a set and costumes and staging, it would of course be a totally different beast. I’m very curious to see where this show goes from here. How cool that Colorado Springs was a part of its incubation!
You need art. Art needs you.
Lauren Ciborowski writes about the arts and music in every issue. W.I.P. stands for Works in Progress.
BEST BITES
128 S Tejon St.
(Historic Alamo Building)
719-635-3536
326 N Tejon St.
719-228-6566
MacKenzie’s Chop House
Voted Best Power Lunch, Steakhouse, and Martini! Downtown’s choice for quality meats and mixed drinks. Open Monday-Friday 11:30am-3:00pm for lunch and 5pm every day for dinner.
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Tony’s Downtown Bar
Winners of 80+ Independent “Best Of” Awards in 25 years. A great Midwestern Tavern with warm beer, lousy food & poor service!!! Pabst, Leinenkugel’s, fried cheese curds, , walleye fish fry, cocktails, burgers, and more. 11am-2am daily. Happy Hour 3-6pm. GO PACK GO! TonysDowntownBar.com
34 E. Ramona Ave.
(S. Nevada & Tejon)
719-633-2220
Edelweiss
For 55 years Edelweiss has brought Bavaria to Colorado Springs! Using fresh ingredients, the menu invites you to visit Germany. Voted Gold Best German, Silver Dessert Menu, and Bronze Best Patio by Indy readers! Reservations and the menu can be found online at EdelweissRest.com
222 N Tejon St.
719-636-2311
2028 Sheldon Ave.
719-836-1932
Celebrating 50 years! Authentic Tex-Mex & Mexican fare in a contemporary Santa Fe-styled establishment. Across from Acacia Park Downtown. Award-winning queso, chili rellenos, and mean green chili. JoseMuldoons.com
South
Park Brewing
Craft brewing at 6050’! Best Smashburger in Colorado Springs. Brewpub and Distillery Tasting Room. Family-owned, award-winning beer. Butter burgers, chicken tenders, and Nashville hot chicken on the menu. Cocktails and wine. Plenty of on-site parking. SouthParkBrewingColorado.com
BOOKS . On saving each other, luck and quantum entanglement
An interview with Colorado author Erika
Krouse
EBy D’ARCY FALLON • Rocky Mountain Reader •
rika Krouse, 55, was born in Yonkers, N.Y. and lives now along Colorado’s Front Range. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train and Story. Since 2008, she has taught at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, where she is a Book Project mentor and winner of the Lighthouse Beacon Award. She has written four books, including the memoir Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, winner of the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Crime Fact and the 2023 Colorado Book Award for Best Creative Nonfiction. Her 2001 short story collection Come Up and See Me Sometime was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Paterson Fiction Award. Her 2015 novel, Contenders, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her latest book, Save Me, Stranger (Flatiron Books), is releasing this month.
RMR: Erika, I’ve loved reading these stories. The story “Save Me, Stranger” was a continuous revelation to me, like a set of Russian nested dolls, opening up with more and more perspectives. This story gave me hope. Life isn’t always pretty but we can affect change, all of us, in our own ways. Can you tell me a bit about the impetus for the story?
EK: I’m so glad and thank you! “Save Me, Stranger” was the first story I had written in about a decade. I wrote it shortly after my friend died by suicide, one day before we were scheduled to meet up. In my grieffueled hubris, I couldn’t help but think that there might have been something I could have done to somehow nudge tragedy off course. I think we’re always one move away from potentially saving each other, but we rarely know what that move is. I wrote that story to cope, and then I got fascinated with the theme and needed more stories to explore it.
RMR: I was thinking of the role chance plays in your life. You got hired as a private investigator— even though you had no official training in that field—by a lawyer you happened to bump into in a bookstore
who found himself confiding in you. (Krouse’s work as a PI for that lawyer is visited in her memoir, Tell Me Everything.) How serendipitous does your own life seem to you? Can you give some examples? How do they play into your writing, these chances?
EK: I think chances are about luck, and I’m both the luckiest and unluckiest person on earth. It was extremely lucky that I bumped into the lawyer who hired me as a PI for a historical lawsuit … and extremely unlucky that it was a sexual assault case, given my own history with sexual violence. It’s always like that. In Las Vegas, I once won twice in the same session of bingo (people yelled at me for “cheating”), but I couldn’t collect the money because I had such bad food poisoning. Great luck, terrible luck.
RMR: You’ve mentioned that you have the kind of face, the demeanor, that makes people feel safe. Complete strangers will confide in you. Are you happy people feel comfortable opening up to you or does it sometimes feel like a burden, as in, hey, I just want to sit in this café and drink my coffee in peace?
EK: I don’t drink coffee, so it’s totally cool with me. There was only one time I regretted it, when the person cutting my hair started talking about her impending divorce and got so upset that she gave me a mullet and I had to wear a hat for six months. But the rest of the time, I really like it. I like connecting with people.
RMR: I’m thinking of the role of second chances in our lives, particularly in light of your story, “Eat My Moose.” That phrase, “Eat My Moose,” seems like a koan to me, although I’m not sure what it means. In the story, those are the last words a dying man utters to another character. There is literally a winter’s worth of butchered moose hanging in his shed that he won’t be able to eat because he’s going to be dead very soon. We all hope we’ll be able to eat our own moose, but sometimes we can’t. I’m struggling here … throw me a bone. What does “Eat My Moose” mean to you? Am I breaking any writer’s etiquette by pressing you like this?
EK: Ha! I think of the moose-eating as an
José Muldoons
evolving parable throughout the story. The main characters are Alaska isolationists who initially seek to cancel out their violent military pasts via rugged self-reliance. But no amount of isolation can keep us from changing each other, creating messes that someone else needs to clean up, right? It’s like we’re eternally locked in a daisy chain of quantum entanglement and human responsibility and unfinished business. Eat my moose. It’s also funny to say.
RMR: I found these stories full of surprises. I also recoiled a little because they were so honest and visceral. I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of them, but I was so grateful too. For instance, in “North of Dodge” the protagonist who steals her uncle’s car and runs away ends up driving an ice cream truck for a living. In the morning, as she’s waiting to get launched on her route, she notices the slaughterhouse across the field. “At the windowless slaughterhouse … chain workers slumped across the yard toward the smell of manure. Sometimes the cows screamed. Their voices sounded hoarse, as if it were their first time screaming, pleading for their version of God.” I felt terrible for the cows and I think you did too. You strike me as someone who goes through life with an open heart, pierced by beauty and pain and love. Is this true? And if so, how do you protect yourself? Do you protect yourself?
EK: That’s the curse, right? You can’t write about life if you protect yourself against it. I’m no role model for keeping healthy boundaries (or for anything else). But I think there’s also a certain brand of courage that comes from making yourself vulnerable and taking risks. I think this is true for everyone, not just writers.
RMR: These stories have touched me in a different way than Come Up and See Me Sometime. I loved that book and thought
it was very funny, but those stories didn’t break my heart. These stories did break my heart. I don’t mean they were sentimental. I can see how you actively push against that in your writing, but there is a different quality here. It’s like you’re not so worried about appearing smart. You’re more inside the story. Or perhaps you’re different now. What is it? Or is it that I’m just in a different place in my own life?
EK: Come Up and See Me Sometime was my first book, and I’m very glad to hear the stories have improved since I started out. That’s what I’m trying for. I try to kick my ego aside so I can write better. It helps that, by the time you’re on your fourth book, your ego is pretty much disintegrated. It’s like wearing a sweater that’s more holes than sweater so why bother to put it on? It’s still an ongoing effort, though. I hope my next book is better than this one, and on and on.
RMR: It’s “cold” reading these stories. I mean, the weather in those pages. Is that because you live in Colorado? How much of a role does the weather and setting play in your writing?
EK: I’m always cold! My friend has a sweatshirt that says, “Always Cold” and I want to steal it. I think that’s part of why I wanted to write about the coldest town on earth in the story, “The Pole of Cold;” I’m amazed at the extremes we call home. Colorado does influence my writing a lot, our fires and floods and snow and hurricaneforce gales. I think our weather reflects our personalities, and affects them, too. Weather has changed me as a person—do you feel the same way?
RMR: Yes. I like big weather. Snow days. Blizzards. When life seems out of our hands. Speaking of the big picture, do you have any advice for young writers?
EK: Young writers: please read a lot. Learn grammar. Travel. Talk to people. Ask questions. Stop staring at your little rectangle. Work harder and more and longer than everyone else. Don’t let other people define you. Don’t do drugs. Don’t listen to me.
D’Arcy Fallon, an award-winning former Colorado Springs Gazette reporter, lives in Springfield, Ohio. A professor emerita of Wittenberg University, she is the author of a memoir, So Late, So Soon (Hawthorne Books), about living in a religious commune in the ‘70s. Her work appears at https://darcyfallon.substack. com. This interview was first published at RockyMountainReader.org. n
Erika Krouse | Courtesy: Erika Krouse
THE STATE .
ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECTS IN LIMBO AFTER TRUMP MOVE
Coloradans thought they had millions coming for drought in the Colorado River Basin. Now, the future is uncertain.
By SHANNON MULLANE•The Colorado Sun
On Jan. 17, in the last hours of the Biden administration, the Bureau of Reclamation announced it would spend $388.3 million for environmental projects in Colorado and three other Colorado River Basin states.
Now that funding is in limbo.
The money was set to come from a Bidenera law, the Inflation Reduction Act. On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to halt spending money under the act. Lawmakers were still trying to understand whether the freeze applied to the entire Inflation Reduction Act or portions of it as of Wednesday afternoon.
The new executive order focused on energy spending but also raised questions about funding for environmental projects in the Colorado River Basin, including $40 million for western Colorado’s effort to buy powerful water rights tied to Shoshone Power Plant on the Colorado River and 16 other projects in Colorado.
Past regulations have been burdensome and impeded the development of the country’s energy resources, according to the executive order.
“It is thus in the national interest to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” the order said. “This will restore American prosperity — including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years.”
The president issued dozens of executive actions within hours of his inauguration, including rescinding 78 of former President Joe Biden’s executive actions.
Where spending is stalled, federal agencies will have 90 days to review their funding processes to make sure they align with the Trump administration’s policies.
For now, the future is unsure for 42 environmental projects in four states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFORTS FOR THE COLORADO RIVER
The proposed projects focus on improving habitats, ecological stability and resilience
against drought in the Colorado River Basin, where prolonged drought and overuse have cast uncertainty over the future water supply for 40 million people. The bureau also awarded $100 million for Colorado River environmental projects in Arizona, California and Nevada.
Coloradans were promised up to about $135 million from the Inflation Reduction Act as part of the Upper Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation Program. It’s one of many buckets that have distributed money from the act to Colorado.
With the funding, people around the state hope to upgrade infrastructure to help protect 15 miles of key habitat near Grand Junction for endangered species on the Colorado River. They want to improve aquatic habitats along rivers in Grand County, where low flows threaten fish and aquatic life, and restore ancient, water- and carbon-storing fens.
“It wasn’t surprising, but we still need to wait to see how it gets interpreted, and what it’s going to apply to or not apply to,” said Steve Wolff, general manager of the Southwestern Water Conservation District. The district joined with local partners to apply for funding for 17 projects in southwestern Colorado and was awarded $25.6 million.
“We would all be very disappointed if any of this money was removed,” Wolff said. “These funds are really bipartisan and are meant to get put on the ground and do good work.”
One of those projects aims to restore ancient fens along Highway 550, known as the Million Dollar Highway, between Silverton and Ouray in southwestern Colorado. These fens, between 6,000 and 14,000 years old, naturally store carbon and slow runoff from the mountains, helping to maintain flows into the summer when water runs low and demand outpaces supply. Drought, a history of mining and human impacts in the area have degraded the fen ecosystems over time, said Jake Kurzweil, a hydrologist with Mountain Studies Institute in southwestern Colorado.
The project managers want to hire locally
to help the rural economy. And the work would help restore river ecosystems where they begin — at their headwaters — if the funding actually comes through.
“Until there’s a contract in place, we won’t be including it in our budgets,” Kurzweil said. “We’re optimistically hopeful, but not counting our chickens before they hatch.”
Of the 42 Upper Colorado River projects awarded funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, 17 projects would include work in Colorado:
• Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s Pine River Environment Drought Mitigation Project, up to $16.7 million: The funding would improve the health of the Pine River watershed, fish passage, deteriorating infrastructure, and water quality while addressing drought impacts.
• Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project, up to $40 million: The funding would go toward the $99 million purchase of the Shoshone Power Plant’s water rights by the Colorado River Water Conservation District.
The district says it will protect future water supplies for ecosystems, farms, ranches, communities and recreational businesses.
• Addressing Drought Mitigation in Southwestern Colorado, up to $25.6 million: The funding would support 17 projects in the Dolores and San Juan river basins in southwestern Colorado. The projects aim to restore ecosystems and enhance biodiversity and water resources while supporting local communities and endangered species.
• Grand Mesa and Upper Gunnison Watershed Resiliency and Aquatic Connectivity Project, up to $24.3 million: The funding would restore watersheds to combat drought impacts to water quality and habitat in western Colorado.
• Orchard Mesa Irrigation District Conveyance Upgrades for 15-Mile Reach Flow Enhancement, up to $10.5 million: The funding would convert open canals into pressurized pipelines, improving water delivery efficiency and reducing environmental stressors. This upgrade aims to support endangered fish species by enhancing streamflow in a critical stretch of the Colorado River.
• Enhancing Aquatic Habitat in Colorado River Headwaters, up to $7 million: The funding would restore stream habitats along the Fraser, Blue and Colorado rivers in Grand County through channel shaping and bank stabilization.
• Yampa River/Walton Creek Confluence Restoration Project, up to $5 million: The funding would restore river and floodplain habitat around Steamboat Springs.
• Drought Resiliency on Western Colorado Conserved Lands, up to $4.6 million: The
THE STATE .
funding would help improve wetlands, floodplains, erosion control structures and habitat for at-risk species like the yellow-billed cuckoo and Gunnison sagegrouse.
• Upper Colorado Basin Aquatic Organism Passage Program, up to $4.2 million: The funding would restore stream habitat in Grand County to improve biodiversity, habitats, fish passage and drought resilience.
• Conversion of Wastewater Lagoons into Wetlands, up to $3 million: The funding would turn outdated sewer lagoons into wetlands to improve biodiversity and habitat for migratory waterfowl and endangered fish species in Palisade.
• Fruita Reservoir Dam Removal, up to $2.8 million: The funding would remove a dam on Piñon Mesa to restore wetlands, habitat and biodiversity.
• Monitoring and Quantifying the Effectiveness of Beaver Dam Analogs on Drought Influenced Streams in the Upper Colorado River Basin, up to $1.9 million: The funding would restore degraded headwater meadows by implementing structures that mimic the natural functions of beaver dams.
• Uncompahgre Tailwater Rehabilitation Project, up to $1.8 million: The funding would stabilize stream banks, restore aging infrastructure and improve the river habitat to help with ecological health and recreational opportunities.
• Eagle River Habitat Improvement, Gypsum Ponds State Wildlife Area, up to $1.5 million: The funding would improve fish habitat and water quality along the Eagle River in Eagle County.
• Orchard Mesa and Grand Valley Metering Efficiency Project, up to $1.5 million: The funding would improve water management in the Grand Valley through the installation of advanced metering technology and real-time remote monitoring systems.
• Habitat Restoration in the Gunnison Basin, up to $750,000: The funding would use lowtech restoration structures to restore habitat for the endangered Gunnison sage-grouse in the Gunnison River Basin.
• Cyanobacteria Monitoring and Treatment for Drought-driven Blooms in a High Elevation, Upper Colorado Reservoir to save Ecosystem Function, up to $518,000: The funding would use real-time water quality monitoring tools and targeted treatments to combat algal blooms and restore aquatic health at Williams Fork Reservoir.
The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonprofit news outlet that covers our state. Learn more and sign up for free newsletters at coloradosun.com. n
MORE TO EXPLORE IN THE PIKES PEAK REGION
By BOB “HIKING BOB” FALCONE
In my column in the Jan. 23 edition of The Independent, I wrote about the many features in the EXPLORE Act, a single piece of recently passed federal legislation that simplifies, standardizes and modernizes how federal agencies deal with many aspects of outdoor recreation.
Shortly after the EXPLORE Act was signed, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that a “letter of intent” had been signed by the cities of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, El Paso and Teller counties, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, Colorado Springs Utilities and Pikes Peak-America’s Mountain to examine a possible management plan for the Ring the Peak Trail that (almost) completely circumnavigates Pikes Peak. The idea is to explore having Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) manage the trail, similar in some degree to how it manages recreation on the Arkansas River Headwaters.
To better understand how these two developments might affect recreation in the Pikes Peak region, I sat down with Becky Leinweber, the executive director of the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance (PPORA), a group that brings together outdoor rec businesses, land management agencies from all levels of government, nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups. PPORA is active in advocating for a collaborative approach to outdoor recreation in the region. (Disclosure: I am a member of the PPORA Advisory Committee.)
We started the conversation with the EXPLORE Act, and I asked what she saw as the immediate and long-term effect the act would have in our region.
“The biggest thing that comes with [the EXPLORE Act] is the federal government is acknowledging the importance of the outdoor recreation economy and all the different contributing pieces to it,” she
said. “So, for outdoor businesses that rely on permitting, and even groups and clubs that rely on permitting, they’re looking at that and going, ‘We have got to have some ways to streamline this and eliminate some red tape.’ There has been legislation to try to do that before, but this is the most sweeping legislation … to try to do that. And there are some mandates included in there, but right now we don’t know how they’re going to fund those mandates, and that’s always the question.”
Leinweber said that the biggest impact is that it will bring federal agencies “up to the modern age.”
“Their systems are very antiquated,” she said. “They don’t communicate with one another. There needs to be some modernization of technologies across the board for our land managers, I think that’s going to affect everybody.”
She expressed concern that the strict timelines that the act dictates for things to be accomplished might conflict with there being no funding included in the law to make it all happen, especially when considering that the U.S. Forest Service saw its 2025 budget cut by $40 million. She said she wouldn’t be surprised if some timelines aren’t met or are extended. However, she noted, the federal government does figure out to fund things if finds important.
However, the overriding benefit she saw in the act would be the standardization of rules and processes across the different federal agencies and even within a specific agency. Leinweber — who also co-owns Angler’s Covey, a popular fishing equipment store that also provides guide and outfitting services, with her husband, Colorado Springs City Councilman David Leinweber — explained how getting permits for their guides has been complicated by different rules in different jurisdictions, even within the same agency. She related how one federal land manager required that their guides — who are independent contractors and not employees — have workers’ compensation insurance, even though none of the other land managers around them required that. She stated that they could only find one company in the country that would provide the insurance for independent contractors, something that is virtually unheard of.
She also recounted how an outfitter in Colorado, near the Utah border, couldn’t get permits for their services in Colorado, so they moved across the border into Utah, where they were able to get permits, from the same federal agency but in a different district. She indicated that these inconsistencies affected not only for-profit organizations, but also nonprofits and volunteer organizations, and even events, such as
races, that may cross into various federal jurisdictions. She stated that the general feeling among outdoor recreation businesses is to wait and see how the various parts of the EXPLORE Act are implemented. On the topic of management of the Ring the Peak Trail, she stated this type of collaboration to managing the trail was one of the results of PPORA’s “Outdoors Pikes Peak Initiative” (OPPI), which in its first phase sought public input on the state of outdoor recreation in the Pikes Peak region. You can find it here: ppora.org/oppi.
During that process, one of the most prominent desires from participants was for collaboration among the various land managers, along with protecting the resources, such as watersheds and also wildlife. Leinweber related how a Ring the Peak Master Plan, conducted by the Trails and Open Space Coalition, focused on closing the “gap” in the trail system along the southwest side of Pikes Peak. She stated that about 18 months ago, all the land managers “came back together and said, ‘Where are we, and where can we go with this?’ and we came to a dead stop on this piece of completing [the trail], and it was a management gap.”
She said that the land managers and other landowners felt that closing the gap in the trail was a great idea, but “who is going to be in charge, who is going to take care of it, who is going manage the people who are going to come, where they go and what they are going to do?” became a primary sticking point in completing the trail, and
private land owners had expressed concern over who would manage parts of the trail that could cross their properties. “The only way that could move forward was to solve the management piece,” and “CPW is a potential way forward.”
The land managers’ acknowledgment that utilizing CPW’s resources to manage the trail “is a huge first step.” She cautioned that there was a lot of work still to be done, but that “this is a pretty critical next step, because if this didn’t happen, Ring the Peak will not be completed.” Since CPW, as a state enterprise, is funded on a pay-to-play model (user fees) and not tax dollars, paying for CPW to manage the trail might be by the development of established campgrounds. But, she pointed out, nothing is set in stone, and it will be awhile before anything changes.
“Yes, this is a first step, it’s an initial step, it’s a very critical first step, but I hope it’s not the only step,” she said, “because we can’t just do the Ring the Peak trail system and call it good.”
Be Good. Do Good Things. Leave No Trace.
Bob “Hiking Bob” Falcone is a retired career firefighter, USAF veteran, an accomplished photographer and 30-year resident of Colorado Springs. He has served on boards and committees for city, county and state parks in the Pikes Peak region, and spends much of this time hiking 800 or more miles each year, looking for new places and trails to visit, often with his canine sidekick Coal.
Credit: Adobe Stock
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FUN&GAMES .
News of the WEIRD
BY THE EDITORS AT ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
ANIMAL ANTICS
A Starbucks employee in Mobile, Alabama, had to have stitches and rabies vaccinations on Jan. 10 after a pet Aotus monkey jumped out of a car at the drive-thru window and into the restaurant, according to Lagniappe. The monkey ran up the employee’s arm to her head and started biting her until a co-worker grabbed it and threw it back out of the window. Mobile Police Department public information officer Blake Brown said the monkey’s owner, Tammy Elaine Gardner, drove away from the restaurant before police arrived. The wounded employee said Gardner, who had another monkey in the car, later returned to the restaurant to check on her but wouldn’t give her name. “The owner of the animal could face charges,” Brown said. The Starbucks location has banned Gardner and her monkeys from the drive-thru. “She’s welcome to come inside if she leaves them in the car,” the employee said.
BEWARE OF DINGO
A 3-year-old girl who was visiting Fraser Island in Queensland, Australia, on Jan. 17 was bitten by a dingo, ABC reported. The Queensland Park and Wildlife Service said the girl was bitten on the back of a leg as her family strolled the beach. The family said they were regular visitors and had scanned the beach for dingoes, but “dingoes are quick, and it happened suddenly,” said head ranger Linda Behrendorff. Other people came to assist in fighting the dingo off using a kayak paddle. The toddler didn’t go to the hospital and is expected to recover.
KRUISE KLUX KLAN
A housekeeping crew on a P&O Cruises Australia ship took passengers by surprise in December when they paraded by the ship’s swimming pool wearing their all-white uniforms with pointy white hoods, News.com reported on Jan. 22. The eight crew were dressed as upside-down snow cones, but passengers were horrified and were quick to document the incident on social media. “We were like, ‘Are we seeing this correctly?’ It was so bizarre,” said one cruiser from Melbourne. Lynne Scrivens, communications director for the cruise line, said the housekeeping crew are from all over the world and had never heard of the Ku Klux Klan. “They are limited with what resources they have on ships,” she said, explaining that they make do with what they can find for costumes. P&O Cruises Australia issued an apology following the event: “The crew members were horrified.”
DIY DUCTUS DEFERENS
A plastic surgeon in Taipei City, Taiwan, is being called the “bravest man in Taiwan” after he shared on social media that he had performed his own vasectomy, Oddity Central reported. Chen Wei-nong recorded the surgery for educational purposes and presented the 11 steps necessary to complete the procedure. “It was a strange feeling to touch and suture my own urethra,” he wrote. He reassured followers that the surgery was performed outside of work hours and under the supervision of a urologist, and while he experienced some discomfort following the vasectomy, he felt fine the next day.
TEXT BOOK CRIME
Jose Israel Teran Jr., 21, was taken into custody on Jan. 19 in connection with a road rage incident in San Antonio, KSATTV reported. In that confrontation, Teran allegedly shot a man in a semitruck while driving north on I-35. But it was Teran’s earlier criminal activity, on Dec. 30, that really had law enforcement’s attention. He was accidentally added to a family group text that day, in which members were discussing a 9-month-old baby’s upcoming baptism. Teran replied to the text, “That’s a nice Caucasian baby how much you want?” He went on to ask, “Are you not interested in selling? I’m willing to start the bid at 500k.” The baby’s father called Teran, who explained that he purchases babies for their organs and could pay in cash or bitcoin. Teran told police he thought the group thread was spam, but he was charged with the purchase and sale of human organs.
Horoscopes .
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The world’s largest mirror isn’t an actual mirror. It’s Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni salt flat, a vast area that’s almost perfectly flat. After a rain, a thin layer of calm water transforms the surface into a perfect reflector that can be used to calibrate observation satellites. In these conditions, it may be almost impossible to tell where the earth begins and the sky ends. I foresee metaphorically similar developments for you in coming weeks. Boundaries between different aspects of your world — professional and personal, spiritual and practical — might blur in interesting ways. A temporary dissolution of the usual limits may offer you surprising insights and unexpected opportunities for realignment. Be alert for helpful clues about how to adjust the way you see things.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):From day to day, glaciers appear static. But they are actually slow-moving rivers of ice that have tremendous creative power. They can make or reshape valleys, moving tons of dirt and rock. They pulverize, grind and topple trees, hills and even mountains. New lakes may emerge in the course of their activity. I invite you to imagine yourself as a glacier in the coming months, Taurus. Exult in your steady transformative power. Notice and keep track of your slow but sure progress. Trust that your persistence will ultimately accomplish wonders and marvels.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In recent weeks, have you stirred up any dynamic fantasies about exotic sanctuaries or faraway places or mercurial wild cards? Have you delivered enticing messages to inspiring beauties or brave freedomfighters or vibrant networkers? Have you been monitoring the activities of long shots or future helpers or unification adepts who might be useful to you sooner than you imagine? Finally, Gemini, have you noticed I’m suggesting that everything important will arise in threes — except when they come in twos, in which case you should hunt for the missing third? P.S. When the wild things call to you, respond promptly.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Archaeologists found two 43,000-yearold flutes in Germany. Constructed of mammoth ivory and bird bone, they still produce clear notes with perfect pitch. They were located in a cave that contains ancient examples of figurative art. Some genius way back then regarded art and music as a pleasurable pairing! I propose we make these instruments your power symbols for the coming weeks, Cancerian. May they inspire you to resuscitate the value of your past accomplishments. May you call on the help of melodies and memories that still resonate — and that can inspire your future adventures! Your words of power are regeneration, revival and reanimation.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): It’s your unbirthday season, Leo — the holiday that’s halfway between your last birthday and your next. During this interlude, you could benefit from clarifying what you don’t want, don’t believe and don’t like. You may generate good fortune for yourself by going on a quest to discover rich potentials and stirring possibilities that are as-yet hidden or unexpressed. I hope you will be bold enough to scan the frontiers for sources of beauty and truth that you have been missing. During your unbirthday season, you will be wise to gather the rest of the information you will need to make a smart gamble or daring change.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2004, and Romanian-German author Herta Müller earned it in 2009. But garnering the world’s most prestigious award for writers did not provide a big boost to their book sales. In some markets, their famous works are now out of print. In 2025, I hope you Virgos do in your own spheres what they only halfaccomplished in theirs. I would love for you to gather more appreciation and attention while simultaneously raising your income. According to my reading of the astrological omens, this is a reasonable expectation.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libra-born Forrest Bess worked as a commercial fisherman in Texas. He created visionary paintings inspired by symbols that appeared to him in states between sleeping and waking. Other influences in his art came from alchemy, the psychological philosophy of Carl Jung, and Indigenous Australian rituals. His life was living proof that mystical exploration and mundane work could coexist. I’m hoping he might serve you as an inspirational role model. You are in a phase when you have the power to blend and synergize seemingly opposing aspects of your world. You would be wise to meditate on how to find common ground between practical necessity and spiritual aspiration.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, arranged to be buried after his death with an army of 8,000 soldiers made from terra-cotta, a clay ceramic. Joining the gang below the Earth’s surface were 770 horses and 130 chariots. For over 2,000 years, this assemblage was lost and forgotten. But in 1974, farmers digging a new well found it accidentally. In this spirit, I am predicting that sometime in the next five months, you will make interesting discoveries while looking for something other than what you find. They won’t be as spectacular as the terra-cotta army, but I bet they will be fun and life-changing.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Author Zora Neale Hurston said, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” I will adjust that counsel for your use, Sagittarius. According to my astrological analysis, the first half of 2025 will ask questions, and the second half will answer them. For best results, I invite you to gather and polish your best questions in the next five months, carefully defining and refining them. When July begins, tell life you are ready to receive replies to your carefully wrought inquiries.
BY ROB BREZSNY
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
Hemoglobin is an iron-bearing protein that’s crucial to most life. It enables the transportation of oxygen in the blood. But one species, the icefish of the Antarctic seas, lacks hemoglobin. They evolved other ways to obtain and circulate enough oxygen in the frozen depths, including larger hearts and blood vessels. The system they’ve developed works well. So they are examples of how to adjust to an apparent problem in ways that lead to fine evolutionary innovations. I suspect you’re now in the midst of your own personal version of a comparable adaptation. Keep up the good work!
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Born under the sign of Aquarius, Clyde Tombaugh discovered the heavenly body known as Pluto in 1930. This was years before he earned advanced degrees in astronomy. His early education was primarily self-directed. The telescopes he used to learn the sky were built from tractor parts and old car components from his father’s farm. During the coming months, I surmise there will be elements of your life resembling Tombaugh’s story. Your intuition and instincts will bring you insights that may seem unearned or premature. (They’re not!) You will garner breakthroughs that seem to be arriving from the future.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): One of the world’s deepest caves is Veryovkina in the nation of Georgia. At its lowest, it’s 7,257 feet down. There are creatures living there that are found nowhere else on Earth. I propose we make it your symbolic power spot for now. In my astrological opinion, you will be wise to dive farther into the unknown depths than you have in quite some time. Fascinating mysteries and useful secrets await you. Your motto: “Go deeper and deeper and deeper.”
