In the first weeks of Colorado’s COVID-19 school testing program, a team hired to perform testing showed up late to their assignment at an elementary school in Montezuma County. When they arrived, they couldn’t get their technology to work, refused to perform work their company was responsible for under its deal with the state and […]
Mancos
Posted inGrowth, Housing, News
Housing in small Colorado towns is “damn near a crisis.” But the solution isn’t as easy as just building more.
MANCOS — There’s no affordable housing in Mancos. Zero rental units. Nearly no houses on the market. The town’s school district struggles to hire teachers because they can’t find a place to live. It’s the same story with the town government, the hospital and the nursing home. It’s an “overwhelming issue” for the town of […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
Somehow, by the grace of God, I weathered the most recent coronavirus storm
PANDEMIC STORM Someone sent me a playlist of dance songs this morning. By eight o’clock, with two cups of tea in me, I was dancing around my kitchen and living room, feeling relaxed and free of cares. My dogs watched. “Who is this woman?” It was different from that night last week when I hit […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
For Colorado’s rural seniors, coronavirus strains access to home-based care — just as it’s needed most
Gary Wilkie never wants to go back to a nursing home, but the 79-year-old knows that without more people in his life to support him, he may need to. Wilkie spends most of his days alone in a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of an affordable-housing complex in Durango. He watches television to pass […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
What my horse taught me about working through the difficulties of coronavirus
Late last year, I was riding my big project horse, Barry. (“Project” because we’ve got stuff to work on and “big” because he’s 16½ hands.) We’d moved up and down through the gaits and had had a lovely two-hour trail ride. Returning home, I grabbed a water bottle I’d left on a fence post at […]
Posted inCrime and Courts, News, Politics and Government
Woman taking refuge in southwest Colorado church hits 1,000 day mark
By Mary Shinn, The Durango Herald MANCOS — When longtime Cortez resident Rosa Sabido first sought sanctuary from deportation in Mancos United Methodist Church more than 1,000 days ago, she expected to stay for a few weeks to a year. As the fight for her legal residency stretched into years, she decided she would not […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Culture, Education, Environment, News, Outdoors
An apple revival near Four Corners is restoring hundreds of historic fruits — and the local ag economy
MCELMO CANYON — The apple orchard on Jude and Addie Schuenemeyer’s farm in a squiggle of a canyon in far southwest Colorado is a wild place. Turkeys gobble around on the hunt for bugs in native grasses that grow nearly as high as the gnarly limbs of the apple trees. Those trees are set hither […]