Cold Weather.

Seems like just yesterday, we were having nice 60 degree days. Now the National Weather Service is forcasting a week at 0°.

Red Truck

I had dinner with Shari and David Daly-Miller. The big event was the introduction of fine beverages from Palisade Brewery. The Grand Valley now has a nice local quality micro-brew. I very much enjoyed their Red Truck IPA.

Colorado Wine Festival

This weekend is the wine festival in Palisade. Alas, I fear that I will be too busy to partake in this event! What with the Spamival that I am hosting Saturday!

Soup Kitchen

I did my monthly duty at the Catholic Outreach Soup Kitchen with the UUUS crew.

Kylie at the Renaissance Fair

This weekend, the annual Grand Junction Renaissance Fair was being held out at the Mesa County Fair Grounds. I took my niece Kylie out to see it. It was the first time that I actually took her out anywhere myself. We had a great time even though there was a light rain most of the time we were at the festival.

Carlson Vineyards

Wine season is upon us. The annual Colorado Mountain Winefest is one of the biggest events of the year and is a huge tourist draw. My favorite winery is Carlson Vineyards. Yes, this is the closest winery to where I live, but I do love their wines and Parker Carlson's whimsical style. Carlson makes very fine wines, including fruit wines. If you are think that fruit wines suck, then you must be thinking of those sickly syrupy California fruit wines that are closer to cough medicine than wine.

The fruit wines of Carlson Vineyards are beautiful. They fit perfectly with cheese, fruit or desert. I think that their plumb wine is a thing of wonder.

Standings September 2

In the two weeks since I created the left and column that contains links related to Grand Junction, Mesa County and the Western Slope of Colorado I have seen my Google standings go from around 350 to 275.

Mesa County Volunteer Connection

Mesa County Volunteer Connection provides an online center to discover volunteer opportunities in the Grand Junction area. The site lists a large number of local organizations that provide help throughout our community. Wether You are interested in helping kids, the poor, the environment, the sick, those seeking to learn, the cause of justice or any other cause, you will find a volunteer job here. The site is operated by the Western Slope DOVIA (Directors Of Volunteers In Agencies).

Unfortunately, the site has a rather poor navigation interface on the home page. There is a stylelized map with different houses representing various volunteering categories. You have to drag the mouse over the buildings to see what link the building represents. Once you get into the site, there is a nice navigation menu at the bottom of the page.

Henrietta Hay

I found the web site of Grand Junction columnist Henrietta Hay. It looks like Henrietta has most of her columns from the last 10 years collected together on her website. This is perhaps the important archive of essays about Grand Junction that I have found online.

Henrietta Hay is a sports-car-driving liberal in a conservative town. In Grand Junction, Colorado, she writes a weekly column for the local Daily Sentinel . In spite of (or because of?) her renegade views, her column is the most popular feature in the paper. Oh, and this week she turns 89 years old.

Fun Junction American Gods

Lifted from a letter to venus3331

Tonight I went out with some friends for their kids birthday party. We took a bunch of kids to Fun Junction to ride the amusements. This was the first time that I had ever been to Fun Junction. How have I missed this for the past 8 years! Do You know of the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman? He is best know for being the creator of the Sandman graphic novels. A couple of years ago, Gaiman wrote a novel entitled "American Gods" about how various Gods and Goddesses from around the world had followed the human migration to America. Since Americans no longer respect these old gods, the gods are pretty much down and out, existing in various impoverished sub-cultures. (However, there are new gods such as the Goddess of Television who are very powerful.) The somewhat decaying kitsch feeling of Fun Junction feels like a scene form American Gods. I half expected to see the norse god Odin in the form of a kindly 60 year old one-eyed man scamming kids at skee ball.

gjActive is becoming

Work is moving forward on the gjActive concept. We are doing brainstroming and visioning. And then what? Business plans, programming, community action, consultations, making new friends. There is lots of work. I suspect that we will have a some public statements in the next two weeks. (Of course, I am taking vacation next week so that will slow things down a wee bit.)

Watch the Grand Junction 4th of July Parade and Support the Bill of Rights

I sent this message to the "UUUS" mailing list:

Pizza, Art and Vibes

Last night Rachael came over and I cooked home made Pizza for her and my folks. Afterward, Rachael and I caught some of the Friday night action at the Art and Jazz Festival[not a permanent link]. This festival kicks off the new installations in Grand Junction's large public art collection. We went into one art gallery featuring the works of Ryabn Watkins. I have seen his works around town and have been impressed by his style and technique. The photos at his web site realy do not do his pictures justice. The three dimensions created by torn canvas pierced by metal rods and pulled taunt buy cables is lost. We finishoff the night at the Mesa Theater to see another great performance of Lion Vibes.

Earth Day report

We had a very successful Earth Day celebration last Sunday. The theme was Save the Humans. The event included a Procession of the Species that Sandra Lee had been planning for years, and a wonderful outdoor concert by Lion Vibes. The "UUUS" was instrumental in supporting Earth Day, and I wrote this letter to thank all of our volunteers:

A gay little problem in Grand Junction

The local controversy du jour is about the use of the word "gay" at local grade schools. On my morning rounds of web sites I was amazed to see that this story was picked up by Plastic one of topical debate sites that I sometimes read. Read the raging debate School's Anti-Bullying Policy Is Gay.

I wonder if I know the poster of this story indiaink

SkilFest

Last week, I met Timothy Herrera. He is one of the dudes who are running the Grand Junction SkilFest hip-hop event. I sent him some pointers on how to improve his web site. (And suggested that he blog it).

It is cool to meet people who have a passion that they are pursuing full throttle.

Sure, maybe I am getting a bit old, and maybe I am not into hip hop culture. The closest I get to this is listening to techno and trance. Not really it. But I don't get why some poeple are actually fearful of hip hop. It is just people who are being creative. Taking a bit of the past culture and adding a big dose of your own attitude is what people have always done.

I remember reading an article from the 1930's talking about how Glen Miller's unwholesome big band sounds were destroying the youth of America. Heh!

Have fun. Don't hurt others. Try to make the world better. I think SkilFest is doing that.

Vibes

Another great Lion Vibes concert. My favorite local reggae group did it again with an outstanding concert.

I was a little skeptical that this would be a successful concert. The venue was The Sports Page a local bar. It had been several years since I was last at The Sports Page. It use to be a ramshackled building will low ceilings that claimed to be a sports bar, but felt like a dive. Yet the Page was also know to have great hamburgers. This was the Page of old.

About a year ago, they tore down the building prominently located on Main Street and First Avenue, and in its place built a nice new two story building and including spacious outdoor seating. So now instead of being a dive, the Page is a very nice sports bar.

I arrived at 8:45pm only to find that the concert did not actually start until 10pm. So I watched Matt, the Jared's and company setup the band. Looking around the bar, I felt apprehension. The bar was filled with people wearing team insignia ball caps and jerseys. While I think that reggae can be quite universal music, I suspect that most of these Page patrons are more into Rock or Country. There there were all of the big TV's showing NCAA basket ball and CNN coverage of the war in Iraq. Not quite that reggae feeling.

When the music finally started, the band was a little shaky. The energy just was not there. A good number of Lion Vibe fans had shown up, but everyone was just sitting and listening. No body danced. Finally, I got up with Kim and danced a bit, still there was no out pouring of dancers to the floor. After about four songs, there were 6 guys (myself included) and one gal dancing. A very strange ratio. Who knows why, but we all know that our social dynamic is that women drive dancing. Women have no problem dancing together, but men simply don't. Finally, Lion Vibe's threw down a song and pulled the audience into action. The floor filled with people, and the music felt real. Lion Vibe's proved that they did not need matriarchs.

Later in the dance, I became suddenly aware that I was dancing surrounded by 8 or 10 beautiful women. Despite the fact that this made me feel acutely isolated and lonely, I did not give into to my strong desire to run away. Okay, the truth is that things went even better...

During the second set, they made the round of introducing the performers. One of the women next to me was shocked to hear that Speedo Man is a band member. I got to speak to Nat several times that evening, and I think that it is remarkable how happy he has become as a member of the band. Earlier in the evening, I even talked to a woman who use to teach his kids. She is likewise very happy to see how well Nat is doing in the band.

By the break after the second set, I was tired. It was after 1am, and Lion Vibes was getting ready for their third set which was promised to be mostly new material. I decided to leave. The party had only slightly thinned, and the bar was still doing a brisk business.

The Lion Vibes continue to sell out their venues.

Everything turns to white

Woke up this morning to a beautiful white wintery landscape. Four inches of snow blanket the land. This is the most snow we have had in at least a year. Sticky snow. I see many trees bowing.