Columns

What a city!
Last week I had a late night and lost a piece of clothing in the process.
Oh, you're thinking sure, Alan, you're going to tell us you were at the Coachlight Tavern and things got out of hand, right?
Not exactly.
I went to the Ice Park Committee meeting.
And it was quite the blur, so much so that the next day I looked all around for the new black fleece pullover my mother-in-law bought me and couldn't find it anywhere.
I searched the house, the office and even 6th Avenue where I had parked. I texted someone at the city and stopped by the police department to check on lost and found.
Nothing.
The next morning I was dropping Beecher off at City Hall and looked across the street. There on a railing was a black piece of clothing. I walked across and, lo and behold, there was my fleece.

Feeling any safer in the neighborhood this week? You may not, but there's a good chance your neighbor might be. That's because the Thanksgiving shopping weekend got off to a bang.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation reports that Black Friday firearm background checks set a record in the state. The CBI InstaCheck team conducted 4,779 background checks for firearms transfers on Friday.
It took 41 employees working a minimum of 10-hour shifts to conduct all the checks.
Talk about rapid fire. That's about one background check every six minutes per employee.
Background checks on Black Friday, which don't indicate how many actual guns were sold, have been steadily increasing over past years. The CBI numbers by year are:
2017:    4,779
2016:    4,329
2015:    4,115
2014:    4,119
2013:    3,804

We eased on down Utah’s “Blue Highways,” drifting like sand in the wind, eddying up here and there without plan nor purpose, living the “good life” like a couple of peripatetic hobos with stolen credit cards.
After wandering San Raphael’s barren slot-canyoned Swell, we caught up with Ms Autumn in Capitol Reef. Gnarly old Cottonwoods stood in line along the banks of the Freemont, leaves of gold palpitating in the breeze. Necks craned skyward at sheer, sky-piercing, buff red walls. On top rested massive domes of white, thrones fit for the gods. Overwhelmed by goose bumps and the pervasive spiritual aura, my agnostic tendencies can’t help but teeter.

If you've missed any of our reporting over the last year or so as it relates specifically to recent sexual assault cases in Ouray County, no worries. A local neighboring publication, printed weekly and tossed hither and thither, took the liberty of lifting our work and ever so gently massaging it into their own last week.
But Alan, you say, you reprint snippets from the Gunnison, Lake City, Silverton and Montrose papers. And you've been known to reprint entire stories from a few of these publications.
Oh, so true, our ever watchful reader. We have a working relationship with these papers and willingly trade back and forth. When we reference other area papers, we use it to augment our own work, not as the roux for our gumbo. And when we reprint entire stories, we reprint entire stories. No changes. No trying to make it look like our own. Full attribution and permission.