Colorado's Cultural Guidepost http://www.cairnmag.com 2008-05-14T18:51:58+01:00 text/html 2008-05-05T17:00:00+01:00 http://www.cairnmag.com http://www.cairnmag.com/content/view/68/61/ images/stories/novel/reviews/ghosthunters.jpg “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death” by Deborah Blum Penguin Press, 384 pages, $26 The time following the American Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a period with a power to tease the imagination like no other. This is primarily so because of a pervasive and seemingly credible interest in spooks. text/html 2008-05-05T12:52:47+01:00 http://www.cairnmag.com http://www.cairnmag.com/content/view/70/79/ images/stories/blog/ruckus/silk_screening.jpg What can I say? Everything that comes to mind is too hyperbolic. Think of all the emotions you’ve ever had and imagine experiencing them all within the short time span of 3 little days. Coachella (http://www.coachella.com/) was exhausting and invigorating, tedious challenges morphed seamlessly into breathtaking exuberance and back again—and I’m sure most volunteers felt the same way. We were hot, we were cold, hungry then full, tired then hyper, annoyed then supremely overjoyed. The only quality that remained with me throughout the entire festival was being sweaty and dirty. But even that felt good at times, and disgusting at others. To sum up, I felt at once overwhelmed and like a sponge at the bottom of the ocean, completely saturated but still wanting to take in more. It was sublime, people, so excuse my poetic indulgence, just for a moment. Besides the music and working with Global Inheritance (http://www.globalinheritance.org/) , which were both amazing; the people I met are who really made Coachella the experience it was. Coachella is one of the biggest annual events for Global Inheritance—what we put on there was much more of a production that what we did at the Ultra Festival in Miami. There was the giant biodiesel-run clock tower in the center of our set up, and on each of its four sides were different sustainably-themed programs: solar powered bags and I-pod chargers, pedal-a-watt bike stations where festival goers could charge their cell phones, an info booth and seminars on making biodiesel out of vegetable oil and custom silk screening on organic cotton t-shirts. text/html 2008-04-29T20:20:13+01:00 http://www.cairnmag.com http://www.cairnmag.com/content/view/67/59/ images/stories/creative/artposium/car_river_journals.jpg So, whaddya get when you cross a farmer, a fly fisherman, a cellist, and a poet? Artposium. Don’t go anywhere. This isn’t some overly intellectual, artsy-fartsy event for the conspicuously pompous. It’s a weekend of smart, interdisciplinary presentations, conversations, and workshops organized around an art-meets-land theme germane to the locale. Held twice annually in different Colorado towns, the next Artposium (http://www.coloradoartranch.org/artposia.htm) is coming up real soon: May 16–18 in Steamboat Springs text/html 2008-04-25T00:08:45+01:00 http://www.cairnmag.com http://www.cairnmag.com/content/view/66/79/ images/stories/blog/babysteps.jpg Well folks, the long anticipated (by me, anyway) RuckusRoots premier event has come and gone. Aside from the biodegradable ticker tape parade thrown in my honor and President Bush arriving in Boulder, reading my flyers and dropping to his knees to beg our forgiveness as a nation, nothing really major happened. Let me just say, in all seriousness, this has been a whirlwind experience, and it is far from over. It is my hope, actually, that it is never over and that I can live in this whirlwind forever, as long as there are issues I believe the youth should become aware of, and hopefully, outraged by. I guess I should invest in a substantial windbreaker. I hear Patagonia makes one out of recycled materials. A whirlwind, indeed. text/html 2008-04-24T21:11:06+01:00 http://www.cairnmag.com http://www.cairnmag.com/content/view/65/57/ For you ex-Boulderites who’ve left Shangri-La for careers, strippers and Rockies games down here in Cowtownthere’s now a glowing orb of a place that spews great beer and food like a solar flare. Veering wildly off the marketing path by opting for an “un-Sun” name, the folks at Mountain Sun (http://www.mountainsunpub.com/) opened the Vine Street Pub (corner of 17th Ave. and Vine Street) on April 14th right here in Denver. That means the excellent micro-brews, creative food and laid-back, hippie atmosphere has joined this cozy little neighborhood just a couple blocks north of Colfax. I guess we Denverites need some Sun, too.