Few feelings delight me more than being an unabashed beginner. One of those feelings, I discovered last night, is playing with clay. I attended a level one pottery wheel class at the Boulder Pottery Lab, run by
Studio Arts Boulder , a nonprofit arts organization that’s super close to finishing a decade-long, $13 million building to teach ceramics, woodworking, metal, glass and printmaking. But the Pottery Lab isn’t in that building — it’s in a slim, two-story former fire department nestled into the neighborhood near Chautauqua Park. It’s there that I learned to cut, center and pull squishy chunks of white clay into what could arguably be called a bowl. I also learned what you do when you screw it up: Fold the clay into a rainbow shape and let it dry on the table, so the lab can re-use the clay later. Most of my first two hours on the wheel was spent making rainbows. Let’s fire this thing up.
THE NEWS
HEALTH
Bird flu has been making headlines lately as it spreads among dairy herds across nine states, including two potential outbreaks in Colorado. Reporter
John Ingold dives into the important questions about the issue, like: Can dairy cows die from bird flu? Is there bird flu in our milk? And how are cows catching something called the bird flu?
WATER
“Every drop of water that we can negotiate and partner on to flow west to better our streams and rivers is a good thing.” A new agreement between Grand County, home to the Colorado River headwaters, and Northern Water, the company that provides northeastern Colorado its water supply, will help streams on the Western Slope stay fuller, cooler and healthier. Previously, the water has been pushed east through four diversion tunnels.
Shannon Mullane has details about the deal and how downstream ranchers and fishers will benefit from the extra flow.
“The question we have is what is the issue? What is this thing to solve?” Backcountry huts are known for bare bones accommodations in some of the most pristine parts of Colorado. Last year, Gunnison County concluded that one hut in particular — four miles up Washington Gulch outside of Crested Butte — was a little too bare, hitting the hut with various septic, building code and land use regulations. New legislation tries to determine whether backcountry huts should be operated as short-term rentals, but county commissioners wonder why a bill was brought up in the first place. As
Jason Blevins reports, many of them see the bill as “a solution in search of a problem.” Tucked into an eleventh-hour oil and gas bill is the promise of a long-awaited rail line between Longmont and Denver. The line is part of Gov. Polis’ legacy dream of a Front Range rail system, but some RTD officials doubt that an entirely new project is the best way to spend the agency’s money.
Jesse Paul has more.
MORE NEWS
THE COLORADO REPORT
Drew Litton illustrates how easy it is to lose count of the number of Denver Broncos quarterbacks since Peyton Manning retired who haven’t worked out. Is Bo Nix the answer? In
“What’d I Miss?” when Ossie mistakenly makes an online repost at odds with his true opinion, the angry reaction is fierce and sometimes unrelenting.
CONVERSATION
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Corrections & Clarifications
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
