Category: Bad news

It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity, part 2

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
The Waldo Canyon fire
The Waldo Canyon fire, as seen from a couple blocks west of Chez Dog.

Sonofabitch. Now we’ve got a live one encroaching upon greater cosmopolitan Bibleburg.

Dubbed the Pyramid Mountain fire, it started somewhere near Waldo Canyon and is already estimated at some 600 acres. An assortment of mandatory and voluntary beat-it orders are in place for west- and north-siders, but at the moment it seems the prevailing winds are pushing the thing north and west, so Your Humble Narrator is not in danger — at the moment, anyway — of becoming a hot dog, har har.

The fire has been declared a federal emergency, and renowned feddle-gummint rassler Dougie Lamborn (R-Hypocrisy) reportedly “stands ready to assist if federal resources are required.” In light of the serious nature of the event I’ll refrain from delivering the obvious ironic rimshot.

More as we hear it.

• Late update: The fire is now officially named for Waldo Canyon (no “Where’s Waldo? jokes, please), and late word is that it’s torched a couple thousand acres and displaced about as many people. Nobody hurt so far, according to the local rumormongers, which is good. You can replace burned-up people, just like you can replace burned-up stuff, but the process takes longer and the outcome is uncertain.

The winds seem to have died down, but it’s always creepy to look at the sky at 9:30 p.m. and see peach-colored clouds and a moon that looks like an orange slice from some kid’s Halloween candy haul.

It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Jeebus. Four days of record-breaking heat in Bibleburg and more on the way. Lord, I know it was supposed to be the fire next time — I just wasn’t expecting it so soon.

Speakings of fires, have I mentioned that we’ve got ’em out the wazoo? Up near Lake George, around Fort Collins, at Pagosa Springs and around Mesa Verde, for starters.

The Springer fire near Lake George is thought to have been human-caused, if you can describe as “human” one or more of the lesser primates banging away at a propane tank with the old smokepole. Yes, that’s the rumor behind the news, as The Firesign Theatre would put it. And the crazier the rumor, the greater the likelihood that it’s true. We also have a serial arsonist lighting up the roadside grasses in Teller County. Good times.

The menagerie and I are left alone to endure this smoky pestilence, Herself having pissed off to Mouse Country for some class of library confab at which they all dress severely, put their hair up in buns and practice the hissing of “Shh!” at each other. Just as well, I suppose, as the metaphorical flames of multiple deadlines are licking around my feet and I can’t seem to stomp them out fast enough, which makes me unpleasant company.

And at least we still have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of, unlike a whole bunch of folks up in Larimer County, whose homes are now portable, fitting neatly into their cars’ ashtrays. Makes a shit monsoon feel like a gentle summer rain.

Adios, Ed Quillen

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Ed Quillen
Ed Quillen

Longtime Colorado scribe Ed Quillen went west on Sunday. He was just 61.

When I was a young punk in the journalism program at the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, where Ed had run the student paper some years earlier, an exasperated adviser told me Ed was probably the only editor in the state who would hire me.

And he did, eventually — though not to work at the Longmont Scene, the Middle Park Times in Kremmling, the Summit County Times in Breckenridge or the Mountain Mail in Salida. I’d burned through a half-dozen newspaper gigs in 12 years and had turned free-lancer before Ed finally hired me to do a thing or two for his Salida-based magazine, Colorado Central, which goes to show you how much academics know about the real world outside their ivy-covered cloisters.

Once, when I was seriously overtrucked and living outside Weirdcliffe, my friend and colleague Hal Walter, then and now a Colorado Central columnist, prevailed upon me to loan Ed a vehicle so he could drive to a speaking engagement in Trinidad. At the time, Ed smoked like a landfill fire, and I asked him not to befoul my ’83 Toyota’s cab with nicotine (though I myself had smoked in the thing back in the Eighties). Ed agreed, and the trip took a good deal longer than it should have because he stopped every 15 minutes or so to step out and burn one.

When Ed and his wife, Martha, weren’t wrangling Colorado Central he wrote for The Denver Post, High Country News and HCN’s Writers on the Range syndicate. A selection of his Post columns was published in 1998 as “Deep In the Heart of the Rockies,” and you can read a number of his more recent pieces in the Post‘s archive.

Ed was always worth reading, an old newshound who sought to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Finley Peter Dunne had his Mr. Dooley — who is enjoying something of a renaissance at Charles P. Pierce’s Politics blog — and Ed had his Ananias Ziegler, media relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America.

Here’s hoping they’re enjoying smokes and jokes at the Thirty Club. Ed, you will be missed.

Ed Quillen is survived by his wife, Martha; their daughters, Columbine and Abby; and a few million words squirreled away on his website. My condolences to his family, friends and many readers.

More about Ed:

• High Country News: Farewell to a wise curmudgeon.

• The Denver Post: Ed’s obit.

• Westword: Michael Roberts pens a remembrance.

The stink also rises

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Destruction zone
Yes, those smelly old elves are at it again in the basement.

Tell you what: When it rains, it pours, especially in our basement.

The water heater is on the fritz now, pissing all over the floor like a badly trained dog, and I would shoot the fucker two or three times if I weren’t afraid of inflicting collateral damage upon the humidifier, which in this climate is the only thing keeping me from bleeding to death through the nose.

Speaking of noses, when the temps creep up into the high 80s, low 90s, what a man wants is a basement free of raw sewage. They say that shit rolls downhill, and speaking as a longtime resident of the valley I will say that they do not lie.

But the stink from same, like the sun, also rises. And a man with a litter box in his office upstairs doesn’t need any more of that sort of annoyance than he can achieve through a diet rich in the foodstuffs of Northern New Mexico, which at least smells good going in.

So much for the bad news. The good news is that chats with the insurance company have not led to extended bouts of weeping; an expert is en route today to lay hands upon the water heater (rather than 158-grain, semi-jacketed, .357 Magnum hollow points); and Ted at Old Town Bike Shop resolved an issue with the front disc brake on the latest test bike, for which I owe him some beer and many thanks.