Rock On

Quartz rocks. You may have seen them, up on the hillsides and below your shoes, during your walkabouts in and around the area you call home. But what is quartz, really? I mean, if it looks like a rock, acts like a rock, and rocks when you bump it with your toe, it stands to reason that what you have discovered is likely to be a rock, and not—as your inscrutable neighbor would have you believe—a source of Great Power during times of economic uncertainty.

Having spent considerable time and effort investigating similar phenomena, I found it excruciatingly easy to make the leap to quartz, and thence to other types of rock that refused to support my weight no matter how much I sniffed and dabbed at my eye. If there's one thing I learned from sandstone, it's that.

Another thing I learned is that common household appliances can be pressed into service for all manner of scientific experimentation, but that doesn't necessarily mean the manufacturer will honor the warranty. What it does mean is that the 2.4 GHz frequency your microwave oven uses to warm leftovers is the same frequency used by your wireless router to contact the suspicious object hovering above your cottage. Cheese, too, can be converted to its liquid form using either of these microwave sources, but quartz is not cheese, at least in the dietary sense. Unlike cheese, quartz oscillates in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies—which often results in humanlike speech—hence my particular interest in kitchen appliances.

As you might expect, this brings up the same question I asked in the third sentence, namely, what is quartz, really? I don't know, but I think it may be some sort of rock. Putting a chunk of it in the microwave didn't tell me anything, but that may have more to do with the extreme temperature of the fragment I held up to my ear after the explosion.

On the other hand, incommunicado quartz is mysterious quartz. Dumb as a rock? I wonder.

Some Notices You Might Want to See

Pedal, pedal.

 

June is Colorado Bike Month!

 

Bike to work off those pounds you got sitting in front of a computer!

 

Wednesday June 27 is Bike 2 Work Day!

 

 

  Job opening at the Police Department as an Emergency Services Dispatcher.

 

Notice is up in the window at City Hall - you can read it in full there, as well as apply.

 

 

Job opening for a Seasonal Full-Time Parking Enforcement Officer - Must be 21 years of age.

 

Notice is up in the window at City Hall - you can read it in full there, as well as apply.

Manitou's New Transformation

 A local resident of Manitou Springs asked us to post this op-ed piece anonymously:

Click on photo to see a larger image.

Click on photo to see a larger image.

Letter from the Task Force - Do You See What I See?

The following document is a letter I received concerning the May 9th meeting of the Soda Springs Park Safety Task Force.  Because the letter was sent to 30 people, under the Colorado Sunshine Law of 1972, it is open to the public.  Because the meeting includes what is considered a quorum representing the City of Manitou Springs, the meeting is open to the public.  Read on, and tell me if you see anything wrong here.

This is a reminder that we will be having a meeting in Soda Springs Park starting at 5:00 and going until 6:30p.m.  At the conclusion of the meeting for those who want, we will be having a potluck dinner at the pavilion, the potluck is only for task force members.  The meeting will focus on environmental and design strategies for the park and surrounding area of influence.

Please bring your agenda from that last meeting, it has the areas of concern that we will focusing on.  We will spend the first 30-40 minutes divided up into small working groups, each looking at the list of possible environmental and design strategies. The last half of the meeting will centered on each group reporting back to the others what they see as possible strategies.  We will not be spending any time on root causes, ordinances, only strategies.

As a reminder to all, this is not an open meeting to the public, it is intended to be for task force members only.  There will no discussion about the past meetings, or root causes, we have a limited amount of time to focus on strategies.  Please come prepared to discuss and report on strategies. 

Potluck:  I will bring Plates, Spoons Forks and Knifes for the pot luck.  I suggest that each person bring their own food and drink.  I will need to leave right after the meeting portion for personal reasons.

As you can see we will ONLY be focusing on environmental and design strategies for this meeting.


Laurie and I will compile the list of strategies, send them back out to you for review and then give them to Chief Riberio, City Administrator, and City Council for review and consideration. Once the Chief Ribeiro and City have had  time to review the list of strategies and add their thoughts, we will reconvene the task force for further input.

Please remember the Soda Springs Task Force is only forwarding recommendations and strategies for consideration, keep in mind that some may or may not be implemented after full a vetting process by City Council.

The Task Force is open to the public.  The part that says the meeting is not open to the public should not stand, and we hope that many from the community are present.

We should come to share our ideas and strategies, but we should also come in the simple name of democracy.  It is bad form to discuss other people's future in their presence and not include them in the conversation.

Agenda of May 1st City Council Meeting and other Community Web Resources

The following document is the agenda of the May 1st meeting of Manitou Springs City Council.  We'll try to do our best in staying on top of these guys.  As soon as the minutes are approved, we'll publish those here, too.  In the future, we'll be video taping the meetings of council and offering them in their entirety (as well as highlights) here on the Street News.

Click here for the minutes of the most recent Manitou Springs City Council meeting.

Click here for the city landing page for the activities of Manitou Springs City  Council.

Also, the city has a few different resources that I think might be beneficial if we have more community participation.  iManitou, which is the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce, has put together a Manitou Springs Community Page.  This could be a great forum and sharing ground for the people of our town.  I'm a member personally, and I encourage other people to join up, too.  We can share photos, videos and ideas with the community and help show what's REALLY going on in Manitou.  There are a few active members, but if we bring more of the culture here, the people in positions of power will have a better idea of the things they're missing out on.