5280 Magazine April 2022

Everyone who picks up a magazine reads it differently. Some people flip right to the back page, a piece of real estate publications often reserve for satire or a personal essay or a crossword puzzle. Others thumb directly to the food section, should there be one. Still others find the features and eschew the rest of the stories writers and designers and photo editors have labored over. I’ve learned this, no lie, by watching the people ahead of me in grocery store checkout lines. Each time I see someone pick up a copy of 5280, I try to guess which kind of reader that person might be—but I also always hope for one thing. I want both the twenty something with the frozen pizzas and the grandma clutching Grape-Nuts to…

Multidisciplinary Artist Young, an Indigenous muralist and painter, centered two of the illustrations she created for “Is This Land Your Land?” (page 106), an examination of land acknowledgments, on photographs of a Comanche woman and a Ute man, both from Colorado. MEANINGFUL MOTIVATION ”I hope to encourage those that see the artwork and read the story to educate themselves about what land they are on and to acknowledge and respect our Earth.” ON INSPIRATION ”My ancestry informs the kin that are a focal point in my work, but so does land and water. From charcoal to pencil to paint—even this keyboard I use to type—these mediums all derive from the land.” ON 5280.COM Magic Moment April 9, Denverite Scotty Wiese will become the first magician to headline Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Think you can’t be fooled? Head to 5280.com…

Since November, motorists passing through Glenwood Canyon have been greeted by a jarring scene: backhoes and excavators toiling in the Colorado River. The heavy machinery is there to remove 240,000 tons of debris left when flash flooding in July 2021 caused a rock flow to rush down the canyon’s walls, which had been burned bare by the Grizzly Creek fire a year earlier. The flood wrecked portions of I-70 and blocked the river with mud, sediment, and rock. The cost of mitigation will total $24.2 million, but the Colorado Department of Transportation predicts the road and the waterway will be cleared by early this month—just in time for the next flash flood season. With more impermeable soil and less vegetation because of the fire, even modest amounts of rain could…

1 ON THE BLINK Blinky the Clown—aka Russell Scott—entertained and educated on the local Blinky’s Fun Club show wearing his trademark tartan blazer for more than 40 years, making him TV’s longest-running clown. 2 SCENES FROM A PROTEST Along with used tear gas grenades, rubber bullets, and spray paint canisters, History Colorado staff collected posters after the first Denver demonstration against the murder of George Floyd. 3 TIP OF THE HAT Pink beanies became a symbol of 2017’s Women’s March on Denver after thousands of people wore handmade versions as part of a protest against the presidential election of Donald Trump, who infamously used the term “pussy” in an offensive manner during an Access Hollywood taping in 2005. The nationwide demonstrations were some of the largest in the country’s history. 4 THE MASKED GOVERNOR It’s likely most…

In July 2019, while serving on the board of Romance Writers of America (RWA), Heidi Bond—who prefers to go by her pen name, Courtney Milan—won an award for promoting diversity within the trade association. Several months later, however, the organization suspended the Front Range author and barred her from hold ing future RWA leadership positions. Her crime? Calling out another member’s depiction of a half-Chinese character as a “racist mess” on Twitter. That wasn’t the first time Milan called out a bad actor. Although she grew up in Southern California dreaming of becoming a writer, she went to law school instead, perusing romance novels as a release from academic pressure. In 2007, during a clerkship for Alex Kozinski, Milan says the prominent federal appeals judge subjected her to abusive behavior, such…

Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) is preaching a new gospel to the masses: Thou shalt not harm the Earth. Founded in 2012, the national nonprofit has mobilized 25,000 Gen Z Christians to spread a “What Would Jesus Do” message to members of their faith who don’t believe in climate change. (In 2015, 37 percent of white evangelical Protestants said there was no solid evidence of climate change, according to the Pew Research Center.) Helping lead that mission is Littleton resident and YECA’s new director of communications, 26-year-old Lindsay Garcia. Ahead of Earth Day, we spoke with Garcia about being a burning bush for climate skeptics. 5280: What message resonates with evangelicals? Lindsay Garcia: One of the first things God says to humans in Genesis is to be good stewards of the…