One landfill in Denver is taking their garbage fumes and attempting to convert them into electric power. Is it feasible? Dana Cronin fills us in with an audio essay.
Red cover art
A House Divided
If your memory works step-by-step, Trump’s evolving stance on immigration feels like a gradual heightening of pitch or a sort of slow burn from bark to bite. At first it was bluster, then it was a slogan. Then hats, tweets, debates, the convention, a 12-state bus-tour, screaming crowds, a victory speech, confirmation hearings. Finally, a pair of executive orders. Each moment blended into the next.
Deal Me In
The screen displayed a debt balance of $80,000. I sulked and shuffled downstairs to find my mother, but tears were already brimming in my lower lash line.
“Why are you upset?” she asked.
I stayed silent, too scared to utter my reality aloud. She glanced at the screen on my computer.
“Oh. I see…” she sighed. “Yeah, sometimes you have to make sacrifices. You know, I graduated with a barrel of student loans on my back and thought, ‘I’ll never get rid of this. Everything I do and all the money I make will be going towards my debt. They own me.’”
This didn’t make me feel better. I walked my dog and tried to process my thoughts. At the moment, all I wanted was to be as blissfully carefree as my ginger-haired puppy, but before I could sink down that rabbit hole of despair I quickly came to terms with reality. I needed a solution. Fast.
Conversations on Menstruation
Deepa was 13 when she found blood dripping between her legs and staining her underwear. She was terrified. She didn’t know what was happening to her body.
I was also 13. I walked home from school after a field trip, went to the bathroom and discovered the symbol of womanhood on my jeans. I remember sliding down the blue wall in my kitchen, shaking, as I called my mom on the phone.
From Cuba With Love
In an attempt to lighten the mood while two Cuban military officers in olive green uniforms escorted me into a concrete-walled compound, I commented on the heavy rain clouds moving in overhead. One of the officers looked up to the sky, but neither replied. The compound’s large metal gate shut at my back.
Two Minutes to Midnight
In August 1988, the first group of commercial rafters to enter Russia since the Iron Curtain dropped in the 1940s, made their way to the Katun River. Nestled in the dense forests carpeting the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia, the river was then accessible only by helicopter. The group of 10 Americans met with a group of Russians thanks to project RAFT (Russians and Americans For Teamwork). During a night at camp, after multiple days on the river, one of the Americans asked, “How is it that we have lived under stereotypes and fear for so long?” The light crackle of the fire grew louder as the silence settled. The same skies that 30 years earlier held the threat of falling nuclear weapons were now clear, dark and speckled with stars. Everyone around the fire looked at each other and started crying. The Cold War was over.
12/28/16
Craigslist, Polyamory and the Apocalypse
I woke to a large man standing over my bed.
“Benji?” I asked. “How’d you get in here?”
Benji shrugged toward the door, “You let me in, remember?”
I mouthed, “Oh, right, of course,” slowly lifting the covers over my bare chest, as Benji leans in closer to the foot of my bed. I’m unable to bring his face into focus, like some prosopagnosic motion blur. I blink and his arms are outstretched, pointing to the empty pillow beside me. I look over my left shoulder and back at him, but he’s already on the bed, advancing.
Just a dream, though, obviously.
Beyond Bernie
"There has been no successful socialist nation ever!” Shouts ensue. “There hasn’t been a successful capitalist one either!” It’s a Saturday night, 8 o’clock, downtown at the Iron Bird Brewing Company, where the Colorado Springs Socialists are hosting their monthly meetup. I’m sitting between a pack of socialists and a 20-year-old libertarian named Patrick, who came “to learn something.”
Today Will be a Better Day
The story begins in an endless void of stars. You approach one, and it’s actually a tumbling ball of static. Text appears beneath it:
name: jacob ernholtz
age: 31
method: asphyxiation by hanging
The ball of static swallows you. Then comes the sound of a garish alarm. It’s 3:22 a.m., exactly when you wanted to wake up. The first thing you see is a poster on your ceiling that says “Today will be a better day.” Below the text is a disturbing hand-sketched face that looks like a demented baby.
Letter from the editor - Red
Mind the Gap
I hang up after the 50th call of the day and mark a check by the running column we have under “Protest the appointment of Steve Bannon.” The phone rings again.
“You’ve reached Senator Michael Bennet’s office. How may I help you today?” I answer in a voice almost as automated as a machine’s.
“If Bannon is in the White House, then no Democrat should work with any Republicans!” announces the caller. “Do to them what they did to Obama for eight years! The Senator should quit or boycott, but there is no way my representative is signing on to any bill a Republican proposes if Republicans don’t stand up and demand that Bannon stay out.” The caller hangs up.
I record another check in our column and take a break. Walking outside, I find myself in the midst of a group of protestors. They wear red baseball caps and hold signs: “Get government out of my Medicare!”
The irony is painful.
Letter from the editor - Food
It’s the time of year when we bid peaches adieu, start noticing squash as decorations and zip our jackets up to our chins as we briskly shuffle to lunch after class. And what better to do on a chilly night of oranges and maroons than to curl up with a snack and the Food Issue? To get the full effect of the following pages, we recommend you find guidance in this homemade recipe...
Behind Kitchen Doors
Machiavelli and a Bag of Chips
I was alone in Florence this July, staying at a friend’s flat. On a gloomy day, I took one of his bikes out and stopped at a café down the road and past a park. I bought a large bottle of Birra Moretti—the Tuscan equivalent of Budweiser—a basic ham and cheese sandwich with tomatoes and basil and a bag of plain potato chips. I rode through some narrow, winding streets to the center of the city.
Shaking in a Park
Lake and I talk about the fireworks business for a while, and he brags about all his romantic conquests, including one in which he made out with ten girls and five guys in one night. We walk on the beach near the power plant and talk about how we are so glad we have reconnected. He says, “Hey, want to get high as balls sometime?” I smoked cannabis sometimes my freshman year and enjoyed it, so I say, “Totally.”
The Sexualization of Meat
When my visiting relatives said they wanted to go to a new British-style restaurant in my town, which describes itself as “meat centric,” I was apprehensive. The feeling of masticating an animal between my canines always felt a bit off to me. However, my family had flown 3,000 miles to visit, so the least I could do was attend a dinner with them.
The Endangered Heart of Wine County
I grew up in one of the top wine meccas of the world: Napa Valley, Calif. Wine Country. It’s a place where the majority of people you see walking down Main Street are tourists, slowing traffic to admire the vineyards and wineries along the highway. It’s a place where high school students have the option of enrolling in a viticulture class, where it’s weird for the parents of a friend not to be involved in the wine industry, and where I’ve dealt with numerous inebriated customers at work, drunk from wine tasting all day.
Cooperative Consumption
In your jaunt past Worner last Friday, you may have noticed a big white truck with the signature Arkansas Valley Organic Growers’ beet stamped on its side. You may have even seen members of the group, better known as AVOG, unloading cardboard boxes and stacking them outside the south entrance of Worner. If you were there because you’re one of the lucky Colorado College students or community members with a box to pick up, you could expect to bring it home and find it filled with an array of quality Colorado produce, grains and honey.