Tag Colorado Springs

Hard Living: Colorado Homesteaders

I’ve got it so easy. Here I sit in my comfy chair sipping a cup of flavored coffee, thinking about my ancestors. Those people were homesteaders, and they had some hard living! My great grandfather, Lester Dudley “LD” Moore, came to Colorado in 1910. He and his brothers and father, and some other relatives, came here because their dad had tuberculosis. The Colorado air was supposed to help. Like most

Continue reading…

Park Estep: An Imperfect Trial

On the night of September 19, 1974, someone murdered the owner of the Suezy Massage Parlor on South Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs. The owner, Sun Ok Cousin, was the Korean wife of a retired Army man. Her assistant, Elizabeth Yon Cha Lee, a very recent arrival from Korea, was attacked with a knife and left in the building her assailant had set on fire, but she survived. On October

Continue reading…

Pioneer Profiles: Spencer Penrose

The “Pioneer Profiles” series explores some of the interesting characters that define Colorado history. This article discusses the life of Spencer Penrose. *** Spencer Penrose got a rather inauspicious debut in Colorado Springs. Fresh from a Harvard education that taught him little but decent boxing skills, Penrose had been eking out a living in Cripple Creek doing real estate transactions with his buddy Charlie Tutt. They made the rounds to

Continue reading…

Gardening Is Reshaping American Culture

Gardening means many things, depending on why you might want it or need it in your life. Time has shaped this art from culturally diverse backgrounds, and people will continue to find more uses for it every day, especially with the Green Revolution reshaping American culture. I would like to share with you what this practice means to me as a “gardener.” Along the way, I’ll attempt to show that

Continue reading…

Pioneer Profiles: Mabel Barbee Lee

This series, “Pioneer Profiles,” explores some of the interesting characters that define Colorado history. All the quotes from the following article are from Cripple Creek Days by Mabel Barbee Lee. *** Mabel Barbee was born to Johnson and Kitty Barbee in 1884. Johnson Barbee was a prospector who spent his time looking for his mother lode, which he was sure was somewhere in Nevada. However, when he heard that Bob Womack

Continue reading…

Ten Reasons Why We Should Pay Attention to Local Politics

For me, the machinations of the machine we call “American politics” seemed like nothing so much as an overrated reality television show starring criminals and people fully indoctrinated into a failing two-party system. I really didn’t see how I could make a difference with my vote, and I didn’t think it was even worth voting. Then I discovered a really amazing aspect of our political system. The local governments in

Continue reading…